History

Brilliant! Democrats Kill The National Womens’ Museum Because It Wouldn’t Include Non-Women! [Revised and Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Wow.

A veteran EA commenter today who excels in the contrived “gotcha!” accused me of “name-calling” because I consistently describe today’s Democratic Party as aspiring totalitarians, Machiavellian, and cheaters, and say Democrats want to gut the Constitution. It reminded me of the objection in the Continental Congress (as portrayed in “1776”) over Thomas Jefferson’s use of the word “tyrant” to describe England’s King George. Jefferson’s justification of his choice of words: “He is a tyrant.” I bet my critic really be incensed as I write—now—that today’s vote in Congress indicates that the party is also silly, doctrinaire and…wait for it….moronic.

Because it does, and it is.

Democrats, along with a few Republicans who should go the way of Thomas Massey, voted to cancel the Smithsonian’s planned Women’s History Museum because Republicans added language to its astablishment bill defining women in a manner that leaves out Renee Richards, Caitin Jenner, and the fully, ah, “intact” male “transitioners” who have been slaughtering female competitors in amateur swimming, wrestling, volleyball, and track and field. You know, like this person known as “Lia Thomas.”

The measure to establish the museum was defeated 216 to 204. Not a single Democrat voted for it, so chained is the party to radical LGBTQ propaganda.

Amazing. Amazing. The fact that most women still support a party that is so hypocritical regarding women’s welfare and rights—this is the party, remember, who made serial sexual predator Bill Clinton the keynote speaker at its national convention proclaiming the “Year of the Woman”!— is as incomprehensible as the fact that so many American Jews still vote for the party that increasing supports Hamas.

In fact, irony and hypocrisy are everywhere in this vote. The Axis of Unethical Conduct (“the resistance,” Democrats and the news media) like to say that Congressional Republicans refuse to swerve from the MAGA script, but the GOP virtually never gets 100% agreement. Every House Democrat, however, wants to see a Women’s History Museum that has a special exhibit honoring this recent Democratic administration official:

How “inclusive.”

Because the proposed museum wouldn’t be pandering to anomalies like Admiral Rachel Levine and the former cute-as-a-bunny actress playing Achilles in the new Odyssey film…

…Democrats decided en masse that American women who were crucial to the founding and development of this nation despite being marginalized, abused and discriminated against shouldn’t have their fascinating and inspiring stories told at all. Their museum wouldn’t sufficiently validate the social pathogen causing parents to allow their children to be mutilated and sports to undermine the cause of female athletes after they fought so hard to compete, you see.

An earlier version of the bill was co-sponsored by 127 Democrats. Republicans on the House Administration Committee added new language to the bill last month to dedicate the museum to “preserving, researching, and presenting the history, achievements, and lived experiences of biological women.”

As opposed to, you know, men who decided they were women, wanted to be regarded as women, or pretended to be women.

Republican New York Rep. Nicole Malliotakis resigned as vice chair of the Problem Solvers Caucus today in response to the Democrats’ ridiculous tantrum, being appropriately disgusted by the vote even though 20 Democrats on the caucus co-sponsored the bill. In a letter to the committee’s co-chairs, Malliotakis pointed to Democrats on the committee refusing to cross party lines on pieces of legislation.

“If not one Problem Solvers Democrat would vote for a straightforward measure to transfer federal land for a women’s history museum simply because it was amended through regular order, during the committee process, to ensure that only biological women are exhibited, then what can we actually rely on the Caucus’ Democrats to join us on? I therefore submit my resignation as vice chair and member of the Problem Solvers Caucus, effective immediately,” Malliotakis wrote.

Good for her.

[Incidentally, I am not unalterably opposed to a National LGBTQ Museum that includesaccomplished and significant trans individuals, if they ever stop killing people…]

Ethics Quiz: The Dogs of The Titanic

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

According to J. Joseph Edgette from Widener University, there were twelve dogs that have been confirmed as passengers on the iconic doomed ship, which sank in April of 1912. Three of the dogs survived; they were all small breeds that their owners could wrap up in blankets and hide in their coats. The crew told passengers (only the First Class passengers brought their dogs) that the limited number of life boats meant that dogs would have to be left behind. 

