language

What’s In A Name?

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

The Axis is so consistent in condemning everything President Trump does that it is becoming difficult to define what is really right and wrong. “Who did it” is not a valid or reasonable basis for making the distinction, but I swear, the Left has been so relentless with its warping of language and standards that even I am getting confused.

The current question is this: “Is there anything wrong with re-naming the Defense Department the Department of War, or the War Department, which is what it was called for before 1947 without the mountains falling and the seas boiling?”

As usual, there is a substantial chance that this is Trump Trolling, as he tries to make people’s head explode. I can also conceive of some value to the name change. I see nothing wrong with the U.S. projecting an image of strength and of a nation that is not going to tolerate international outrages because it’s reluctant to use military force. Yet focusing on “defense” has its advantages too.

They are two sides of the same metaphorical coin, one seeming more aggressive (oh-oh! That pesky testosterone again!) and the other more typically feminine: making the priorities accommodation and compromise over conflict and violence.

Is there any basis for ruling Trump’s branding decision unethical? I don’t see one.

End of Summer Ethics Countdown, 8/30/25: Of Trailblazers, Dogs, Firings and Things.

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

This date, I am told by the History Channel, constitutes two race barrier landmarks. On August 30, 1967, Thurgood Marshall became the first African American to be confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice. U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Guion S. Bluford became the first African American to be shot into space on this date in 1983. I get it: there were clearly social and legal barriers to black Americans for a very long time, and both of those achievements represent progress for the race and the nation. Still, I find myself wondering if the marking of such “trailblazers” hasn’t become a sop to race-obsessed victim-activists who want American society to forever pay reparations to blacks, and for that matter all minorities and women, at the expense of the merit based society the U.S. aspires to be.

Thanks to computers, it is now possible to find all sorts of records and distinctions that nobody dreamed of commemorating before. The Boston Red Sox just went 7-1 in a short road trip, and we learned that it was the first time in the team’s history that it won seven games in a road trip of eight games or less, and so what? Wait, let’s check: Yes! There has never been a gay, Portuguese-African-American intellectual property specialist under 5’8″ hired as an associate at a major D.C. law firm! Obviously that should elevate an applicant in the hiring competition, no?

No.

Enough musing…

1. Pam Bondi fired a Justice Department intern paralegal for middle-fingering a member of the National Guard in Washington, D.C., on her way to work earlier this month, adding “Fuck the National Guard!” to her outburst. Bondi explained, “This DOJ remains committed to defending President Trump’s agenda and fighting to make America safe again.If you oppose our mission and disrespect law enforcement — you will NO LONGER work at DOJ.” I see nothing inappropriate in this, particularly in the atmosphere fostered by the Left in which working within the government to undermined policies the Axis deplores is being lionized and encouraged. The Justice Department can’t and shouldn’t trust such an individual. It is too bad we have come to that: once, lawyers and other good citizens could be trusted to do their jobs without allowing political biases and dissenting opinions to lead them to abuse their positions. No longer.

In related news, Sean Charles Dunn, the DOJ paralegal who was fired for throwing a sub sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection agent, has been charged with a misdemeanor after a D.C. grand jury refused to issue felony charges. A D.C. grand jury would probably refuse to indict President Trump’s assassin. I can see the argument that a felony for assaulting an officer with a non-lethal missile isn’t felony-worthy, but I hope this jerk gets jail time.

I’m sure he won’t.

2. The Ethicist answers an infuriating question: “Should I Report My Neighbor’s Animal Abuse?” Of course you should, you trepidatious idiot! This is a pure “Fix the problem!” situation. The inquirer ladles on all the reasons why he has allowed the poor animal to be abused for months, and the conduct described absolutely shows abuse. He had seen the dog kicked. The dog is kept outside on a short chain in freezing and hot weather. The writer sputters, “I can’t take him in; my own dog is elderly and won’t accept another. And while I believe [the dog] is neglected, nothing I’ve seen clearly violates the law. I feel trapped: afraid of overstepping with unpredictable neighbors, afraid of doing nothing and regretting it if [the dog] suffers or dies...What, ethically and practically, should I do to safeguard this dog’s well-being?“

Oh, fix the problem, you revolting weenie! How much has the dog suffered while you do things like whine to advice columnists? Tell the neighbors that you will buy the dog, and then give it to a humane dog rescue group. My dog Spuds was rescued from abuse by one rescue volunteer going up to the door, knocking, and saying, “Either turn that dog over to me or I’m calling the police.” The Ethicist gives his usual prolix response to fill up the column and comes around to the right answer eventually, but what would this pathetic inquirer do if he saw the neighbors abusing a child?

3. Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias! This is classic. Most of the news media reported the President curtailing Kamala Harris’s Secret Service detail so that the usual semi-illiterate, gullible readers would see it as more of Trump’s “revenge tour.” CBS: “President Trump has revoked former Vice President Kamala Harris’ U.S. Secret Service protection.” Ditto ABC, NBC, BBC. Only the Associated Press included the rather relevant information that former VP’s, unlike former Presidents, typically only get six months of Secret Service protection, and Harris’s would be up under normal circumstances. But President Biden, or his autopen, extended Harris’s detail to 18 months for no discernible reason. Writes Ed Morrissey: “So the actual story is that the Biden administration gave Harris a stealth extension of taxpayer-funded benefits to which she was not entitled. If Congress wants to extend those benefits for former VPs, then let Congress propose and pass those into statute as amendments to the pension system for former presidents and VPs. Otherwise, Harris is no longer a public servant, and she can use her own resources for personal protection rather than sponge off the taxpayers. Trump simply canceled the illegitimate extension and restored the normal post-office benefit limitations to which all VPs are subject.”

But most of the public won’t see it that way, and this is intentional. Enemy of the people.

4. Look, the evil EPA fired employees who made it clear they couldn’t be trusted to carry out the policies of the agency! Yes, the EPA has started firing some of the144 employees it placed on leave for endorsing a public letter that said the changes President Donald Trump and his appointees had made at the agency “undermine the EPA mission of protecting human health and the environment.” More than 270 employees initially signed the letter, with over 170 choosing to be named. The open letter “contains information that misleads the public about agency business,” an EPA official said. “Thankfully, this represents a small fraction of the thousands of hard-working, dedicated EPA employees who are not trying to mislead and scare the American public.” “This is to provide notification that the Agency is removing you from your position and federal service consistent with the above references,” said one termination notice. “I have determined that your continued employment is not in the public interest.”

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Psst! Progressives! It’s What You Mean That’s The Problem, Not How You Say It…

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

This is pretty funny, as Ethics Duncery goes. Third Way calls itself “a national think tank and advocacy organization that champions moderate policy and political ideas,” acting as “a critical bulwark against political extremism.” Right. It’s latest project is an attempt to train their fellow travelers not to “use an awful lot of words and phrases no ordinary person would ever dream of saying.” The feature “Was it Something I Said” continues, “The intent of this language is to include, broaden, empathize, accept, and embrace. The effect of this language is to sound like the extreme, divisive, elitist, and obfuscatory, enforcers of wokeness. To please the few, we have alienated the many—especially on culture issues, where our language sounds superior, haughty and arrogant.”

Smoking guns abound in this thing, beginning with the use of “we” in that sentence above. “Was it Something I Said” begins, “To: All Who Wish to Stop Donald Trump and MAGA.” Not stop a particular policy or project, mind you, just the elected President of the United States and all those who support him, “The Third Way” is in fact the same old way: the Axis has a dearth of rational policy ideas and principles, so hating Trump, treating Republicans as plotting Nazis, and adopting “It Isn’t What It Is” as their primary operating principle (also known as “Sure. we can fool all the people all the time” remains the plan.

The objective here is to employ more soothing, vague and seductive language to accomplish it. Amazing: every time the Left encounters the perils of imposing reality, its reflex solution is to hide the problem by cooking the rhetoric. The public doesn’t like racial and gender discrimination? Hey, let’s call it “diversity, equity and inclusion!” Normal people think amputating the penises of boys who have been confused about their gender by pro-trans indoctrination? No problem! Call it “gender-affirming care”! Most citizens find the idea of open borders repugnant, not to mention stupid? Ah, but if we all call illegal immigrants immigrants or migrants, then we can confuse them completely! I assume you can continue this theme without my assistance.

