Go into the light…all are welcome.
Open Forum!
Go into the light…all are welcome.
U.S. Society
Stop Hanging On!
Guest Post By James Rogers
Why are we hanging onto a relationship for which we should be actively separating ourselves?
Is it ethical to cling to something you know is more than dead, when it is demonstrably existentially dangerous?
What is this relationship that is so toxic? The intact 50 states comprising the United States. My proposition is: We must separate from states, leaders and groups actively attempting to destroy the U.S. Constitution and American culture before there is no Constitution left to protect us and a culture seeking to exterminate us.
The states themselves are rather obvious: California, New Mexico, Illinois, New York, Vermont, Connecticut, Washington, Delaware, New Jersey, Minnesota, and distinct portions of other states like western Oregon, northern and eastern Virginia, eastern Pennsylvania, southern lower Michigan, southeastern Wisconsin, plus the District of Columbia.
The leaders can be broadly described as Democratic Socialists, so-called democracy advocates, cultural cancers such as the “gender affirming care” and abortion-on-demand advocates. The names on this list are long, but they all subscribe to the Obama-imagined fundamental transformation of the US against those clinging to the Constitution, God and guns.
They have proven via political violence, poisonous policies, and social canceling that we are their targets. COVID policies experimentally divided the country into individualists and collectivists. Obedience was the metric / the crux of COVID policy. Even now, after proof being provided of the malicious nature of government policies during the period, the true believers call out individualists as deniers. Similarly issues like DEI, puberty blockers, climate change, court packing, electoral college elimination, unfettered immigration, no voter ID, history rewrites, endless lawfare, judicial overreach and trans activism are alive and very well among the places and people described above. Nearly everything they believe is intentionally malicious, not real, or so grossly exaggerated it is ludicrous.
The United States is not united. To expect us to somehow become united again is a fantasy. And yet our traditional notion of America of 50 United States persists…as we fervently hope this will go away once people come to their senses. These people and policies are not rational, nor will they ever be. Stop the delusion.
The more we cling to the self-deception the more opportunity those seeking to unravel the culture have to do terrible things, endangering everything we believe to be right, valuable, and sustainable as a society.
In the original colonies the sentiment was join or die. Now we must separate ourselves to survive and begin to thrive again in a society worth keeping.
The Case of the Bondage-Promoting Congressional Candidate
Christoper Gallant, 37, is an openly gay military pilot, former air traffic controller and volunteer firefighter who is running against Rep. Nick LaLota, who represents New York’s First District, covering eastern Suffolk County. Photos “surfaced,” as they like to say, showing Gallant in an explicit ad campaign modeling leather bondage gear. In some of the photos he appears to be doing…stuff…with another man.
The photos originally appeared on the site of a bondage apparel company called Mr. S Leather about 15 or 16 years ago. In response to the photos entering the campaign conversation, Gallant’s lawyer said that the photographs “were taken during a private, consensual photo session involving Chris and his then-partner, with whom he was in a committed four-year relationship. Chris was also friends with the owner of Mr. S Leather, and the shoot was intended to be fun and personal, with the understanding that Mr. S could use select images in connection with certain products” and that Gallant “remains fully committed to his campaign and to earning the trust of the people he seeks to represent.”
Right. About that trust thingy—oh! I forgot to mention that Gallant is the Democratic Congressional candidate in the race! Did I have to?
“This is the Democratic congressional candidate for CD1,” the local GOP wrote on Facebook above the smaller photo above. “Is this who you want to represent us in Washington DC?” That’s certainly a fair question. I hold that there is an equivalent of EA’s recently revisited Naked Teacher Principle in play here, though I’m not sure what I would call it. A candidate who has allowed himself to be photographed like that gets no sympathy from me if that choice eventually costs him a job teaching in a public school, and the standards of character and role model fitness for a member of Congress should be a higher bar than the one required of teachers. Sadly, considering the current Congress, that is obviously not the case.
Ethics Hero: Brit Hume
Today is the 30th anniversary of the debut of Fox News, a day that will live in infamy for the Totalitarian Left, much as Elon Musk’s rescue of Twitter is reviled. Americans under the age of about 50 never reflect upon what broadcast news was like before October 7, 1996, and most of them can’t imagine how crucial the conservative news network has been to our democracy.
The emergence of Fox News has had some unfortunate and unanticipated consequences too, but those who argue that the United States, its public, culture and society would be better off with no TV news options other than the liberal Democrat monopoly of reporting and opinions, which was the state of the medium before Rupert Murdoch’s daring innovation, is revealing their own bias.
The revolution may well have failed without Brit Hume, so today seems like an appropriate time to honor him. Hume started his career in national broadcast news with ABC—you know, the company that now calls “The View” a news program. In 1989, he became ABC’s chief White House correspondent and was prominent in that role until he quit in 1996 to join the new rebel network. A thorough professional, a recognizable face and a respected name, he instantly gave credibility and visibility to the Roger Ailes-led project.