When the ship struck the iceberg and it became clear that it was going down, the dog-loving steward in charge of the ship’s kennel released all of its canine occupants, which then ran all over the ship, surely confused, while the chaos intensified. (How did James Cameron not use that in his movie?) The three survivors were all kept in their owners’ staterooms. Lady, a Pomeranian belonging to passenger Margaret Hays, was one; Sun Yat Sen, a Pekingese belonging to Myra Harper and Henry Harper, was another, and a second Pomeranian owned by Martin and Elizabeth Rothschild was the third lucky dog.

The larger dogs that died included a King Charles Spaniel, a Poodle, a Borzoi, an Airedale, another large terrier, a Chow-Chow, a Fox Terrier, a French Bulldog and a Great Dane.

According to Titanic lore, Ann Elizabeth Isham owned the Great Dane pictured above. Rather than leave him to die alone, she chose to stay behind and comfort her beloved dog as the sea rushed in. Isham was one of the four first-class female passengers who lost their lives on the Titanic, but the only one who allegedly decided to die rather than leave her pet.

In fact, there is no evidence that she really died that way, or that she ever owned a dog, much less died with one. Nonetheless, Isham has acquired a saintly reputation among dog lovers, so let’s assume she did die rather than abandon her dog.

Your Ethics Alarms Change-of-Pace Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Was that decision rational and ethical or emotional and irresponsible?

Would you do that under similar circumstances?

I’m pretty sure my late wife Grace would have.

Incidentally, there is another famous dog story about Titanic that has also been debunked. Supposedly a Newfoundland named Rigel belonging to Titanic’s First Officer William Murdoch was able to withstand the freezing waters after the ship sank. As the rescue ship Carpathia approached, nobel Rigel barked so loudly that the ship could locate the lifeboats. 

The tale is fiction. Murdoch had no dog on board. No survivor mentioned “Rigel.” The story apparently first popped up in 1912, in “The New York Herald.” See? The news media was making stuff up even back then. The news reporter also claimed that Donald Trump was to blame for the sinking. 

Kidding!

Making Americans Dumber and More Ignorant Every Day: MSNow!

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

Jonathan Turley quoted a gobsmacking statement from MSNow’s consistently ridiculous Katy Tur that is, I kid you not, too stupid to qualify for Unethical Quote of the Month.

Commenting on Speaker Mike Johnson’s evocation of natural rights at the “Rededicate 250” rally on the mall in Washington, DC., she said, “What about this passage from Mike Johnson declaring that our rights do not derive from government? They come from “you, our creator and heavenly father.” Is this him putting God over the Declaration of Independence?”

No, you moron, it is him correctly interpreting what Thomas Jefferson wrote about natural rights, the core of the American philosophy of liberty and individual determinism over government domination. The Declaration states without equivocation, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Who or what “The Creator” is was consistently left up to individual faith and judgment by the Founders, who often used neutral terms like “Providence” to describe the origins of life, humanity and the universe. Jefferson’s point, which of course statists like the Axis of Unethical Conduct and its mouthpieces like Tur want to ignore, is that certain rights accrue in a just society to an individual automatically, and government cannot ethically or morally take those rights away. To maintain that such rights have to be granted by the government is to declare humanity unacceptably dependent on the power and will of others. The Declaration, Constitution and the Bill of Rights explain what the government can’t do.

