Government & Politics

Stephen Decatur, Eduardo Saverin, and the Unpatriotic Hypocrisy of the Right

/ Jack Marshall / 77 Comments

Stephen Decatur

I admit that I am often ambushed by the hypocrisy of both political parties and their followers. The ability of both conservatives and progressives to completely reverse positions and advocate exactly what they had passionately opposed mere months, weeks, or even minutes before is breathtaking, and I never seem ready for it. For example, after the Democrats had tried to pin the shooting of Rep. Giffords on the harsh rhetoric of  Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and others in the conservative camp, I really wasn’t ready for them to ratchet up the metaphorically violent metaphors themselves within a few weeks, but they did. Similarly, after conservatives had mocked and condemned the discouraged liberals who had fled the U.S. in dismay after George W. Bush was re-elected, I was unprepared for the unseemly applause emanating from the Right when Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin decided to become an ex-American to save mega-millions on his tax bill.

Lock-step ideology is damaging enough, but lock-step ideology without consistent values, principles and priorities is dangerous, and that, I fear, is what we have on both ends of the political spectrum in America today.

Stephen Decatur (1779-1820) was a genuine American hero, once featured in grade school history lessons but now, like so many others, the victim of cultural oblivion. One of the greatest naval commanders in U.S. history, Decatur had his meteoric career was cut short by a duel, and as his exploits on the waves have faded from memory, the one feature of his remarkable life that is best remembered is his legendary  toast, made in April 1816,  that became an iconic, if often misunderstood, expression of American patriotism:

“Our Country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong.” Continue reading →

The Significance of “Pow Wow Chow”

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

Great title, by the way….

There is mostly bad ethics news for Elizabeth Warren fans from the re-discovery of the 1984 cookbook she contributed to called “Pow Wow Chow,” but some good news too. The good news is that the 28 year-old cook book, edited by her cousin and listing the current Harvard professor and Democratic Senate contender as a contributor named “Elizabeth Warren, Cherokee,” shows that Warren didn’t just concoct her claims of Cherokee heritage to achieve minority status to help her get faculty jobs through university diversity hiring policies. Oh, she intentionally employed her dubious heritage credentials to get that edge, no doubt about it. But the cookbook shows that though she was only 1/32 Native American by the most generous calculations and was assuming that lineage on the basis of hearsay alone, Elizabeth Warren really had convinced herself that she is a Cherokee, and probably believes it to this day. Hence her obsession with being able to call herself a Native American appears less opportunistic and more, well, nuts. [ Note: for a thorough though excessively sympathetic review of Warren’s claims, read this, in The Atlantic.]

In fact, it looks like a severe case of Sixties Liberal Delusion Syndrome, also known as Billy Jack Disease. Warren talks and writes like a stereotype campus liberal, and like her Sixties campus forbears, she must have figured out in early adulthood that kinship with oppressed minorities is the antidote to white guilt and the ticket to a perpetual state of self-righteousness and victimization. If my diagnosis is correct,  Warren’s lockstep liberal mindset seized upon her family lore about American Indian heritage, and installed it as a cornerstone of her self-image as a foe of the capitalist, white-dominated American power structure. I am sorry I doubted her; I now think it is likely that she has long thought of herself as a true Cherokee. True, I think that is ridiculous; I think extending that attenuated minority identification into a resume enhancement, allowing her to displace more deserving candidates, is indefensible; and I think her obsession calls her judgement and stability into question. But at least she wasn’t lying. About that.

Yes, this is the good news.

The bad news is that Warren’s contributions to the cookbook appear to be misrepresented and stolen. Continue reading →

The Right Kind of No-Tolerance Policy: Will Obama Get A Halo For Prison Rape Reform?

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

If backing gay marriage earns a rainbow halo, stopping prison rape at least warrants this….

