Religion and Philosophy

Ethics Dunces: Half of the U.S.A.

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

“Who’s Plato?”

According to a recent  Pew poll, almost half of the U.S. is still unaware of last week’s landmark Supreme Court decision upholding the Affordable Care Act, limiting Congress’s power to control private choices through reliance on the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, and flagging the Democrat deceit in passing a substantial tax on the middle class while hiding the fact in public and political discourse. 15% of the public must have been watching Fox and CNN the way listeners of Orson Welles “The War of the Worlds” listened to the 1938 radio broadcast, turning the dial before misinformation was clarified. These trusting or lazy souls still think the ACA was over-turned. This is, admittedly, better than thinking the world has been conquered by Martians.

The poll means that as we head into a watershed election that challenges the nation to make hard choices about its future course in tax policy, addressing the debt and deficit, foreign policy, commitment to national defense, entitlement reform, immigration, education, infrastructure renewal, employment, financial regulation, and equally vital matters that could have a decisive impact on America’s success, stability and even survival, one half of the public lack the interest and initiative to  stay current with crucial national developments. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Nomination For Enshrinement in the Hall Of Bad Ethics Ideas: A Hippocratic Oath For Scientists”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Zoebrain, the Aussie researcher who has enlightened many Ethics Alarms debates, provides delicious perspective to the post regarding scientific ethics, specifically regarding the question of whether scientists can or should pledge, like doctors, to “do no harm.”

Here is her Comment of the Day to Nomination For Enshrinement in the Hall Of Bad Ethics Ideas: A Hippocratic Oath For Scientists:

“Tell the truth, the whole truth – but possibly not nothing but the truth, as long as any opinion is unmistakably marked as such. Correct your past mistakes as you find them. Also be prepared to accept responsibility for the moral consequences of the power you provide to others being misused. Unless you feel it right to give them the power, you must accept personal responsibility and so withhold it. That’s not a Scientific sin, it’s a personal one.

“Providing the sharpest possible scalpel to a surgeon is one thing. Providing it to a vivisectionist of “untermenschen” another. Providing it as a toy for a 6-month-old baby yet another.

“The only scientific sins are knowing falsification of results, and omitting contradictory evidence. But scientists have responsibilities as humans too.

“Please have a listen to this song [ by musical satirist/scholar Tom Lehrer’s “Werner Von Braun,” about the amoral Nazi-turned-U.S. rocket-scientist.]:

Continue reading →

The Homophobic Counselor, the Ethical Bigot, and the One-Legged Tarzan

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

Jennifer Keeton was expelled from the graduate program at Georgia’s Augusta State University in 2010 because her Christian religious convictions dictate that homosexuality is sinful and voluntary conduct, rather than an innate sexual orientation. A court upheld the school’s right to expel her on the basis that her beliefs made it impossible for her to meet their counseling standards, which the court ruled were neutral, and did not discriminate against her speech or religion.

The case may raise legitimate constitutional issues. The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), a conservative legal group, and Constitutional Law professor Eugene Volokh (of Volokh Conspiracy fame) are assisting Keaton as she attempts to get reinstated. Ethically, however, I don’t think she has a leg to stand on.
In fact, I think her position resembles the old Dudley Moore-Peter Cook comedy routine where Moore is one-legged amputee who cries foul at being “discriminated against” by a film director who refuses to consider him for the role of Tarzan:

Similarly, how can a counselor claim to be able to provide full and competent services when her attitude toward gays dictates an unsympathetic, hostile and scientifically discredited point of view? Continue reading →

The Ethics of Bloomberg’s Soft Drink Ban

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

“It’s a serious problem.”

“Something needs to be done.”

“This is a public health issue.”

The media defenses of New York Mayor Bloomberg’s controversial decision to ban the sale of large soft drink servings in New York City, and Bloomberg’s defense as well, set up a classic utilitarian argument for a government intrusion into personal choice and lifestyle. It is, simply, that the ends justify the means, and as we all know, sometimes they do.

