History

Ethics Dunce: President Trump

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

[My leg is still killing me, I hope not literally, and sitting at my desk is excruciating, but I have to post this, truncated though it may be.]

The President should not cave to the “Think of the Children!” lobby that wants the United States to send aid to a rogue, terrorist state that is also the enemy of a just combatant the U.S. is supporting. It seems that he is. That is asinine and cowardly.

If children are starving in Gaza, the Gazans, and specifically Hamas, are responsible. Not Israel. Not the United States. The mission in warfare is to win the war, and one does not win a war by making warfare less unpleasant for the enemy. Frankly, it astounds me that I, or anyone, should have to make this point.

The last time the United States won a war (I do not count Grenada) was World War II. The Pentagon did not allow the publication of photographs of dead babies and malnourished Japanese and German children for exactly the reason we are seeing now, and have seen many times since 1945. War is ugly, and winning a war requires acts that in any other context are rightly regarded as immoral and unethical. This what a professional military is for: it (theoretically) doesn’t become sentimental about the necessities of warfare.

[Footnote: This was one of my late father’s objections to “Saving Private Ryan.” He said it was an insult to George Marshall and a deliberate effort to confuse the public to claim that the General would feel obligated to reduce the sacrifice of any single family while his army’s mission was to win a war.]

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Nah, The Democratic Party Hasn’t Become Openly Anti-Semitic! It’s Just That One of Its Biggest Allies Wants To Erase Jews From the Holocaust…

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

When I read about this, I was certain that some NEA-hating conservative news source was exaggerating. Nope. It is right there in black and white, as you can see above in the entry from the National Education Association’s newly released 2025 handbook. My brain found this so shocking that it refused to explode as it should have, and just went into a safety shutdown. I can’t account for the last three hours…

The nation’s largest teacher’s union is a massive contributor to the Democratic Party, a major reason why public education has deteriorated into ideological indoctrination, and a force for ill in American culture and society. It was, for instance, substantially responsible for the disastrous decision to close the schools in the midst of the Wuhan Virus Ethics Train Wreck. Now it has openly proclaimed its hostility toward not just Israel, but the Jewish people.

The handbook, the NEA’s guide for the union’s nearly 3 million members, describes the Holocaust as having “12 million victims… from different faiths.” As unquestioned historical sources make undeniable, “The Final Solution” was at the core of Hitler’s extermination project. The NEA says the union will “promote the celebration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day” by “recognizing more than 12 million victims of the Holocaust from different faiths, ethnicities, races, political beliefs, genders, and gender identification, abilities/disabilities, and other targeted characteristics.” This section is on the page before the one shown above:

The NEA then promotes “Nakba” education, which describes Israel’s founding in 1948 as the “forced, violent displacement” of 750,000 Palestinians. The document further pledges to teach that “anti-Zionism is not antisemitism” and defends educators’ and students’ “free speech in defense of Palestine.” In case the graphic above is too hard to read, here are the key sections:

States one news source, “Critics argue the NEA is promoting a one-sided, revisionist history while ignoring the central role of Jews in the Holocaust.” This would warrant a “Ya think?” except that I have used my quote for today in the previous post. Where’s the “argument”? That is exactly what the NEA does in the handbook, and the position goes beyond unethical into evil. The group is obviously proud of its position and confident that the Democratic Party and the public supports it.

Did you know that the Republicans and Donald Trump are Nazis?

Now what? Here is what…

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The State Dept. Strikes a Blow Against Utopianism and Unethical Virtue-Signaling

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

The U.S. State Department announced that we will not participate in next week’s conference regarding the imaginary “two-state solution” for Israel and the Palestinians. Good.

France and Saudi Arabia are the hosts, and France has already announced its intention to recognize a Palestinian state. The U.S. called the meeting “counterproductive to ongoing efforts to end the Gaza war and release hostages” Ya think? Permitting Hamas and the Palestinian to benefit in any way from its 2023 terrorist attack on Israel only ensures more of the same.

