Quotes

Reflections On President’s Day, 2012: A United States Diminished in Power, Influence and Ideals

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Rep. Ron Paul is fond of saying that the United States shouldn’t be the world’s policeman, and thanks to irresponsible stewardship of America’s resources and horrific maintenance of its ideals, his wish has already come true. One result is a world that has no functioning opposition to evil, a world at the mercy of chaos with no champion or guiding inspiration in sight. The other result is a United States that no longer stands for its own founding principles.

For proof, we have only to look as far as Syria, where a brutal dictator is killing his own people at an accelerating rate. Although his people have tired of his tyranny, Hafez al-Assad, like Gaddafi before him, seems determined to kill as many of his own countrymen as he has to in order to stay in power. Our President, Barack Obama, has delivered stern admonitions and disapprovals, which is this President’s style and approximately as effective as tossing water balloons. The Secretary of State, Mrs. Clinton, expresses frustration, for all the good that does. The killing, of course, goes on.

If you think I’m going to advocate U.S. action in Syria, you are wrong. Quite simply, we can’t afford it—not with a Congress and an Administration that appear unwilling and unable to confront rising budget deficits and crushing debt with sensible tax reform and unavoidable entitlement reductions. Yesterday Congress and the President passed yet another government hand-out of money it doesn’t have and refuses to raise elsewhere, among other things continuing to turn unemployment insurance, once a short-term cushion for job-seekers, into long-term government compensation for the unemployed. Part of the reckless debt escalation was caused by the last President unconscionably engaging in overseas combat in multiple theaters without having the courage or sense  to insist that the public pay for it, and the current administration is incapable of grasping that real money, not just borrowed funds, needs to pay for anything. The needle is well into the red zone on debt; we don’t have the resources for any discretionary military action.

Ron Paul thinks that’s a good thing, as do his libertarian supporters. President Obama, it seems, thinks similarly. They are tragically wrong. Though it is a popular position likely to be supported by the fantasists who think war can just be wished away, the narrowly selfish who think the U.S. should be an island fortress, and those to whom any expenditure that isn’t used to expand  cradle-to-grave government care is a betrayal of human rights, the abandonment of America’s long-standing world leadership in fighting totalitarianism, oppression, murder and genocide is a catastrophe for both the world and us. Continue reading →

Update: The King Memorial Quote Mess Is Officially A Fiasco

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

The Martin Luther King Memorial Commission meets to address the quote controversy

When we last left the star-crossed Martin Luther King Memorial on the National Mall, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar had boldly declared that the Interior Department was ordering the embarrassing misquotation of the martyred civil rights leader changed, so he would not sound to future generations like “an arrogant twit,” in poet Maya Angelou’s neat phrasing. Now a war of words and intentions has broken out, with Salazar declaring that the entire made-up quotation (“I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness.”—something King never said, and probably never thought, either) had to be removed, and the correct quote (“…if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter.”) added, and Ed Jackson, the architect who oversaw the memorial’s development for years, saying that Salazar’s plan would wreck the structure. Asked if there was any way to remove the inscription from the memorial without destroying it, Jackson answered, “No.” Continue reading →

Ethics Hero Emeritus: Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011)

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Too many excellent writers are writing about Christopher Hitchens in the wake of his premature death from cancer for me to add much of value. I disagreed with Hitchens frequently, but then, so did everyone. What I appreciated was his integrity, which was unshakable. What I admired, and will always try to emulate, was his refusal to be seduced by convention, ideology, political agendas and partisan bias. Hitchens looked at the world with clear and piercing eyes, and dissected what he observed with a mind that was curious, rigorous, and forever open. Thus he was never a comfortable ally for liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat, because he would never hesitate to arrive at conclusions that shocked his friends and cheered his friend’s enemies. He was fearless and principled.