How can someone who doesn’t understand this—because they never learned it, presumably—get to be a network news host? It’s horrifying. Similarly horrified by Tur’s ignorance, Jonathan Turley wrote today,

“The Revolution was fought over natural rights that belonged to colonists as human beings, bestowed by God and defended by the American Revolution. The Constitution created a system that guaranteed the protection of those rights contained in the Declaration of Independence.Speaker Johnson was speaking directly to the foundation of this Republic in reaffirming his faith in natural rights. Of course, the rejection of natural rights in academia and politics is consistent with the view that our rights evolve with a “living Constitution.” What the government giveth, the government may taketh away. The debate reflected in Tur’s comments could not be more timely or elemental on our 250th anniversary. We must again decide not just who we were then but who we are now as Americans. There are many who want to decouple our system from natural rights as they “reimagine” American democracy and “trash” the American Constitution.”

No wonder so many Americans are gulled by the Democrats’ cynical claim to be “protecting democracy.” They don’t know what American democracy is.

OK, Maybe Bill Maher Is Sincere In His Criticism Of Democrats and Progressives…MAYBE, Part II: Why Bill’s “New Rule” Is Not As Ethical As He Thinks It Is

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

In Part I, I published Bill Maher’s surprising slap at Democrats and progressives for their unethical drift into anti-Semitism. It’s pretty good—for Bill. The 18 paragraphs are numbered so I don’t have to repeat them here, especially since WordPress nearly sent me to the woodchipper when I was trying to compose the first post. I’m sorry that you’ll have to jump back and forth, but so do I, to write this.

And away we go…

1. Everyone has a right to be anti-Semitic, just as everyone has a right to lie, or commit adultery. Advocating anti-Semitism, promoting it, and acting on it is still unethical. These ethical nuances, rights vs. law vs. ethics, are beyond Maher’s comprehension.

2. See? Bill immediately defaults to a Rationalization #22 defense of Israel. It isn’t the worst country! Wow. Talk about a back-handed compliment!

3. Not quite as bad as China, Russia, Sudan, Iran, Myanmar, Haiti, the Congo, and North Korea, eh? Way to make anti-Semites feel ashamed, Bill….

4. Ezra Klein is nothing to be proud of. He has been a leader of Axis bias for a decade.

5. A “They’re just as bad” (Rationalization #2) cheat by Maher, and he’s cherry-picking. Carlson has been excoriated by conservatives for his anti-Israel stance. He is not representative of the Right at all, and I, for one, never thought he was.

6. Bill managed not to mention the Times’ “dog rape” libel.

9. Maher likes the #22 rationalization so much he comes back to it. This is because Bill doesn’t get ethics. He also evokes “Everybody does it!” here, the hoariest rationalization of all. Jeez Bill…read a book.

10. The “new rule” is about Democratic Party anti-Semitism, but the candidate he writes the most about is an obscure anti-Semitic Republican. Huh.

11. Israel overwhelmingly has the “right-wingers” on its side, and it has the President of the United States on its side in particular. Maher never mentions President Trump at all. He’s only willing to infuriate his audience so much, apparently.

12. Trying to continue his false equivalence argument regarding anti-Semitism on”both sides,” Maher pairs two typical leftist academics with…Candace Owens? She is persona non grata among conservatives, a true embarrassment, and she is the opposite of an academic, as she is illiterate.

13. Again with the rogue Republican joke in a statement about Leftist anti-Semitism, and again, Bill is cherry-picking. There is a reason that Margery Taylor Greene isn’t in Congress any more. Representing her idiocy as mainstream Republicanism is despicable. Rep. Fine’s sharp quip after one of Mayor Mamdani’s Muslim minions derided dogs was, in my opinion, undiplomatic but defensible. No dogs in the U.S. have engaged in any mass shootings or terrorism.

14-18. Bill finishes very strong, almost making up for his rationalizations and weasel words on the way to his conclusion

You Know That Ridiculous “100 Best Vocalists” List? The Guardian says “Hold My Beer….”

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

Well yes, John, I’d say that’s a fair and accurate assessment.

Read the Guardian’s explanation of how they got this list. It’s even worse than the list itself, but it does explain the bias creating this mess with this single phrase: “Atwood’s horribly prescient The Handmaid’s Tale.” Prescient? I guess I missed the U.S. turning women into involuntary full-time baby machines.

