Government & Politics

Wolf’s Question and the Ethical Answer

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

"Upon reflection, perhaps failing to buy health insurance was a mistake..."

Wolf Blitzer’s question to Rep. Ron Paul at the CNN/Tea Party Express Republican debate in Tampa, Fla. has received most of its publicity because of the idiotic response it elicited from the audience, or some of it. That is good fodder for the Tea Party-slimers, but it was the query itself that raised the most interesting ethical issue.

What should happen, Wolf asked, when a healthy 30-year-old man who can afford insurance chooses not to buy it, and then goes into a coma and needs intensive care for six months? Ron Paul, true to his libertarian soul, muttered unhelpfully that we should all take responsibility for ourselves, which is true, but non-responsive. Blitzer followed up: “But, Congressman, are you saying the society should just let him die?” (This is where the barbarians at the gates added their bloodthirsty shouts of “Yeah!”)

Slate’s Jonah Goldberg has written about what he calls the three possible options available to American society to handle the comatose slacker: Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Nobel Prize Recipient Ivar Giaever

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

"You keep using that word 'incontravertible.'; I do not think it means what you think it means."

Nobel Prize winning physicist Ivar Giaever just resigned as a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) in protest over the group’s official position that

 “The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring,” the APS stated. “If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.”

Giaever, an 82-year-old Norwegian, sent an e-mail to the APS  announcing his resignation, saying he  “cannot live with the statement” on global warming. Giaever wrote:

“In the APS, it is ok to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is ‘incontrovertible?’ The claim (how can you measure the average temperature of the whole earth for a whole year?) is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me is that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this ‘warming’ period.” Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Unethical Business Practices: Online Reputation Services”

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

For those offended by the fact that this is the second Comment of the Day, I can only note that I haven’t posted a COTD for a while, so they can consider this one as making up for say, September 9.

Tgt has some uncomfortable truths about the practicalities of taking principled stands, in the context of my discussing the dishonest and bullying tactics of so-called online reputation protection services without specifically naming any one company.

There are gradients of this dilemma, which I’m not sure the author sufficiently acknowledges. For example, in the recent Defense of Marriage Act controversy in which law firm King & Spalding arguably dumped an unpopular representation because of inappropriate but no less threatening warnings from its biggest client, there are core professional values involved: once a lawyer ( or firm) accepts a representation, he or she may not, consistent with professional norms, drop the new client because of fear that the representation will have unpleasant consequences. There is no ethical obligation, however, to engage in a protest or civil disobedience when one objects to an abuse of official power. There is an obligation to do something, and it is ethically legitimate to choose a course that addresses the wrong without causing unnecessary harm to oneself or others. One not  cowardly by not being foolhardy.

Unless I accept John Adams’ rather perverse conviction that the only way one knows one is doing the right thing is when he is certain that the consequences will be personally ruinous, I don’t agree that I have failed an ethical obligation by choosing to flag unethical conduct without specifically inciting a company whose business it is to intimidate websites.

Besides, as I noted in my response to this comment, I am not through with these guys. Not by a longshot. But here is tgt’s Comment of the Day to my opening volley: Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Unethical Quote of the Month: Canadian Judge Joanne Veit”

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

The Comment of the Day, by Eric Monkman, is one of many excellent comments on yesterday’s post on the words of a Canadian judge in allowing a woman who murdered her newborn infant to go free.

There are many threads in the discussion, and I am not caught up. I officially apologize to combatants Eric and tgt especially for not being able to respond in sufficient detail, or in some cases at all, to their thoughtful posts. This an example of the limitations of the blog comment format. I wish I could organize a conference call.

The discussion went into so many directions that the initial post’s point was distorted, in part by me. Here is how I would summarize it:

Judge Veit’s quote, the actual focus of the post, strikes me as ethically offensive because 1) the statement that “many believe” abortion is a less than ideal solution to unprotected sex suggests that abortion is acceptable as a primary method of birth control. The commenters object to my interpretation of the judge’s phrasing to mean that she personally believes the adverse of the statement, that abortion is an ideal solution to unprotected sex. (The ideal solution to unprotected sex is not to have unprotected sex.) OK. I see their point. I still read it differently, and my comments are based upon my reading. At best, it is a sloppy, imprecise statement. 2) The comparison, and equivalency, between grief for the child—who is dead, and who was killed by the person who was most responsible for her welfare—and grief for the murderous mother, who is alive, and who is avoiding legal sanctions for her crime, shows a warped set of ethical values. The implication is that the life of a child is no more important, nor has any more regard from the society, than the emotional comfort of the mother. I know that is the standard in Canada, and in much of the US. It is wrong.

The subsequent discussion about how acceptance of abortion leads to acceptance of infanticide was focused on the U.S., but mistakenly assumed that this was the order of events in Canada. It was not; I think that is affirmatively strange, as one would assume that a human life would not be less valued in a society as it became more viable. It doesn’t change my analysis regarding the U.S., however.

Eric asks some good questions which I will address at the end. Here is his Comment of the Day, on “Unethical Quote of the Month: Canadian Judge Joanne Veit”: Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Month: Canadian Judge Joanne Veit

/ Jack Marshall / 44 Comments

“…While many Canadians undoubtedly view abortion as a less than ideal solution to unprotected sex and unwanted pregnancy, they generally understand, accept and sympathize with the onerous demands pregnancy and childbirth exact from mothers, especially mothers without support…Naturally, Canadians are grieved by an infant’s death, especially at the hands of the infant’s mother, but Canadians also grieve for the mother.”