The Justice Department just announced the first comprehensive federal rules aimed at “zero tolerance” for sexual assaults against inmates in prisons, jails and other houses of detention. The new policy has teeth in it, decreeing that states that don’t take adequate measures to prevent sexual assault on prisoners will lose federal prison  funds. This initiative was disgracefully long in coming, but begins the repair of the human rights atrocity going on in the nation’s prisons literally since the first cell door clanged shut. It is the right kind of “no-tolerance” policy, because allowing prisoners to rape other prisoners—it is estimated that at least 10% of all inmates experience sexual assault—-should never have been tolerated. That it has also been used by law enforcement and popular culture to enhance the deterrent power of imprisonment, essentially making rape a culturally and governmentally sanctioned element of the penal system, should weigh heavily on the national conscience for years to come. It was un-American, as vile a desecration of the principles of our country as torture.  Continue reading →

Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman Ethics Train Wreck Update: An Integrity Test For The Lynch Mob

/ Jack Marshall / 46 Comments

As Emily used to say, “Never mind!” Al? Spike?

The news coverage of the  emerging evidence in the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman was slow in coming this week, perhaps because it makes the news media look bad. Reluctantly, however, it is finally getting out, though perhaps not with the breathless urgency the media mustered when it was actively manufacturing fake evidence—-a doctored 911 tape, a grainy film showing no injuries to Zimmerman’s head—so Martin’s shooter could be pronounced a killer-racist before he was even charged.

ABC News, perhaps attempting to atone for its disgraceful coverage of the case in March, released a through report on its website of latest developments, revealing that:

  • “Two police reports written the night that George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin said that Zimmerman had a bloody face and nose”
  • “Zimmerman seemed to have a battered nose and bloodied face…and the back of his clothing was soiled with wet grass…Zimmerman was also bleeding from … the back of his head.”
  • “Two witness accounts appear to back up Zimmerman’s version of what happened when they describe a man on his back with another person wearing a hoodie straddling him and throwing punches.”
  • “The documents state that Zimmerman can be heard yelling for help 14 times on a 911 call recorded during the fight.” Continue reading →

Pay Attention, Children! Doing the Right Thing Isn’t Right If It Violates A Stupid Rule!

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Then, after this relaxing break, he returned to his supervisor position in Wayne County…

It appears that no-tolerance policies in the schools may not be alienating students after all. Some of them, at least in Michigan, are learning the no-tolerance way and applying it in the workplace.

Not John Chevilott, though: he just doesn’t get it, probably because when he went to school, they didn’t have no-tolerance policies. A veteran public-works employee in Wayne County, Michigan, he was mowing grass in Detroit’s Brightmoor neighborhood when he found a loaded revolver. He called the police and waited for them to  pick up the gun, but they didn’t appear. Chevilott finished the job and took the weapon to the police after work. The gun had been stolen in 2005, records showed, and police told him that he had handled the situation well.

Wayne County, however, has a no-tolerance policy forbidding employees from possessing  weapons on work property. After all, there’s no reason for a worker to have a gun, except in the extraordinary situation where one is just hanging around, loaded, and the worker picks it up. But how often would that happen? It’s no wonder nothing about that situation was written into the rule, and rules, as they say in the schools—the schools where kids chew their pizzas into the shape of pistols and get suspended, the schools where kids disarm fellow students of knives and are expelled, and the schools where four-year-old boys kiss girls and get arrested for sexual assault—“rules are rules!”

John Chevilott, who had been on the job 23 years and scheduled to retire in two days, was fired for violating the policy, even though his supervisors understood that the gun wasn’t his, that he had turned it into police, that it was loaded, that it was as much a threat to public safety lying in the grass as any weapon brought to work by an employee, and that he had “possessed it” only to get it into the hands of law enforcement officials.  To be fair, they also suspended Chevilott’s foreman, who knew about the incident, for not reporting the infraction. Continue reading →

Ethics Round-Up in Race, Religion and Sex: GOP Bigotry, Georgetown’s Integrity, and Warren’s Absurdity

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

Help! I’m buried in great ethics stories!