This is another throbbing example of the Ethics Alarms nostrum that proposing impossible “solutions” to persistent problems is unethical, no matter how “Imagine”-ish they seem on paper. No, we are not going to engage in a trillion dollar transfer of wealth from white Americans who had nothing to do with slavery to black Americans who were never slaves. No, there will be no unilateral disarmament by any nation that has enough firepower to matter. No, the United States will never accept an Australian-style gun ban. No, the dangerous National Debt will never get smaller.

The two-state solution is arguably more impossible than any of these other impossible dreams. The Palestinians have been rejecting various two-states solution since 1948; their favored solution—wiping out Israel and slaughtering as many Jews as possible, “from the river to the sea” and all that—is far more likely. The Biden administration, being incompetent and addicted to wrong-headed policies, had the useless John Kerry flying around as some kind of ambassador for two-state peace: gee, that worked out well, don’t you think?

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The U.S. State Department announced that we will not participate in next week’s conference regarding the imaginary “two-state solution” for Israel and the Palestinians. Good.

France and Saudi Arabia are the hosts, and France has already announced its intention to recognize a Palestinian state. The U.S. called the meeting “counterproductive to ongoing efforts to end the Gaza war and release hostages” Ya think? Permitting Hamas and the Palestinian to benefit in any way from its 2023 terrorist attack on Israel only ensures more of the same.

This is another throbbing example of the Ethics Alarms nostrum that proposing impossible “solutions” to persistent problems is unethical, no matter how “Imagine”-ish they seem on paper. No, we are not going to engage in a trillion dollar transfer of wealth from white Americans who had nothing to do with slavery to black Americans who were never slaves. No, there will be no unilateral disarmament by any nation that has enough firepower to matter. No, the United States will never accept an Australian-style gun ban. No, the dangerous National Debt will never get smaller.

The two-state solution is arguably more impossible than any of these other impossible dreams. The Palestinians have been rejecting various two-states solution since 1948; their favored solution—wiping out Israel and slaughtering as many Jews as possible, “from the river to the sea” and all that—is far more likely. The Biden administration, being incompetent and addicted to wrong-headed policies, had the useless John Kerry flying around as some kind of ambassador for two-state peace: gee, that worked out well, don’t you think?

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Comment of the Day: “Return of the ‘2016 Post Election Ethics Train Wreck’”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

AM Golden invades the realm of Ethics Alarms long-form historical ethics commenter Steve-O-In NJ with an epic Comment of the Day, and a thing of beauty it is indeed. The post also brings back many memories I would rather have left buried. Here it is, in reaction to the essay, “Return of the ‘2016 Post Election Ethics Train Wreck'”:

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This is a 60-plus year process in the making. Barry Goldwater ran a fairly incompetent campaign but he absolutely had the news media biting at his heels the entire time. They gushed about Bobby Kennedy in ’68, they took potshots at Nixon. By the time Reagan came along, he faced hostility from a large segment of the press and Hollywood. In the meantime, Brain Trusters infiltrated the universities and encouraging the student protest movements instead of explaining how our Constitution was designed to work, culminating in a culture 50 years later that understands its country so poorly that it gets its news from Jon Stewart who is able to ignorantly proclaim that the Constitution doesn’t say that protests have to be peaceful.

In the election of 1992, Arsenio Hall ranted in his monologue when President George H.W. Bush said he probably wouldn’t appear on Hall’s show after Gov. Bill Clinton did, yelling about what made Bush think Hall wanted him on his show. Open hostility over who may or may not be a guest on Hall’s show paved the way for the venom spewed on every Late Night show today.

Believe all women? Not if they accused the first “black” President, Bill Clinton, of sexual harassment and even rape. “Anyone can drag $100 through a trailer park,” right? Bubba was caught with his pants down and allowed us to be caught with ours down on 9/11/2001 when he blew off an offer to hand over Osama bin Laden. Meanwhile, the culture wars were heating up and Americans were becoming concerned about the country’s direction.