Sometimes, however, those means sacrifice too much: lives, dignity, fairness, liberty, fun. Sometimes employing those means require crossing lines that have not been crossed before, opening the door to more and greater sacrifices that even advocates of the particular measure would find objectionable and wrong. This leads to the slippery slope dilemma, and invokes absolutism. Some things must never be considered as just means, no matter what the ends being sought may be. Immanuel Kant’s philosophy of absolutism declared that it was always wrong to use human beings against their wills to solve problems, no matter how great the problems are. The Declaration of Independence holds that a human being’s rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness must never be breached by government. Continue reading →

Executing an Insane Killer: a Cynical Ethics Controversy

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

Let’s me get this straight: this is only a “macabre spectacle” if the guy strapped down to be poisoned isn’t crazy. Right?

In the case of Steven Staley, Texas has itself one of those periodic ethical/legal conundrums surrounding capital punishment that leave me feeling  cynical, puzzled, and worried that I am missing an important part of my compassion apparatus.

Staley’s problem, or his perhaps stroke of luck, is that he is a little more crazy now than he was when he committed the crimes that placed him on death row. In September 1989, Staley escaped from a Denver prison  and started robbing everything he encountered, looting nine businesses across four states. Finally he hit the Steak and Ale Restaurant in Tarrant County, Texas. Staley and his accomplices gathered the employees at gunpoint and forced the manager to hand over the contents of all the registers and the store safe. He then took the manager into the getaway car as a hostage, and executed him as Staley tried to elude the police. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero Emeritus: Harry Philo (1925-2012)

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Harry Philo: Champion, Lawyer, Inspiration

A great man died last week, and yet unless you are member of his family or law firm, a trial lawyer, or one of the many people he helped over his long career, you probably never heard of him. There is barely a trace of Harry Philo on the Internet; Wikipedia has no page devoted to him, and a Google search turns up next to nothing. (It shows over 22 million links for a search on Kendall Jenner, who is Kim Kardashian’s little sister). Yet Harry Philo was a great man, and one of the things that was great about him was that he didn’t waste a lot of time seeking glory for himself. Continue reading →

On Tolerance, Religious Freedom, and “Ain’t No Homos Gonna Make It To Heaven”

/ Jack Marshall / 45 Comments

It is generally true, as the indignant members of Greensburg, Indiana’s Apostolic Truth Tabernacle Church say, that what they include in their church’s services is nobody’s business, and the fact that the congregation loudly applauded the horrific spectacle of a 3-year-old boy singing the hate anthem, “Ain’t no homos gonna make it to heaven!”would have never bothered a soul if it hadn’t been videorecorded and placed on YouTube. At this point, however, that no longer matters. The cat is out of the bag, the horse has left the barn and the beans are spilled, and now millions of Americans know that this church teaches hate, indoctrinates young and vulnerable children with its poison, and sows the seeds of prejudice and the active deprivation of American citizens of their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Since millions of people know this now, a critical number of them will go out of their way to make life in this country a living hell for members of that church and the church itself by demonstrating at every turn that we don’t want churches like that in America, or people like that in America. They aren’t good for society, they cause positive harm without any compensating benefits, and they need to change their ways or suffer the consequences. And to that I say: Good. Go to it. Continue reading →

How Consequentialism Leads To Bad Ethics: An Illustration

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Tgt passes along this cartoon by Zach Weiner. He knew why I would like it: I am often railing about the misuse of consequentialism, justifying an act as ethical after it has produced desirable results. This fallacy bolsters “the ends justify the means” reasoning and makes every act, even clearly wrongful ones, theoretically redeemable in retrospect, after the results are in (although, of course, all the results are never in. That’s Chaos for you!)  The defense of torture by Bush administration defenders on the grounds that it may have uncovered valuable intelligence is the most recent example. Had the unconstitutional imprisonment of Japanese-American citizens in World War II  prevented some Japanese undercover plot by imbedded traitors, undoubtedly that fact would be used to justify an unjustifiable and disgraceful breach of American law and values. Looking backward creates this ethical distortion.

