History

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 7/11/2022: Twitter Wars And More

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

But first, a cheerful song, because it’s all downhill from here…

Speaking of music, some opening notes are in order:

  • Yesterday was the anniversary of the much-heralded Scopes “Monkey Trial,” a 1925 ethics train wreck that I wrote about extensively last year, here and here.
  • Today, July 11, marks two of the most vivid examples of how random chance changes everything—history, culture, values, traditions– in ways that cannot be imagined. The first was the foolish duel in 1804 between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr that resulted in Hamilton’s premature death (but ultimately in a boffo Broadway musical!). The second was Count Claus von Stauffenberg’s close-but-no-cigar assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler in 1944.
  • Nearer to the present, the apparent collapse of Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter is disappointing, because it would make reporting on various Twitter-Twiggered ethics issues a lot easier if I could start an account again in good conscience, as I was prepared to do once the service got out from under the clutches of its current censorious and progressive-biased masters.
  • I also haven’t felt like participating in Facebook of late, as the Woke Hysteria among my once rational friends there over the recent SCOTUS decisions is too great a temptation–as in “target”— for me. Right now they just want an echo chamber to scream in, and that’s what they have. Someone somewhere on the web opined yesterday that late night talk shows,  “Saturday Night Live” and its ilk were no longer primarily about comedy, but rather therapy sessions for angry and depressed progressives and Democrats, with the shows using mockery and insults to reaffirm their convictions about “the others”—those dumb, evil, racist conservatives. I think that may be a perceptive analysis. “Saturday Night Live” is a particularly vivid example: the show that once reveled in portraying Gerald Ford as a bumbling klutz and George W. Bush as an outright moron week after week while they were in the White House now hesitates to exploit the comedy gold represented by Biden’s misadventures and Kamala Harris in general. It proves that SNL is more interested in hanging out with the cool kids than actually being funny—which is supposedly its mission. This is a conflict of interest, and the producer and writers aren’t even attempting to resolve it ethically.

1. Twitter Wars #1: @Ka1zoku_Qu0d, an idiot of the sort that literally clogs Twitter, posted this: “Hold on I want to make sure I say this carefully. Yeah Anne Frank had white privilege. Bad things happen to people with white privilege also but don’t tell the whites that.” This caused so much static on the platform that “Anne Frank” ended up “trending.” Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: “Ethics Quiz: Grandstanding Or Justice?”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

I didn’t provide my answer to the ethics quiz about the propriety of charging and trying the woman whose accusation against 14-year-old Emmett Till resulted in his infamous lynching in 1955. Jim Hodgson’s Comment of the Day nicely explains what it would be, though.

I also heard an interesting angle from my lawyer sister that is probably worth a full post. What Carolyn Bryant Donham said in 1955 would be literally nothing today. It was only in the warped Jim Crow culture of 1950s Mississippi that a woman false claiming a black teen touched and flirted with her could lead to violence, or could be considered provocation for a violent crime. How do you justify prosecuting someone 67 years later for an act that would no longer be considered a crime?

Here is Jim’s post, in response to “Ethics Quiz: Grandstanding Or Justice?”…

***

My answer to the ethics quiz is that no, she should not be prosecuted. It just isn’t feasible to achieve any fair degree of justice at this point.

As a retired deputy sheriff, the first thing that struck me as odd in the news reports that I read concerning this “discovery” was the clear implication that the “lost” warrant itself was somehow a bar to her being arrested and prosecuted at some time during the past 67 years. It may be news to many people, but paper warrants get lost (or at least temporarily “misplaced”) with some regularity. In my state, any officer of the court with knowledge of the original warrant could have asked for the warrant to be re-issued by the same court that issued the original. In my state this is referred to as issuing an “alias warrant” or an “alias writ.” Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Grandstanding Or Justice?

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Weird.

A team searching a Mississippi courthouse basement for evidence about the infamous lynching of black teenager Emmett Till in 1955 stumbled upon the unserved arrest warrant charging Carolyn Bryant Donham— identified as “Mrs. Roy Bryant” on the document—with the 14-year-old boy’s abduction. Donham was the young woman who falsely claimed that Till had whistled at her and grabbed her, causing a mob of white men to murder him. The warrant was never served, apparently because the Jim Crow-era Mississippi sheriff didn’t feel a mother with two children should be prosecuted. Now Till’s family wants Donham, 88, arrested and tried...almost 70 years after the crime.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz on this Independence Day weekend is…

Would it be ethical to do this? 