This is a DEI list, and not a very smart or informed one. No Mark Twain, because “Huckleberry Finn” has been cancelled. Jack London was too much of a toxic masculine writer for these weenies, I guess. “Treasure Island” is too full of men and boys too. “The Three Musketeers” is nowhere to be found; nor is “The Count of Monte Christo.” The women in “Ivanhoe” are too girly. But knee jerk political correctness kicked three of the very best novels, all written by women, off the list: “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “Gone With The Wind,” and “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” almost certainly the most influential and important American novel ever written. Humor is pretty much verboten, unless it’s anti-war humor (“Catch 22”). P.G. Wodehouse wrote the funniest novels of all time: the problem with including him would be picking which were the best. Yes, ancient odd-ball novel “Tristram Shandy” is on the list: I challenge anyone to claim it has even half the outright belly laughs of Wodehouse at his best.

Not including Tolkien is inexplicable (and I don’t even like his writing); similarly, the greatest novels that engage children while reaching adults as well were cut: “Wind in the Willows,” Watership Down,” and especially the two Lewis Carroll classics, “Alice in Wonderland” and “Alice Through the Looking Glass,” both among the cleverest, most original, most quoted and influential novels in the English Language.

Meanwhile, one entry on the list, “The Turn of the Screw,” isn’t even a novel. I thought the vocalist list was absurd because it was lazy and ignorant, but “The Hundred Best Novels of All Time” is even worse, because it is overtly political. “Never has such a list been more needed,” The Guardian says. Why would incompetent, biased, misleading lists ever be “needed?” Amusingly, the explanation of this thing starts with the correct assessment in its very first sentence: “[C]ompiling a list of the greatest novels of all time is an impossible task.”

Here is the stupid list. Go crazy…

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List Incompetence: “The 100 Best Vocalists of All Time”

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I think this is my third post on “list ethics.” My first was in 2011, reviewing a sloppy, careless list called “The Fifty Most Unforgivable Acts in Baseball History.” The second was in 2020, about a list called “The 25 Greatest Actors Of The 21st Century (So Far).” The list I’m writing about this time is even worse than those two; in fact, it’s unforgivable.

I get it: lists are clickbait and exist so people can argue over them. They almost always have a gimmick: if you make a list of the greatest rock and pop groups of all time, you can’t have The Beatles as #1, because any idiot could decide that. You pick “The Zombies” or “Heart.” Bill James, the baseball stats pioneer, wrote a book ranking the greatest baseball players at each position. Everyone knows that Ted Williams gets #1 in left field, but Bill picked Stan Musial. It’s cynical and dishonest, but lists are arbitrary and meaningless anyway.

I read lots of them and my eyes hurt from rolling. I only get seriously critical when a list covers something I know a lot about. Baseball history and acting history are in that category, and so is popular music history. What I wrote about the baseball list in 2011 applies with even greater force to “The 100 Best Vocalists of All Time” compiled by Consequence, a website I never heard of and based on this effort, will never visit again. I wrote (I’m substituting the topic of the list at issue today):

“If you are going to write about history, there is a duty to perform diligent research, even for a silly online list. Misrepresentations online have a large probability of misleading people. The list isn’t close to complete; it isn’t consistent; it isn’t well-researched.. Anyone who looked at the list and assumed that these are [the best vocalists of all time] would be seriously misinformed.”

The list is introduced by this description of its methodology, and its flaw becomes clear. “To generate our list of the top 100 vocalists of all time,” it says, “we polled over 50 musicians, including Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Class of ’26er Steve Stevens, rising stars like Samia, Blondshell, and Kneecap, and established icons Randy Blythe, Mike Patton, and Linda Perry, plus many more. After we assembled the surveys into the spine of the list, our staff chimed in with more picks, mostly historical, to round things out. The final ranking is a curated perspective on the hundreds of names that were nominated.”