George W. Bush – faced with a supremely hostile news media and entertainment industry – endured screeds about stolen elections, fake Presidencies and two mocking cable television shows (“That’s My Bush!” and “Lil Bush”) before he gained some respect after 9/11, but never really got the credibility he deserved. In pop culture, far too many Bush-deranged Harry Potter fans believed they saw the myopic Ministry of Magic’s denial that the evil Voldemort had returned in the efforts by the Bush administration to urge vigilance in watching out for terrorists. Ah, remember when J.K. Rowling was the voice of truth? The damage to the American public’s understanding of the Constitution, particularly the Judicial branch, continued apace

Bob Dole and John McCain were treated as racist, sexist old men who would put this country into a Nazi theocracy; Mitt Romney was framed as a racist, sexist and religious nut who would send this country into a weird Mormon Nazi theocracy. All three were all virtually Hitler.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama was the be all and end all of existence. He who could do no wrong—and could not be touched because he had black skin and anyone who criticized him was a racist—took full advantage by damaging America on the world stage and inciting racial divisiveness on a scale that hadn’t been seen in 50 years.

When Donald Trump was campaigning in 2016, the news media covered him incessantly. It now appears that they wanted him to be the nominee because, in the words of Stephen Colbert on the day my family and I sat in his audience in NYC on a hot July day as he did a riff on how corrupt Hillary Clinton was, “Hillary so corrupt the only candidate she can beat is Donald Trump!”

It turned out she couldn’t even do that.

So the forces that had been coming together for 60 years—the biased news media, the leftist entertainment industry, progressive-dominated academia and other elite, corrupted professions coalesced into a single so-called Resistance Movement. Trump says people coming through our border with Mexico aren’t all angels, they accuse him of saying all immigrants are criminals. Trump says not everyone protesting in Charlottesville was a racist Nazi, he’s accused of “bothsidism” and pestered endlessly about condemning white supremacy even though he did condemn it. Trump is falsely accused of colluding with a foreign power, leading a big chunk of the population to believe his Presidency is the result of another stolen election.

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Ethics Quiz: The Non-Star All-Star Game Selection

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

This is fun: a different kind of MLB annual All-Star Game ethics controversy! We’ve never seen this one before: usually the controversies over baseball’s “mid-summer classic” (This is All-Star Game week, with the teams taking a break around Wednesday’s game televised on Fox News.) involve fairness in the selections (there are always more deserving players than the limited rosters can hold, whether every team should have at least one representative even when that means selecting a mediocre player having a so-so season, whether there was bias in the selection of the reserves, whether aging great players should be included on the squad because they really are the players the fans want to see, whether the fan voting system is absurd, stuff like that. (Some past controversies are discussed here,)

Never this, however: MLB added Milwaukee Brewers rookie Jacob Misiorowski to the National League All-Star team last week. “Who?”you well may ask? Misiorowski is a highly touted rookie who has only been in the major leagues for about a month. He’s been the starting pitcher in just five games, and now holds the record for fewest games ever played in by a player making an All-Star team—by a lot. Wails Yahoo Sports,

“The main goal of the Midsummer Classic is to recognize the players who have performed at a high level through the first half of the MLB season. With that, it also allows fans to see the stars of the game they might not watch on a regular basis. But by adding Misiorowski to the NL All-Star roster, MLB has sent a message to players that not only does the game not matter, but performance doesn’t matter, either.”

Misiorowski is what baseball jargon refers to as a “phenom.”

He’s viewed as a future superstar, and has looked like it, beginning his career with 11 perfect innings, no hits, no walks. Nobody had done that in the history of the game, He regularly tops 100 mph on his fastball, which has been clocked as speedy as 103. Yes, he’s an exciting newcomer who may do great things…eventually.

But picking him for the All-Star Game is like, oh, let’s pick an absurd hypothetical, like giving a Nobel Peace Prize to a newly elected U.S. President before he’s actually done anything related to peace at all. Not that such a thing could ever happen….