Continue reading →

Pre-Independence Day Ethics Warm-Up, July 3, 2022: What Might Have Been [Broken Link Fixed]

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Typically, Ethics Alarms has highlighted July 3 with reflections on the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863, for which the 3rd was the dramatic last and decisive day. I know it must be hard to believe, but I do get tired of writing the same things over and over again, an occupational hazard of being an ethicist during a mass ethics breakdown in our democracy and among the increasingly corrupt people we have put in power to protect it. I still can’t ignore Pickett’s futile charge and Custer’s charge as well, so I direct you to last year’s post on both events and their ethics implications.

However, this year I am introducing the July 3 warm-up with another crucial anniversary, one that may have had even more impact on the history of the United States, its prospects and its values than Gettysburg. July 2, 1776 is when the Continental Congress finally agreed to take the leap and forge a new nation (John Adams thought the 2nd would be the day we celebrated) and July 4, 1776 was the date the document was signed. But in-between those more noted dates the Continental Congress began debating and editing Jefferson’s draft Declaration, eventually making 86 edits that cut the length by about a fourth. 

Because the Declaration of Independence is the mission statement of America, framing and sometimes compelling what followed, especially the Constitution, the editing decisions of July 3, 1776 affected our laws and culture in many ways that are unimaginable after more than 200 years. You can read the original here. It is this deleted paragraph, however, that most inspires reflections on what might have been (and what might not):

“He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he has obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed again the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.”

Now on to the present day’s ethics concerns...

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Well, There Goes My Head! Slavery Was “Involuntary Relocation”…

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

A group of Texas educators have proposed to the Texas State Board of Education that slavery should referred to “involuntary relocation” in second grade social studies sessions.

I supposed it’s nice that conservatives are back to mastering the “it isn’t what it is” trick, this one the variation known as “it wasn’t what it was.” Lately it’s the Left’s cover words that have been most in evidence, like “choice” for abortion, and “gun safety,” when what they mean is “gun ownership restrictions.” Then there is “equity, diversity and inclusion” for “racial preferences” and “restorative justice” which really means “letting criminals get away with slaps on the wrist for serious crimes so they can prey on their communities again but at least there won’t be ‘over-incarceration.'”

All of these (and so many more) used by the Left and Right—never forget “enhanced interrogation” “rendition,” and “detainees” (you know: prisoners without trials forever)— are base deceit designed to deceive—-in other words, lies.

Lying to kids, however, is especially despicable. Slavery was not “involuntary relocation” any more than it was “free room and board” or “Community singing.” Those “educators”( a working group of nine, including a professor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley) have revealed their absolute lack of fitness for their jobs, for mis-education is the opposite of education. They should apply to be White House press secretaries. Or New York Times op-ed writers. Fire them. Parents? Are you paying attention?

“The board — with unanimous consent — directed the work group to revisit that specific language,” Keven Ellis, chair of the Texas State Board of Education said in a statement. Board member Aicha Davis, a Democrat, said that the proposed wording is not a “fair representation” of the slave trade.

Ya think?

Does this look like “relocation” to you?

__________________

Pointer: Curmie

Another CVS Adventure: Observations On A Revealing Juneteenth Encounter

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

The  CVS on Quaker Lane in Alexandria, scene of many ethics adventures…

I am still at war with CVS, which has so far ducked all of my efforts to seek an appropriate response for our local branch’s unethical treatment of a 30-year regular customer (me) last year. I still haven’t gotten around to moving all of my drug prescriptions to Walgreen’s, Harris Teeter or Safeway, however, so yesterday I was once again involved in a long, complicated mess regarding the filling of one of my more crucial pharmaceutical needs. (My CVS doesn’t do well with its pharmacy service either, especially since it used the Wuhan freakout to justify cutting staff down below a minimum level.)

Luckily, I was dealing with my favorite member of the current staff, a smart, young African-American assistant pharmacist with superb interpersonal skills. In the course of our discussion, I mentioned that most of the stores were closed (this is Northern Virginia) since the state was one of those making the Monday after Juneteenth’s arrival on a Sunday a holiday.

She had no idea what I was talking about.