Most of all, however, Christopher Hitchens wrote like an angel, a simile the committed atheist would have hated. It is a measure of the depths to which popular taste and intellect have fallen that the Mark Train Prize was awarded in recent years to the pedestrian likes of Will Farrell and Tina Fey when Hitchens routinely churned out prose wittier than their best efforts on the most inspired days of their creative lives. He was truly the spiritual and literary descendant of Mark Twain, as well as Swift, Ambrose Bierce, H.L. Mencken, George Bernard Shaw, W.S. Gilbert, Dorothy Parker, Gore Vidal and the rest of the select crew of social critics blessed with the ability to infuriate, illuminate and amuse simultaneously. When he focused all of his passion, intellect and rhetorical skills on a topic he cared about, Hitchens was as close to an irresistible force as a writer can be. Yet his mission was always noble. His constant goals were truth, justice, fairness, and wisdom. Of him it could be fairly stated, as of few others, that while Christopher Hitchens was around, bullshit was never safe.

I’ll close with four links about Hitchens: the New York Times obituary, the Washington Post obituary, a collection of comments and other links about Hitchens, a collection of his essays, an appreciation from a friend, and a collection of some of his best quotes.

If you can only read one, choose the last. The list is heavily tilted toward Hitchens’ attacks on religion, and he wrote about so many other things, but it is representative of his skill and style. One quote on the list  in particular I remember well, and it makes me laugh every time I read it:

“If you gave [Jerry] Falwell an enema he could be buried in a matchbox.”

Ah, we’ll miss you, Hitch!

Unethical Quote of the Week: Herman Cain

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Stick to pizza, Herman.

“Here’s what I would have – I would have done a better job of determining who the opposition is and I’m sure that our intelligence people have some of that information. Based upon who made up that opposition, OK, based upon who made up that opposition, might have caused me to make some different decisions about how we participated. Secondly, no, I did not agree with Qadhafi killing his citizens. Absolutely not. So something would have had to been – I would have supported many of the things they did in order to help stop that. It’s not a simple yes-no, because there are different pieces and I would have gone about assessing the situation differently, which might have caused us to end up in the same place. But where I think more could have been done was, what’s the nature of the opposition?”

—–Republican Presidential hopeful Herman Cain, responding to a reporter’s question asking for his opinion of President Obama’s handling of Libya. The comment followed an eleven second pause and one false start, as Cain appeared confused and unprepared for the question.

The ethical problem with Cain’s answer was not that he fumbled it, but that like his stated position on abortion, it is unethical and intellectually lazy. Continue reading →

My 15 Hollywood Cures For A Paterno-Penn State-Sandusky Hangover, Part 2

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Part 1 listed the first seven of my 15 cinematic remedies for Penn State-inspired ethics ennui. Part 2 includes the final eight. Please don’t take the order too seriously; I could have shuffled the whole batch. I also tried to include as many genres as possible. When it comes to ethics, good lists can be compiled using all Westerns, all sports movies, all war movies, courtroom drama or science fiction. Here we go…

8. Spartacus (196o)

The raw history is inspiring enough: an escaped gladiator led an army of slaves to multiple victories over the Roman legions in one of the greatest underdog triumphs ever recorded. Stanley Kubrick’s sword-and-sandal classic has many inspiring sequences, none more so than the moment when Spartacus’s defeated army chooses death rather than to allow him to identify himself to their Roman captors (“I am Spartacus!”)

Ethical issues highlighted: Liberty, slavery, sacrifice, trust, politics, courage, determination, the duty to resist abusive power, revolution, love, loyalty.

Favorite quote: “When a free man dies, he loses the pleasure of life. A slave loses his pain. Death is the only freedom a slave knows. That’s why he’s not afraid of it. That’s why we’ll win.” [Spartacus (Kirk Douglas)] Continue reading →

My 15 Hollywood Cures For A Paterno-Penn State-Sandusky Hangover, Part 1

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

For this hangover, movies work better.

The past week, as much as any week within memory, has caused me to despair about the culture, the state of ethical values in America, and my own futile efforts to try to bring some light to the darkness. My mood was not only ravaged by the Penn State scandal (and Penn State’s students’ scandalous reaction to it), but also the continued drift and incompetence in our government and the lack of any apparent leadership or courage to address the problems of our economic system, other than to complain about them.

In such times—there have been others, though happily not many—my spirit urgently needs an infusion of inspiration and hope, and fast: as Al Pacino reminds us in “Scent of a Woman,” there is no prosthesis for an amputated spirit. This is when I turn to the movies that speak to me of courage, redemption, and ethical virtues validated. They are my lifeline; I can’t write or think about ethics from the bottom of a pit. I’ve got only a few days before Thanksgiving, after all. This is no time to be cynical and dubious about the course of humanity and the United States of America, a nation I love and admire.