Your Ethics Alarms All-Star Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Is it unethical for Misiorowski to be selected for the All-Star Game?

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Biden’s Doctor Claims Privilege and Takes The Fifth

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Former President Biden’s White House physician, Kevin O’Connor, refused to answer questions for the House Oversight Committee’s investigation into the White House and Democratic cover-up of Biden’s mental decline and disability. News accounts from the Axis keep stating that Biden’s condition and a cover-up are “alleged” only, but res ipsa loquitur: what we already know, have witnessed and heard tells us all we need to know except the who, how, and how long. Biden was (is ) suffering from dementia of one kind or another. His condition was carefully, if insufficiently, hidden from the public. The fact that his power had to be exercised by unelected figures using the President as their agent, puppet or beard constitutes at least as great a scandal as Watergate, and perhaps a more substantial attack on our democracy.

This betrayal of the public trust requires at least as thorough an investigation as that definitive scandal in the Nixon White House received. Democrats, however, unlike the Republicans of the Watergate era, are refusing to do their duty and assist in the inquiry, probably because they have metaphorical blood on their hands. They were complicit. They were guilty. The House inquiry includes questions about whether Biden’s staff used the autopen to illegally carry out official actions in Biden’s name. One would think both Democrats and Republicans would be concerned about this. Apparently not. Make of that what you will.

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One More Bit of Evidence That The Government Is Too Incompetent To Be Trusted With So Much Power And Money

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

 The Transportation Security Administration has started to phase out its rule requiring travelers to take off their shoes before going through airport security.  The New York Times writes that “the agency has not officially announced this change and did not confirm the new policy” but it “appears to be taking effect at airports across the country.” Caleb Harmon-Marshall, a former TSA officer, first reported the soft launch of this policy via his travel newsletter. It appears to be happening first at major airports, then trickling down to all of them.

The requirement was one of the best examples of what Ethics Alarms calls The Barn Door Fallacy: a rare or preventable incident occurs attracting lots of media attention, and lawmakers or regulators react hysterically with draconian measures that are expensive, obtrusive, ineffective and unnecessary to ensure that what had never happened before won’t happen again.

Richard Reid (above) is an incompetent British terrorist who tried to bring down a passenger plane in 2001 by igniting a plastique bomb in his shoe. (The fuse was wet, and he couldn’t get it to light.) This coming being so soon after the September 11 bombings and everyone being freaked out over the failure of airport security that allowed that tragedy, the TSA decided to make all commercial airline passengers remove their shoes and have them x-rayed forever. Morons. (My mother observed that we should regard ourselves as lucky that a female terrorist hadn’t tied to set off a bomb in her brassiere.) And it has taken 24 years for someone in charge to decide, “You know, this is kind of stupid.”

“Why now?” Harmon-Marshall asked in his newsletter. “I think it’s politics, not security. A handful of lawmakers have recently ramped up criticism of the TSA, with some even floating the idea of dismantling the agency altogether. From complaints about long lines to inconsistent screening experiences, the pressure has been mounting. And this shoe change? It feels like a direct response to that pressure.”

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If Trump Derangement (And Groupthink) Can Make Intelligent and Informed People Post Junk Like This…

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

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…what hope is there for sanity and rational discourse in the near future?

I am distraught. The meme above was posted with approval by a elite college history professor I have known for 50 years. I know he’s smarter than this, wildly so, and that he would flunk any student exercising such poor critical thinking skills in an essay or thesis. So how did he come to post such obvious crap, and how can he be helped? Continue reading →

Ethics Alarms Encore! “July 3: Pickett’s Charge, Custer’s First Stand, Ethics And Leadership”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Picketts-Charge--330-to-345-pm-landscape

July 3  was the final day of the pivotal Battle of Gettysburg in 1863, reaching its bloody climax in General Robert E. Lee’s desperate  gamble on a massed assault on the Union center. In history it has come to be known as Pickett’s Charge, after the leader of the Division that was slaughtered during it.