This is one of those periods in which there are so many juicy ethics stories that I am falling far behind. Here are three that are worthy of longer treatment that I can’t allow to get lost in the crowd: Continue reading →

Chris Matthews Gets A Lesson On The Golden Rule

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Don’t forget…Cliff almost WON Jeopardy!

Chris Matthews, the MSNBC “Hardball” host, has frequently mocked Sarah Palin’s knowledge and intelligence, and often used an iconic TV game show to do it. Such as:

  • “Is this [vice presidential debate] about her brain power?… Do you think cute will beat brains?…Do you think she’d do better on the questions on Jeopardy! or the interview they do during a half-time?…My suspicion is that she has the same lack of intellectual curiosity that the President of the United States has right now and that is scary!”
  • “They find these empty vessels who know nothing about the world! Nothing about foreign policy! Who immediately begin to spout the neo-con line. I read her book — it’s full of that crap….It’s unbelievable how little this woman knows!…Don’t put her on Jeopardy!” Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: France

/ Jack Marshall / 37 Comments

France

France doesn’t seem to comprehend it yet, but it is embarking on an uncharted and dangerous journey by installing a leader whose lifestyle argues for the irrelevance of marriage.

Valérie Trierweiler, the partner of France’s newly-elected president François Hollande, is being referred to world-wide as France’s new, and unmarried, “First Lady.” She seems like a serious, admirable professional, and there are certainly benefits to any nation by having a woman of substance, intelligence and talent at or near the top of that country’s public figures. I know very little about Hollande, but I am assuming that he is qualified for the difficult job he is undertaking, and that he, like Trierweiler, are mature adults who have every right to structure their personal relationships however they please. That assumption, however, requires the omission of the duties of leadership from the calculation. Leaders cannot make personal decisions based only on their own needs, but must make those decisions while acknowledging an immutable and long-proven fact: leaders have a disproportional, almost frightening power to influence, shape and change a culture, and the more successful and popular  leaders are, the greater that power is. Continue reading →

Dear Alabama Farmers: Am I Sorry That You Are Inconvenienced By Enforcing The Law And No Longer Have Sufficient Illegal Immigrants To Exploit? No.

/ Jack Marshall / 121 Comments

It continues to boggle my fairly unbogglable mind to see how many illegal immigration apologists and open-border advocates regard these kinds of stories as support for not enforcing immigration laws.

This is from a news item by Jay Reeves of  the Associated Press:

“Some Alabama farmers say they are planting less produce rather than risk having crops rot in the fields a second straight year because of labor shortages linked to the state’s crackdown on illegal immigration. Farmers interviewed by The Associated Press say they had no choice but to reduce acreage. They fear there won’t be enough workers to pick crops at harvest time. The crops are often picked by Hispanic migrants, both legal and illegal….” Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: Washington Post Blogger Greg Sargent

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

“But when it comes down to it, this all happened too long ago and too early in Romney’s life to know with real certainty whether it’s revealing of any of those things or not — particularly when it comes to who Romney is right now. I can’t get around the simple fact that I wouldn’t want to be judged today by some of the things I did in my teens, and I suspect many others feel the same way.”

—Washington Post blogger-from-the-Left Greg Sargent, concluding his post entitled, “What Does Mitt Romney’s Bullying Tell Us?”

My god, man! I think you’ve discovered The Golden Rule!

Who the heck is THAT guy?

Sargent, being a designated left-wing mouthpiece for a newspaper that often fulfills that role itself, naturally toes the company line in most of his post before having this lucid ethical moment. He spends part of the article speculating on what the Post’s “bombshell story” about what Mitt did or maybe did in prep school might suggest about Romney—all the better to throw out indictments “from some” like cruelty, “a real mean streak,” “a disdain for the weak,” just to plant a seed in the minds of voters that might bloom Greg’s way by November. But he edges into Ethics Hero territory for making the necessary “Never mind!” point in fairness and common sense. Continue reading →