Thus I am going to take a brief detour from the usual format of Ethics Alarms, with your leave and forgiveness, and share with you the fifteen movies that I will turn to as I try to recharge my enthusiasm, inspiration, and hope. Here are 1 though 7; the rest will be along shortly:

1. A Man For All Seasons (1966)

Hardly the most upbeat film to start the list, but probably the greatest ethics movie ever made.

Ethical issues highlighted: Integrity, honesty, courage, leadership, corruption, abuse of power.

Favorite quote: “Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world… but for Wales?” [Sir Thomas More (Paul Scofield)] Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: Greta Van Susteren

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Welcome to the Wisconsin Supreme Court!

“Are any of the newspaper asking for them to step down? People have very serious disputes and their whole lives depend on decisions on the Supreme Court, and this isn’t fair to the people. Are newspaper editors saying they got to go?”

—-Fox News Host Greta Van Susteren, asking Milwaukee-Journal Sentinel reporter Jason Stein why the Wisconsin news media has not demanded  the removal of Justice David Prosser and  Justice Ann Walsh Bradley or both, since by all accounts they turned ideological differences into a physical altercation in chambers. The reporter ducked the question, and blamed it all on Gov. Scott Walker, thus taking “missing the entire point” to art form status.

Van Susteren is not only right, but obviously right. Continue reading →

Incompetent Elected Official of the Month: Rep. Andre Carson (D-Ind.)

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Worse than Joe "You Lie!" Wilson; worse than Allan "The Republicans want you to die!" Grayson. Will anyone say so?

Many Members of the Congressional Black Caucus have specifically stated in the past that they have no interest in budget-balancing issues, and that their primary and over-riding objective is to keep government money flowing to their neediest constituents. That’s a narrow and irresponsible position, but defensible if your view of the duty of elected representatives is that they are only advocates for the voters who elect them, and not bound by any obligation to national welfare  as a whole. Even if one accepts this approach (shared by many in the Tea Party), it does not excuse executing that advocacy by stirring up race hatred with diatribes attributing monstrous and unjustified motivations to political adversaries.

In other words, it doesn’t excuse slanderous comments like these about the Tea Party and its adherents, issuing like flaming vomit from the uncivil mouth of Rep. Andre Carson:

“This is the effort that we are seeing of Jim Crow. Some of these folks in Congress right now would love to see us as second class citizens. Some of them in Congress right now with this Tea Party movement would love to see you and me… hanging on a tree. Some of them right now in Congress right now are comfortable with where we were fifty or sixty years ago. But it’s a new day with a black president and a Congressional Black Caucus.”

Continue reading →

More Quotation Ethics: The Martin Luther King Memorial Strikes Again…But It’s Maya Angelou’s Fault

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Who said that quote inscribed on the MLK monument? Not Rev. King! Maybe that guy in the hat...

When I saw the Martin Luther King quote engraved on the north face of his monument at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, my immediate thought was: “A little full of ourselves there, are we, Marty?”

It reads: “I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness.”

Personally, I’ve always hated drum majors—prancing, flashy show-offs with big hats. I never thought of Martin Luther King as a drum major, or as someone prone to self-glorifying descriptions. I was relieved, therefore, to learn that what he really said was this, in a sermon two months before his death, speculating on what his eulogy might sound like:

“If you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter.”

Ahh! Now that’s the Rev. Martin Luther King I remember! Unfortunately, it’s not the one future generations of America will know, because a false quote, mischaracterizing his meaning and his character, is immortalized in stone on the National Mall. Continue reading →

Historical Theft at the King Memorial

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Rev. Theodore Parker

The new Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial is not just the King-in-Carbonite monolith that has caused so much controversy. There is much more to the National Mall’s latest addition, including inscriptions in marble of quotes from the martyred civil rights leader’s writings and speeches. There are more than a dozen examples of his oratory, a quotation from King’s 1963 “Letter From a Birmingham Jail,” and an excerpt from King’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in 1964.

Among them, this:

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

But Rev. King didn’t say it. Theodore Parker, an influential and eloquent Boston minister and abolitionist, did. King never pretended otherwise; it was one of his favorite quotes, and he used it often, but he usually credited its originator. Continue reading →