At about 2:00 pm this day in 1863, near the Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg,  Lee launched his audacious stratagem to pull victory from the jaws of defeat in the pivotal battle of the American Civil War.  The Napoleonic assault on the entrenched Union position on Cemetery Ridge, with a “copse of trees” at its center, was the only such attack in the entire war, a march into artillery and rifle fire across an open field and over fences. When my father, the old soldier, saw the battlefield  for the first time in his eighties, he became visibly upset because, he said, he could visualize the killing field. He was astounded that Lee would order such a reckless assault.

The battle lasted less than an hour. Union forces suffered 1,500 casualties,, while at least 1,123 Confederates were killed on the battlefield, 4,019 were wounded, and nearly 4000 Rebel soldiers were captured. Pickett’s Charge would go down in history as one of the worst military blunders of all time.

At Ethics Alarms, it stands for several ethics-related  concepts. One is moral luck: although Pickett’s Charge has long been regarded by historians and scholars as a disastrous mistake by Lee and in retrospect seems like a rash decision, it could have succeeded if the vicissitudes of chance had broken the Confederacy’s way.  Then the maneuver would be cited today as another example of Lee’s brilliance, in whatever remained of the United States of America, if indeed it did remain. This is the essence of moral luck; unpredictable factors completely beyond the control of an individual or other agency determine whether a decision or action are wise or foolish, ethical or unethical, at least in the minds of the ethically unschooled.

Pickett’s Charge has been discussed on Ethics Alarms as a vivid example, perhaps the best, of how successful leaders and others become so used to discounting the opinions and criticism of others that they lose the ability to accept the possibility that they can be wrong. This delusion is related to #14 on the Rationalizations list,  Self-validating Virtue. We see the trap in many professions and contexts, and its victims have been among some of America’s greatest and most successful figures. Those who succeed by being bold and seeing possibilities lesser peers cannot perceive often lose respect and regard for anyone’s authority or opinion but their own.

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Mahmoud v. Taylor: No, LBGTQ Indoctrination Is Not The Theory of Evolution

/ Jack Marshall / 39 Comments

…and shame on the three Progressive, woke Justices who are implying that it is.

24-297 Mahmoud v. Taylor (06/27/2025), just handed down by the Supreme Court, should have been an easy 9-0 decision. Sadly, the three female radicals on the Court (I once had high hopes for Justice Kagan, who’s not, you know, an idiot like the other two, but she clearly has been brain-washed with Clorox or something, so the tally was 6-3) opposed the holding that families choosing not to have their children exposed to pro-gay, bi-, trans, etc propaganda in their public school classes have a right to do so. (At least the majority didn’t say parents have an obligation to do so, which would have been my position.)

The decision declared illegal a Maryland school board’s decision to deny opt-outs for religious students during such scintillating in-class readings as “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding,” a story about a child’s gay uncle marrying a man, and “Pride Puppy,” an alphabet primer about a dog who gets lost at a gay pride parade. Incredibly, the lower court and Court of Appeals had sided with the school against a group of Muslim, Roman Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox parents who argued that the school board’s lack of an opt-out policy breached their right to exercise their religion under the First Amendment.

“The Board’s introduction of the ‘LGBTQ+-inclusive’ storybooks, along with its decision to withhold opt outs, places an unconstitutional burden on the parents’ rights to the free exercise of their religion,” Justice Samuel Alito Jr. wrote for the conservative majority. “[F]or many people of faith across the country, there are few religious acts more important than the religious education of their children…In the absence of an injunction, the parents will continue to be put to a choice: either risk their child’s exposure to burdensome instruction, or pay substantial sums for alternative educational services.”

To read the hysterical dissent from the three knee-jerk progressives, SCOTUS just returned to the bad old days of Tennessee v. Scopes (1925), when a state made it illegal to teach Darwin’s theory of evolution because it contradicted the Bible (as Clarence Darrow showed by making a monkey out of William Jennings Bryan on the witness stand, Darwin didn’t and doesn’t).

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