While searching for Pete Rose posts in preparation for this one, I ran across an ethics multi-issue post from February 11, 2020, shortly before the Wuhan virus messed with our economy, our democracy, our laws, our health, our social interactions, our culture, our health and our sanity (but it was racist to blame it on China. Don’t get me started….). I don’t remember writing it at all, so I was fascinated to read this:
—-President Biden at the U.N., stumbling through his speech on world affairs even with the assistance of his teleprompter.
Even though our President is demented, deluded, habitually dishonest and without shame, I am still astounded that he would have the gall to say that at the United Nations. I guess he thinks the delegates are as stupid and gullible as his party evidently thinks the U.S. public is.
No, the context of that head-exploding statement doesn’t make it less nauseating:
American Antisemitism Sunday continues with one of Steve-O-in NJ’s trademark historical commentaries in response to today’s post, “Ethics Quiz: Georgetown’s Qatar Conference.”
And here it is!
[I also could have justifiably credited Steve with an Ethics Quote of the Week, which you will find below: “[E]thical leaders of any cause owe those they lead a duty to realize when the conflict has become unwinnable and then seek an end to the conflict.”]
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I don’t know about unethical, but it’s surely tone-deaf, in bad taste, and divisive in light of the current situation and in light of what this symposium seems to cover. A discussion about the now almost 80-year-old Arab-Israeli conflict is certainly possible, assuming it were a balanced one. A discussion of terrorism through the last two centuries which would include the difference between political (in support of a political goal) and millennial terrorism (where the violence is the goal), changes in viability with technology, counter-terror tactics and their evolution, and so on could be very interesting. However, this sounds like a pity party for Palestine and a hate-fest for Israel. It’s allowable, just barely, under free speech and academic freedom, as long as it sticks to discussion, although I think it’s going to generate a lot of heat and very little light. If it’s going to be a seeding place for violent demonstrations, forget it.
Truth be told, trying to nail down any kind of ethical framework around terrorism is like trying to staple water to a wall. Some deliberately try to separate the two by saying things like “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” Frankly that’s the lazy way out, although it IS true that our biases are going to color how we view one cause vs. another cause and what kind of tactics we can justify. Rebellions of one kind or another have been around almost as long as mankind has organized itself into this group vs. that group, and certainly since the days when mankind had empires. The Romans were often able to stymie that by making the conquered peoples into junior partners, but some peoples, like the Jews, the Britons, and so on, wanted no part of that kind of arrangement, and had to be essentially destroyed to the point where organized resistance was no longer viable. In a time when both sides had essentially the same weapons, it was all about numbers. Certain tactics like ambushes and targeted eliminations, proto-terrorism if you will, worked to some degree, but usually couldn’t win. If the rebel side had insufficient numbers or was dispersed to the point where it couldn’t get sufficient numbers together, violent resistance wasn’t viable. Rebels or bandits could give the other side a very hard time (Hereward the Wake, the Knights of St. John at Rhodes), but in the end causes like that were usually either doomed, or only went anywhere when they COULD amass numbers enough to wage something like a real civil war.
I can almost hear Rod’s voice: “You are about to enter another dimension. A dimension not only of cover-ups and lies, but of fake Presidencies. A journey into a wondrous land of manipulation and abuse of power. Next stop, the Edith Wilson Zone!“
Let’s begin with this: Did you know that President <cough> Biden hasn’t had a Cabinet meeting in almost a year? I didn’t. Isn’t this newsworthy? Nothing has happened in the last 11 months that warranted the President gathering his top deputies? Seriously? When was the last time an administration went this long without a Cabinet meeting? (I can find no record of that, but a competent journalism establishment would have told us.) We have a fake Presidency being covered up, still, by the party running the Executive Branch and its corrupt, complicit allies in the news media, while its conspirators claim to be saving democracy. The highest ranking officer responsible for the cover-up is running for President, and her role in this defiance of basic constitutional norms and the public trust has barely been mentioned.
Good question, Dana. Glad you’re engaged enough to ask: most Americans apparently don’t know and don’t care.