It is equally infuriating, to me at least, when good and ethical decisions are judged, usually by the media or by political pundits, as “wrong” or ” mistakes” because of bad results that could not have been foreseen when the decision was made or the act undertaken.

Weiner’s cartoon nicely marks the logical flaws in backward ethics, for those for whom the word “backward” is an insufficient clue.

___________________________________________

Spark and Pointer: tgt

Source: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at  jamproethics@verizon.net.

 

Ethics Quote of the Week: Michael Fumento

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

“As a conservative, I disagree with the political opinions of liberals. But to me, a verbal assault indicates insecurity and weakness on the part of the assaulter, as in “Is that the best they can do?” This playground bullying – the name-calling, the screaming, the horrible accusations – all are intended to stifle debate, the very lifeblood of a democracy.”

—-Michael Fumento, writing powerfully in Salon about the increasingly viscous rhetoric of too many conservatives, and how it has left him estranged from his own political philosophy.

He writes,

“Civility and respect for order – nay, demand for order – have always been tenets of conservatism. The most prominent work of history’s most prominent conservative, Edmund Burke, was a reaction to the anger and hatred that swept France during the revolution. It would eventually rip the country apart and plunge all of Europe into decades of war. Such is the rotted fruit of mass-produced hate and rage. Burke, not incidentally, was a true Tea Party supporter, risking everything as a member of Parliament to support the rebellion in the United States.

“All of today’s right-wing darlings got there by mastering what Burke feared most: screaming “J’accuse! J’accuse!” Turning people against each other. Taking seeds of fear, anger and hatred and planting them to grow a new crop.”

You can read his whole essay, “My break with the extreme right” in Salon, here.

_____________________________________________

Pointer: Volokh Conspiracy

Source: Salon

Graphic: Sleepless heretic

Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at  jamproethics@verizon.net.

Racism, the Media, and Reverend Wright Distortions

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

He’s b-a-a-a-a-a-c-k! (Sort of….)

This has been happening to me a lot lately. I see a political story with ethical implications, and decide to pass. I think, “Nah, this is another ‘the news media is in the tank for Obama story”—it’s pretty obvious; I don’t need to go there.” Then the story starts to churn, the news media, left and right, distorts it thoroughly through spin and stupidity, and pretty soon I can’t stand it any more.

The controversy over a proposed, and rejected, Super-Pac ad blitz focusing on the President’s controversial relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright—demagogue, radical, racist—began when a leaked copy of a proposal prepared for conservative billionaire Joe Ricketts was leaked to the New York Times. The Times’ decision to put the proposal on its front page was sadly typical, and irresponsible. We don’t what wacky proposals circulate in the back rooms of both parties and their allies, and I don’t see why we would want to know, unless, as in this case, the objective was to suggest a series of things that aren’t true. Prime among them was that the Romney campaign was preparing to mount a full-bore attack on the President’s character. Nothing has suggested that, except the Times, whose story forced the presumed GOP nominee to apologize for a mode of attack 1) he had nothing to do with and 2) had never been approved anyway.

This was unfair, slanted and biased conduct by the Times, and the point at which I decided, “Oh, heck, we’ll be seeing the Times and the Washington Post, not to mention the broadcast media, pulling this until November. People either will recognize it for the partisan bias  it is, or they won’t.”

Then came Carol Costello on a typical morning for CNN, when she or the regular morning host Soledad O’Brien spend every AM sneering at Republicans and looking at the camera all dewy-eyed whenever President Obama’s name comes up. Costello, who I have concluded sets my teeth on edge even worse than the smug O’Brien, began her day with this: “Today’s question: Will racial politics work in 2012?” Continue reading →