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Ethics Update On the Axis Freakout Over Virginia and Tennessee’s Redistricting Results

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

[Note: I apologize for the funky formatting here, but it’s not my fault: WordPress again messed with its (terrible) “block system” with no warning and I’m trying to figure it out.]

I’m posting the graphic above again because it is res ipsa loquitur, rebutting on its face what so many of the hysterical Democrats, elected officials, pundits and partisan reporters are screaming as they survey the results of their own corruption and hypocrisy.

As Ethics Alarms has been asserting (and proving) for a decade now, the Left cheats. Its “they go low, we go high” mantra has always been cynical gaslighting, but the somnolent Right allowed them to escape accountability (and their just desserts) far too long. Donald Trump, whatever his ethical flaws may be, has always understood the concept of fighting back. This time it really paid off, and all Americans should be grateful. Yes: we should fervently seek fair districting in every state. Maybe the current chaos will eventually lead to that. However, letting one party rig the system unanswered while the other party just sits and shrugs is worse than the chaos.

Scott Greenfield, defense lawyer, blogger, Jack-hater and progressive legal pundit, deserves praise for a nearly completely ethical and unbiased analysis of the Virginia Supreme Court decision striking down the dastardly gerrymandering trick Virginia’s “moderate” governor and its corrupt Democrats tried to inflict on half the state’s voters. He writes in part,

“The confluence of a few unfortunate circumstances resulted in the Virginia Supreme Court holding that the state constitutional amendment to allow the redistricting plan as a counterbalance to other states’ legislative redistricting plans to eliminate congressional districts deemed “safely” Democratic was unconstitutional. Wags and cynics will imagine this ruling to be the product of radical rightist activists. It was not…Neither the majority nor dissent took unprincipled positions, both having some merit to their position, but the point of a ruling is to reach a determination. The Virginia Supreme Court did so, in a principled fashion, and it ruled the redistricting amendment unconstitutional under the state Constitution. It was a crushing defeat for Democrats, but that doesn’t make it partisan or radical. Sometimes, you lose. While the combination of the Supreme Court’s Callais decision and this Virginia ruling has set in motion a partisan war that serves to make congressional elections a by-product of widespread cynical gerrymandering rather than a reflection of the will of the voters, perhaps one of the most noxiously anti-democratic efforts to rig an election possible, don’t blame the Virginia Supreme Court for “losing” safe districts for Democrats. The court did its job and its ruling, no matter what outcome you would have preferred, was grounded in a principled reading of the state Constitution.”

Good for Scott. He is still, however, a Trump Deranged, biased progressive (like most trial lawyers), so he also wrote…

“If you want to find blame, it’s in the legislatures that decided to sell out their citizens, their voters, at the open and notorious behest of Trump. For all his baseless bluster about rigged elections, we’re finally going to have one and Trump demanded the rigging.”

Bad Scott. Bad. Look at the damn chart above. Democrats had already rigged Congressional elections. Did you wonder why the predicted “red wave” in 2022 never materialized? Wonder no more. Nine Democrat-dominated state legislatures made it virtually impossible for Republicans to get elected. President Trump, that kingly fascist, had the sense and combative instincts to get his party to try to even the odds. The “red” states that did that through redistricting (gerrymandering) followed their constitutions. Virginia did not. Naturally, the losers blame Trump.

Former DNC chairwoman and current ABC contributor Donna Brazile naturally took the same dishonest path. Remember, Brazile was the Democrat who first tipped me off to her party’s cheating ways: as a paid CNN “contributor” in 2016, she used her insider status to tip-off Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton regarding the questions she would be asked at a CNN “town meeting.” This was so unethical even CNN couldn’t tolerate it, and she was fired. Yesterday Brazile joined GOP Rep. Dan Crenshaw and HBO’s “Real Time” host Bill Maher to give a masterclass on double standards and leftist gaslighting. Republican redistricting efforts are, she said, “immoral,” while Democratic efforts are what “voters decided.”