Continue reading →

George Washington University Insults The Nation’s History

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Of course, we have seen this coming for a long time, and I will be surprised if the creeping, craven effort to erase George Washington and the legacy of the Founders from the school that now bears his name will stop; it may even accelerate.

The George Washington University Board of Trustees finally decided to discontinue the use of the school’s “Colonials” moniker based on the recommendation of —believe it or not—the “Special Committee on the Colonials Moniker.” In case you have the historical literacy of a horseshoe crab, before what is now the United States of America won its independence, it was made up of colonies, and its occupants fighting for their nascent nation were often called “colonials” because that’s what they were. These colonials were completely responsible today for the United States’ existence and everything it has achieved. The leader of the army of colonials was George Washington, and the first President of the radical new nation established by those colonials was that same great man. Thus to conclude that referring to various teams and groups associated with the educational institution named in his honor as Colonials is anything but descriptive, justified, and an honor is, to be blunt, bats.

However a gross majority of the people running the institutes of higher education in the U.S. are shallow, fearful, pandering fools, and GW’s leaders are clearly in that group. Here is the revolting statement by Board Chair Grace Speights: Continue reading →

An Ethics Alarms FIRST! Carl Paladino Scores Two Ethics Dunces In A Single Day!

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

I don’t want to leap to conclusions or anything, but I think maybe Mr. Palladino needs to reassess his political ambitions.

Today a recording surfaced of the congressional candidate Ethics Alarms just featured in this Ethics Dunce post telling Buffalo’s WBEN Radio host Peter Hunt on Feb. 13, 2021 that he had recently listened to a broadcast about “Adolf Hitler and how he aroused the crowds.” Palladino continued,

“And he would get up there screaming these epithets and these people were just – they were hypnotized by him. That’s, I guess, I guess that’s the kind of leader we need today. We need somebody inspirational. We need somebody that is a doer, has been there and done it.”

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Ethics Quote Of The Month: Kim Phuc Phan Thi

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

“I thought to myself, “I am a little girl. I am naked. Why did he take that picture? Why didn’t my parents protect me? Why did he print that photo? Why was I the only kid naked while my brothers and cousins in the photo had their clothes on?” I felt ugly and ashamed.”

—-Kim Phuc Phan Thi, the now 59 year-old woman (above). She was the screaming  9-year-old North Vietnamese girl shown in “The Terror of War”, the famous photograph by AP photographer Nick Uts showing her running naked and burned down a road after napalm was dropped on the village of Trảng Bàng in 1972.

I always  uncomfortable with that photograph from the moment I saw it, and thought it was cruel and unethical. Would the AP have published a similar photograph of a white American girl? I don’t know, but I don’t trust the Associated Press (or any press, at this point). It won Ut a Pulitzer Prize and helped energize the anti-Vietnam war effort in the U.S., but the photo (shown in the underlined link above) fails two basic ethics systems: Reciprocity, as in the Golden Rule, and Kant’s Categorical Imperative, which forbids using another human being as a means to an end. Can it be justified under Utilitarian principles, as a balancing of outcomes? Was the benefit of publishing the photo sufficient to make it ethical conduct, despite the harm it would do to an innocent child?

 Not on my scorecard.

Continue reading →

The Worst President Ever? Part 2

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

In Part 1, an embarrassing 20 days ago, Ethics Alarms looked at the first ten American Presidents and found only two, James Madison and John Tyler, even slightly worthy of consideration. Neither were bad enough however to qualify for the finals, however. The next group, 11-20, have more promising candidates.

Zachary Taylor, like William Henry Harrison not long before him, never had a chance, dying after less than a year-and-a-half in office. The old general signaled that he would have been a strong President in the same sense that Andrew Jackson (and Donald Trump) were strong, which is not to say that he would have necessarily been good for the country. In the mold of Jackson, Taylor was a slave-holder who was determined not to let the demands of the slave-happy South tear the nation apart. His successor, Millard Fillmore, is often assumed to be a poor President because he has a funny name, but he wasn’t terrible. He presided over the adoption of the Compromise of 1850, which may have delayed the South’s attempt at succession until Abe Lincoln was around to deal with it, and dealt competently with a mess of foreign affairs problems in his less than three years in the White House.

America had to wait four more years, through the successful if openly imperialistic Polk administration, to get to its first strong candidates for Worst President, and then got four within the next five:

Continue reading →