—- Canadian Judge Joanne Viet, announcing that Katrina Effert, who strangled her newborn child and threw the body over a fence into the neighbor’s yard when she was 19, will serve a three-year suspended sentence with no jail time for the murder, reflecting a “fair compromise of all the interests involved.”

This is a cautionary ethics tale indeed for those who deny that a callous attitude toward human lives in the womb, giving them no standing against a mother’s desires and convenience, will gradually, inevitably, coarsen and warp a culture’s respect for life and its comprehension of wrong. [Addition: Many commenters have pointed out that Canada had designated infanticide as a relatively minor crime before fully legalizing abortion. That is a strange progression, though once infanticide had been declared “understandable,” abortions days were numbered. In the US, the gradual de-valuing of young life is moving in the more obvious way, from younger to older. The process, however, is the same.] Continue reading →

Another Inherently Misleading Statistic

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

“Ok, I’ve put on some weight, but that hippo must weigh a ton!”

Ethics Alarms readers know that  certain statistics reporters and pundits like to cite are guaranteed to set my head spinning around like Linda Blair in The Exorcist. One of them, that 50% of marriages end in divorce, is unethical because it’s imaginary. Another, the “women earn 75 cents for every dollar earned by men” line, is intentionally misleading as well as out of date. Lately, my head has been doing a 180 because of the popularity of citing Congress’s unpopularity, as measured by polls. In this case, the number is probably accurate and the implication of it is clear: the public doesn’t have much admiration for Congress. What is unethical is the misleading way it is typically used by journalists, to contrast with the President’s increasingly miserable poll numbers. Continue reading →

Perry, Insomnia, Leadership, and the Death Penalty

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

When should a leader lose sleep over a decision?

A lot of ink has been spilled over NBC’s Brian Williams’ question to Rick Perry regarding the death penalty, the Republican candidates debate audience’s strange reaction to it, and Perry’s response. Conservatives see Williams’ question—“Your state has executed 234 death row inmates, more than any other governor in modern times. Have you struggled to sleep at night with the idea that any one of those might have been innocent?”—as a loaded query by a biased questioner who is pressing the progressive anti-death penalty agenda. Liberals see Perry’s answer as proof-positive that he is an unthinking, unfeeling, blood-thirsty monster. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Does This Show That The Media Is Getting Better, or Worse?

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Soon, the press may just make up ALL its stories (From Bad Reporting Comics)

Here’s a real head-scratcher. On September 9, the Associated Press ran this story, critical of Gov. Rick Perry:

Texas wildfire victims wondering where Perry is

BASTROP, Texas (AP) — Residents affected by a devastating Central Texas wildfire are growing impatient with state officials and questioning why Gov. Rick Perry hasn’t spent more time there.

 Some residents yelled at Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst when he visited the command center in Bastrop County Friday, asking where Perry is and why they haven’t had any housing help. Wildfires have destroyed nearly 1,400 homes about 25 miles from Austin.  Perry, running for the Republican nomination for president, interrupted his campaign and returned to Texas for two days before heading to California for a debate Wednesday. He is now fundraising in California.

Perry’s office said “everything that needs to be done to respond to these fires is being done.” Dewhurst said the White House hasn’t yet replied to a request for federal aid.

Then, Saturday morning, this appeared where the story had been: Continue reading →

Unethical Web Post of the Week: “Screw Civility” by Rick Robinson

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Tell Alexander Hamilton how much fun incivility is...

That an ethics dolt like Rick Robinson has spent so much time advising those in the Halls of Power speaks volumes about why our government institutions are dysfunctional and corrupt. His biography says he even ran for Congress. With ethical values like his—weak, dubious, and confused—it is a miracle he wasn’t elected.

In an essay for Tucker Carlson’s conservative news site The Daily Caller, Robinson defends the uncivil rhetoric of Jimmy (““Let’s take these sons of bitches out …”) Hoffa Jr and Rep. Joe ( “You lie!”) Wilson on the historically false and ethically idiotic grounds that “America was built on a solid foundation of uncivil political discourse.” It is ethically idiotic because this is consequentialism (“Everything turned out all right, so it was the right thing to do”) and a rationalization (“They did it, so we can too!), and it is historically false because no nation, indeed no functioning organization of any kind, was built on incivility….especially this one. Continue reading →

When Ethics Hero Meets Ethics Dunce: Alan Ehrlich and the Spirit of Citizenship vs. South Pasadena Police Chief Joe Payne and Official Arrogance

/ Jack Marshall / 48 Comments

"Step away from the intersection, sir! You are not permitted to make my officers look bad by doing the essential jobs they cannot."

When a traffic light in South Pasadena went out during the morning rush hour, citizen Alan Ehrlich stepped into the breach and began directing traffic at the major intersection.

“I grabbed a bright orange shirt that I have and a couple of orange safety flags. I took it upon myself to help get motorists through that intersection faster,” said Ehrlich. Before he took action, traffic was backed up for more than a mile, as vehicles took more than a half hour to maneuver through the intersection.

“It was just kind of chaos of cars . . . there were stop signs up. But people were challenging each other to get through the intersection,” said a witness  who works at an office nearby. He reported that Ehrlich’s stint as volunteer traffic cop had traffic flowing within ten minutes.

South Pasadena police then responded to the scene, ordered Ehrlich to stop, and issued him a ticket, but refused to direct traffic at the intersection themselves. South Pasadena Police Chief Joe Payne explained that he did not have the man power needed to staff officers when lights fail, and that Ehrlich should have just allowed traffic to back up. Continue reading →