Voters in Virginia “decided” on the gerrymandered map based on the referendum’s false statement, indeed exactly the opposite of reality, that the new map would “restore fairness.” Remember?

“Restore fairness” by making sure that a 50-50 party split would be represented by a 10-1 Democrat district map. Sure.

Then Brazile played the race card, as Democrats inevitably do when the facts aren’t in their favor. “I come from one of those states that all of a sudden, the Supreme Court said, ‘Well, we don’t like partisan gerrymandering. No, we don’t like racial gerrymandering.’ So, one out of three voters in Louisiana is a black voter. One out of three. And they are now thinking of eradicating. So, that says people from some parts of Louisiana can represent New Orleans better than the folks who are representing—or Baton Rouge. It is wrong, it is immoral, and it is unjustified.”

Well-said, mush-mouth. “They” are thinking of “eradicating” black voters? I think Donna was trying to say that the Jim Crow laws that were still in effect de facto if not de jure in Southern states in the early Sixties justifies “good racial discrimination” in 2026, 60 years later. You can read her logic- and law-free rant here.This is, however, apparently the fake narrative the Axis has decided to run with, proving with its attempted cover-up just how desperate and unprincipled it is.

On yesterday’s MSNOW propaganda-fest “The Weekend,” Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY) compared the 1857 Dred Scott ruling to the SCOTUS decision that the 1965 Voting Rights Act could no longer justify anti-white discrimination in the Southern states, and declared the Roberts Court “one of the most racist courts in American history.”Got it. If the Court doesn’t allow the Democrats to rig its Congressional maps to pack the House with as many blacks as possible, it’s racist. Morelle also parroted the “will of the voters” lie in attacking the Virginia Supreme Court’s rejection of redistricting referendum. Did the MSNOW host point out for its viewers that Morelle was misrepresenting both decisions? Is a bear Catholic? Does the Pope shit in the woods?

This how House minority leader Hakeem Jeffreys reacted to his party being foiled in its unconstitutional, dishonest power-grab in Virginia:

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Unethical Quote of the Month: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

“The American Revolution was against the billionaires of their time.”

—-Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, talking nonsense, as usual

I don’t care too much if the Congresswoman is historically ignorant. I do mind that she keeps spouting false-history in public, because most of the American public is also historically ignorant, and they might assume that because she is an elected official of some status, she must know more than they do. She doesn’t. AOC epitomizes the Dunning-Kruger Effect, where stupid people don’t realize that they are dolts.

It also is infuriating that the Congresswoman made this statement on a stage at the Institute of Politics, and no one corrected her. I view that as the equivalent of ratifying fake history. Donors take notice!

Her latest garbage is particularly egregious. The American Revolution was fought against a monarchy, a nation and its Parliament, not “billionaires.” To characterize the Revolution as a revolt of peasants against the rich is typical Communist propaganda. John Hancock, one of the instigators of the rebellion, was considered the richest man in New England, a multi-millionaire in today’s dollars. Robert Morris, probably the richest man in the colonies, and worth nearly a billion dollars in today’s currency, contributed millions to fund the war. Another one of the richest Americans, probably in the $500-$600 range (again in today’s dollars) was the “Indispensable Man” who led the colonial forces on the battlefield, George Washington.

A cardinal sin to Ethics Alarms is making Americans dumber, and the sin is central to AOC’s political existence. I highlighted some earlier a-historical blather in this post, but a narrative distorting the nature of the American Revolution is particularly unforgivable.

Ethics Case Study: “Old Blue Eyes” vs “The Godfather of Soul”

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I’ve checked this story out to the extent that it is possible. It could be apocryphal; that “photo” above is clearly A.I. But the tale fits what is known about the characters of the two superstars, and it’s a useful parable whether the story is strictly true or not. “Print the legend,” as the old newspaperman says at the end of “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.”