“In reality, most Democrats do not run or govern on wildly out-of-touch social positions,” claims Third Way. “But voters would be excused to believe we do because of the words that come out of our mouths—words which sound like we are hiding behind unfamiliar phrases to mask extreme intent.”

Yes, this moderate, centrist, Democrat “think tank” doesn’t think promoting illegal immigration, using radical surgery and hormone blockers on children and institutionalizing anti-male, anti-white discrimination qualify as “wildly out of touch.” “[I]f we don’t think more carefully about our language, many in America will be banking on help from Donald Trump and Republicans, because Democratic levers of power will be few and far between,” the introduction to the NewSpeak guide says. Oh, no! Americans might end up trusting a President who has clearly opposed the Axis’s ridiculous, divisive damaging obsessions, which is, after all, why he was elected over the Democrats’ DEI candidate. Translation: “Let’s be smart about this, and hide what we really mean and what we really want to do. You know, like saying Joe Biden was “sharp as a tack,” and calling videos of him wandering vacantly like a zombie “deep fakes.”

You may want to wade into the whole thing, but here are some examples of what you’re facing:

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Incompetent Re-Branding of the Decade?

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Amazing. Mediaite, an MSNBC cheerleader, calls this thing above as ‘surprisingly elegant.” Elegant? MS is best known as a disease, and a nasty one. If someone says, “I have MS now,” the proper result is, “I’m so sorry! What’s the prognosis?” More pandering from Mediaite: “Media rebrands usually stink. Quibi. Tronc. Syfy. The graveyard is crowded with names that sounded bold in the boardroom and ridiculous everywhere else, which is why MSNBC’s new identity as MS Now feels like such a surprise. It’s not perfect. It’s not thrilling. But it’s… smart.” Hey, everybody! It’s smart to make your new identity the common name for a dread disease! Is it possible that no one mentioned this among the dozens—hundreds?—of alleged professional marketers and image consultants involved in the process? Just to make sure I’m not imagining this, I just Googled “MS.” The result:

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Observations on the Cincinnati Beatdown

/ Jack Marshall / 35 Comments

While languishing in the hospital, this was the story that I felt most frustrated about not being able to post. Not that I could get a single, clear, spin-free account of what happened. In the aftermath of some Cincinnati event or festival or something, a black man and a white one got into a verbal altercation. The white guy seems to have uttered a racial slur, precipitating a brawl that was quickly joined by a mob of black youths who beat up the white guy and then turned their anger on a white woman who tried to intervene, knocking her unconscious and kicking her as she lay helpless on the ground. An estimated hundred bystanders, most or all of them black, stood by taking videos, laughing, and cheering the mob violence on. There was only one call to 911.

1. Almost all of the national coverage of this incident has been on Fox News. The New York Times, interestingly, hasn’t reported the story at all. The natural question has been raised: If a black man and woman had been attacked and beaten by a mob of young whites as 100 white bystanders cheered them on, there would be protests in the streets and calls for “justice.” Why the double standard?

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If the Only Value of Colleges Now Is Credentialing (Since They No Longer Educate) What Good Is a Credential With This Low A Bar To Obtain?

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

The answer is “Not much, if any.”

In a June 18 op-ed, Michael Torres, the policy director for the Classical Learning Test (CLT), revealed that in 2024 the College Board made sweeping changes to the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) to “dumb them down.”

Among the “improvements”: the Reading and Writing section of the test was shortened from between a required 500-750 words to 25-150 words, or approximately the length of a social media post. The College Board’s reasoning? The ability to read longer passages, it insists, is “not an essential prerequisite for college.”

The exam, the Board explains, now “operates more efficiently when choices about what test content to deliver are made in small rather than larger units.” This goal required, for example, eliminating passages from the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence to prevent the unfair penalizing of “students who might have struggled to connect with the subject matter.”

Yeah, you wouldn’t want to prevent a student who can’t comprehend our Founding documents from getting a college degree. Accordingly, the optional essay was also eliminated entirely, presumably because not being able to organize one’s thoughts and communicate them clearly is no longer a prerequisite for being regarded as intelligent, able, and wise.

Torres accused the College Board of “catering to students’ declining performance and social-media-induced attention-control issues.”