When I saw the story above last night, what I foolishly call my mind raced to two other related matters. One was the failed pseudo-sequel to “A Fish Called Wanda,” “Fierce Creatures,” in which the entire cast of the earlier, far superior comedy reunited to perform a John Cleese screenplay about a corrupt zoo-owner who, among other schemes, tries to pass off a mechanical panda as the real thing. The other was this story….
…from 2011.
I hate to pick on well-intentioned commentary from the resident Ethics Alarms Reasonable Cephalopod, but so be it: I can’t let this pass. Several commenters were lining up to defend this bit of circular argle-bargle from Kamala Harris yesterday:
There must be stability and peace in that region, in as much as what we do in our goal is to ensure that Israelis have security, and Palestinians in equal measure have security, have self-determination, and dignity. That there be an ability to have security in the region, for all concerned, in a way that we create stability, and—let us all also recognize—in a way that ensures that Iran is not empowered in this whole scenario in terms of the peace and stability in the region.”
Extradimensional Cephalopod, as always trying to arbitrate, wrote, “Jack, if we separate the statement from the person saying it, the statement itself is fine. It’s a statement of the ideal outcome.”
The tweet above illustrates a modern ethics zugzwang phenomenon. I was struck by the tweet because I had recently had an argument with my relentlessly Democratic sister about the Supreme Court’s decision in Relentless v. Department of Commerce and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, striking down the landmark 1984 decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council that made federal agencies the presumptive lawmakers in matters Congress had not specifically addressed if an agency rule was “reasonable.” She believes that Chevron’s fall will be a disaster.
This is a short one, but not am easy one, because bias is so likely to be involved.
Althouse posted the [I almost wrote “horrifying,” but that would be biasing you]clip above that has “surfaced” from a podcast earlier this year. (Isn’t it fascinating that virtually no one was paying attention to Harris most of the time until she was suddenly anointed?).
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:
Or can her supposed endorsement of astrology (which in my view is about like saying you worship the Greek gods) be excused as just typical politician pandering to a substantial voting block? Althouse links to a list of ten leaders who supposedly believed in astrology, a collection which I would take with about about a truckload of salt. The claim that Ronald Reagan “leaned on astrology for guidance” is particularly weak: he met with an astrologer once, and he indulged Nancy’s interest in the nonsense, as most loving spouses would.
One question that occurred to me as I looked at the list: what is the cut-off point before which it is fair to attribute an individual’s belief in astrology to the absence of scientific knowledge generally?
I’m not certain what to call this, and solicit your suggestions. Incompetence? Woke virtue signaling? Self-hate? Betrayal? Insanity?
The Jefferson Council, an organization of conservative University of Virginia alumni, has criticized the recent tone of the school’s student-run campus tours that are supposed to convince prospective applicants and their families that U.Va is the place for the graduating high school students to continue their education. The tour organization, the University Guide Service, has been alienating prospective students, the Council says, by immersing the hopeful, bright-eyed young idealists with a “woke version of U.Va history.”
The cheerful tale of the storied university’s origins, the alumni complain, begins by describing how the university’s land was stolen from the Monacan Indian tribe, then goes on to describe how the Rotunda (above) designed by Thomas Jefferson as the center of campus, was constructed by slave labor. They believe that a tour for prospective students should emphasize Jefferson’s positive contributions to the nation, like, oh, authoring the mission statement for this great democratic experiment, his indispensable contribution to securing American independence, his achievements as the third President of the United States, his brilliance and an architect and inventor, those little details. There was nothing unusual about using slave labor when the University of Virginia was established in 1819. Why would an institution emphasize that in a promotional tour?
The jersey worn by baseball legend Babe Ruth when he “called his shot” in Game 3 of the 1932 World Series sold over the weekend for $24.12 million, setting the auction record for most expensive sports collectible. The previous record price for any sports collectible was the $12.6 million that a rare mint condition Topps 1952 Mickey Mantle card fetched in 2022. Babe’s jersey far eclipsed the $10.1 million a Michael Jordan Chicago Bulls jersey from Game 1 of the 1998 NBA Finals achived at auction that same year, the record for athletic attire until Babe broke it, like he shattered so many records when he was alive.
The sale raises many ethics issues, but the main one is that the exorbitant price is almost certainly based on a fabrication, a lie. It is similar to paying millions for the axe little George Washington used to cut down his father’s cherry tree.
Ethics Alarms 