Frank Sinatra is a complex figure, to say the least. He had mob connections and used them (even though “The Godfather” horse-head-in-the-bed story is almost certainly fiction), and had a reputation for dropping loyal friends like hot rocks when they displeased him. He is also credited with integrating Las Vegas hotels, refusing to perform anywhere that relegated black performers to second class status.

James Brown was one of those black performers who benefited from Frank’s stand, and he was appearing at the Sands Hotel in 1968. Brown had a one-week engagement at the Sands, where Sinatra was always treated as its main attraction. Brown, like Frank a seasoned pro who kept tight control over all aspects of his act, had arrived to find requested dressing-room features like mirrors, lighting, space to warm up and more absent despite his making his needs clear to management. Brown threatened to pull the show unless he got what he expected, while the Sands told him he risked forfeiting his fee and being sued.

Brown ultimately agreed to perform, but said he would not cut his set to 60 minutes as management told him Sinatra had directed. Then Brown went on stage opening night like his hair was on fire, and had the audience cheering well past the supposed one hour deadline. The next day, management again relayed Sinatra’s orders: keep the performance to the contracted 60 minutes. Brown defiantly extended his set again.

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Comment of the Day: “The New York Times Is Shocked—SHOCKED!—That Anyone Would Think It Discriminates Against White Males!”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

A short COTD for a change—Michael R., whose first comment was on this post in 2009, not long after Ethics Alarms was launched, has made a trenchant observation that seems obvious once you read it, but had never occurred to me in this degree of clarity.

His comment follows yesterday’s post about the New York Times being sued for discriminating against a white, male job applicant. The paper is denying it, of course, but as I asked in the post, “Does anyone believe that the woke, left-biased, victim-mongering, knee-jerk Democratic New York Times, after declaring that its staff was “too white” and “too male” has not been systematically discriminating against whites and men?”

Interestingly, Ann Althouse offered a poll to her readers on exactly that question…

…and here are the results as I write this:

Michael’s observation slapped me across my metaphorical face with the realization that approving of “good discrimination” is the result of the societal embrace of the Golden Rationalization, “Everybody does it,” in epidemic proportions. This is ironic, because the same unethical reasoning is what supported slavery and, after that, routine anti-black discrimination and prejudice for so long.

I worked in the administration of an institution that was all-in on “affirmative action”-–note that this is one of the great cover-phrases of all time, like “pro-choice,” allowing something that is unethical and illegal to be framed as something else—in the late Seventies when it took the culture by the throat. The institution was Georgetown Law Center, which is still committed to the self-contradictory policy Michael R.’s comment focuses upon: you may recall that its Dean essentially dismissed a new faculty member for daring to suggest that Justice Jackson, the DEI nomination of Joe Biden, was taking the place of more qualified candidates.

There was once a utilitarian argument for affirmative action; indeed I made it myself once upon a time. But a nation founded on equal justice and individual responsibility cannot maintain integrity while accepting any form of racial and gender discrimination without end. The fact that so many of our friends, relatives and colleagues can’t figure this out points to a widespread lack of ethical analytical skills. It is, I think, the same faulty and unethical reasoning that has spawned the rationalization of illegal immigration.

Here is Michael R’s Comment of the Day on the post, “The New York Times Is Shocked—SHOCKED!—That Anyone Would Think It Discriminates Against White Males!”

* * *

I have tried to explain why racially discriminatory programs are wrong to people at my institution, but it just doesn’t work. It is impossible to get them to understand that they can’t discriminate based on race. Most of them have grown up in a world where the courts have ruled that race-based discrimination is permissible. Explaining to them that it was illegal the whole time is just incomprehensible. I mean, it does seem implausible that every single federal and state court in the entire country ruled that the law that said you can’t discriminate based on race ruled that you could discriminate against SOME races. Explaining that they never made it legal, they just ruled it was permissible makes it worse. How can judges give people permission to violate the law for 60 years?

Remember, the Milgram experiment showed that as few as 10% of the population is capable of critical thinking. Most of those people are dismissed as troublemakers by society for their crime of critical thinking.