Ya think?

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Little League Ethics: A Bat Flip Controversy Goes To Court

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Little Leaguer Marco Rocco of Haddonfield, N.J., 12-years-old, hit a majestic home run in a Little League tournament game against a team from Harrison last week. Marco emulated what many big league players do in similar moments of triumph: he flipped his bat into the air to celebrate as he began to circle the bases. His homer put his team up 8-0 and a step closer to the Little League World Series.

But Marco was ejected from the game, and, by the Little League rules, the ejection included a one-game suspension for the next game too. Marco’s innocent bat flip meant he would would be barred from playing in a showdown against Elmora Township, with a the New Jersey state Little League title on the line. Marco’s father was told that in the umpire’s judgment, his son broke a rule that “At no time should ‘horseplay’ be permitted on the playing field.” No rule mentions bat-flipping.

So Mr. Rocco, who is a lawyer, filed a motion asking a New Jersey court for a temporary restraining order, and got it. The judge that Marco could play, in the next game, which took place yesterday, holding that “Little League is enjoined from enforcing its suspension.”

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Will the Unethical Appeals To Emotion Rationalizing Illegal Immigration Never Cease?

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

The metaphorically tear-flecked column in the Times screams, “We Will Regret Not Standing Up to This Venomous Cruelty.” [Gift link here!]

You know what the “venomous cruelty” is? Sending people who are in the U.S. illegally back to where they never should have left in the first place.

The author is Linda Greenhouse, a dyed-through-and through progressive who warps students at Yale Law School. She’s a legal journalist who won a Pulitzer Prize once, the Times tells us, not that this should mean anything after the Post and Times won awards for their false coverage of the Russian Collusion non-story and after “The 1619 Project’s” fake historian was rewarded for that political fantasy.

Greenhouse isn’t stupid, or at least shouldn’t be, with degrees from Harvard University, Yale University, Yale Law School, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Yet here she is, writing things like

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An Ethics Alarms “Bite Me!” Goes To Dr. Kirsten Viola Harrison!

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

The “Bite Me!”is an Ethics Alarms designation reserved for either an individual whose “response to being bullied, pressured and threatened into submissiveness is to say, “Do your worst. I believe in what I am doing, and I don’t grovel to mobs,” or as used several times here, to impugn the author of unethical conduct that demands the response, “Bite me!”

Dr. Kirsten Viola Harrison is a licensed psychologist and a “spiritual integration coach,” whatever the hell THAT means. She’s seeking her 15 minutes of faux fame by lecturing us about how people can unwittingly give off an “unapproachable energy,” thus sending out a “bad vibe.”

“Giving off a bad vibe’ means unintentionally projecting energy, through words, tone and body language, that others perceive as negative, inauthentic, or that make one appear unapproachable,” she explains. “It often triggers discomfort and mistrust, even when no harm is intended. Since our brains are wired to detect dissonance between what someone says and how they say it, the non-verbal signals which inform our emotional responses are exceedingly influential and powerful in shaping our interactions.”

Dr. Harrison has identified nine phrases she says can create these bad vibes if one isn’t careful. Gee, I wonder if “Bite me, you insufferable, over-credentialed fool!” is on the list? In her case, the “Bite Me!” is earned by abuse of authority and making gullible people stupid with New Age psychobabble. Here is her list, and my reactions.

1.”I’m Just Being Honest!”

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A Perfect Example of a “Trump Lie”

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

On both MSNBC and CNN today, a big deal was made over the fact that President Trump said that “no other country” confers automatic citizenship on those born within its borders. They were both sneering so hard that I bet they needed a lip massage afterwards, “Of course, 33 nations have birthright citizenship,” said one, with the other making a similar statement.

No question about it, they are right and Trump was wrong. What he meant, however, was “No nations anywhere but the Americas have birthright citizenship, and we are the only major power in the world that does.” Or, “Almost no nations that know what the fuck they are doing have birthright citizenship.” Presidents shouldn’t be that careless, but Trump is, he refuses to change, he’s not going to, and nobody should pretend that they are shocked when he does.

Here’s the list, as represented in the chart above: Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Gambia, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Jamaica, Lesotho, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, United States, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

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