Final Ethics Words On The Recent Banned Commenter Wars…
Over the weekend and already this morning, this nice, peaceful ethics blog was the victim of harassment and attack from an embittered banned commenter. It’s far from the first time this has happened since 2009, when EA first spread its wings, but this one was unique in its persistence and idiocy. What kind of person spends his or her valuable time writing long, mostly coherent screeds to post where 1) they aren’t welcome and 2) where they will be dispatched to Spam Hell the second the proprietor, me, sees them? You can answer that question as well as I can, but the inescapable conclusion is that such conduct validates my judgment in banning them in the first place. Ethical people don’t act like that. Rational people don’t act like that. Ethics Alarms is for ethical, rational, and also smart people. For “Cassandra’s AI Agent,” one out of three isn’t good enough, and I’m starting to have doubts about the “smart” part.
[Added: One of the ways this conduct is indefensibly unethical is that all the spammed comments from CAA clogged my spam folder and caused me to miss James Flood’s constructive comment last night on this post. I just got it up.]
Thanks to Steve Witherspoon, I finally learned how WordPress lets a blogger block a commenter. It would have been nice if WordPress itself made this information conveniently available or obvious: it’s buried several layers deep on my “Dashboard.” Oh, I’m sure there was a video with the information made available to me at some point many years ago. Silly me—I assumed that visitors to an ethics blog would respect the host’s rules, orders and requests, including the order to stay out of the comment threads. Most have, in fact, usually after an angry email or a single last word. Not “Cassandra,” however, and not the previous comment-bombing champ,”A Friend.”
The device of pretending to be a new commenter using a new email address is particularly obnoxious. “Cassandra’s AI Agent” is also in violation of EA rules by not sending me the real name behind the screen name. Come to think of it, so are many of you regular commenters out there: shame on you, and shame on me, for I have been lax in enforcing this requirement. If I had, we wouldn’t be debating whether CAA is Alizia Tyler or not. (I still vote “no.”)
But before we wave goodby to this pompous asshole, let me clarify, for the record, the delusions that seemingly led to the rage-fest. Many of them appear somewhere in the Comment Policies linked on the Home Page, and every aspiring commenter is obligated to read them. Nevertheless, I’ll risk being redundant.
Before The Angry Left Completely Moves On From Christa Pike…[Corrected]
The hits just keep on coming for the “Women are the victims of the patriarchy so let’s go socialist!” crowd. First we had the mother who murdered her three children (if women could just murder them before they were born, this would never happen!). That was a really good one, but its path to intersectionalism was complicated when the hold-out juror turned out to be black. Then, as usual, the Axis decided to take revenge by doxxing him, the social media mob decided to mug him, and the Axis media started lying.
Never mind! To the rescue came Tennessee, which botched the lethal injection that was supposed to kill a woman who had been on Death Row for decades. Other convicted murderers have had their lethal injections fail, but not women, and, most important of all, not before mid-terms. Christa Pike has been another toxic empathy bonanza for progressives, but just as it was really getting rolling, another she said-they said campus rape scandal burst into the headlines. “Jane Doe” is a much more appealing alleged victim to cheer despite the strong likelihood that she is setting out to (further) wreck the lives of young men whose primary offense may have been that they accepted her drunken and drugged offer of “free pussy.” Interestingly, every lawyer I’ve asked so far has agreed with me that it’s likely that the whole ethics train wreck was launched by an enterprising attorney who told “Jane,” “You know, if you sue, Cornell will probably just settle to avoid the bad publicity. You’ll get millions and I’ll get a third! What’s not to like? As for those guys you’ll have to accuse, fuck ’em. Oh, right! You already did!”
Ethics Snippets on “The Day of the Troll”
Today I’m having to waste time I could be using to finish Part 2 of this post, spamming the infantile rants of a banned commenter who is Big Mad that my tolerance for his/her/its bigotry finally ran out.
Well, here are some items I won’t have time to write full posts on…
1. Unethical (and idiotic) Sunny Hostin Quote of the Week. The lawyer on “The View” who thinks eclipses are proof of climate change actually said, “Had Biden just stayed in the White House and said, ‘I’m not gonna debate this man because he’s morally bankrupt,’ Biden might be the President today.”
And wouldn’t that have been grand! If only the cover-up of Biden’s dementia had been more effective…
2. A “Fix the problem” tale from the firehouse. The firehouse on my street, in a Northern Virginia neighborhood where everyone seems to own a dog (or three) has been putting out boxes of dog biscuits for the canines walking by to enjoy for more than a decade. There was even a special plastic box and a smaller one labeled “Back Up Biscuit Box.” My dog looks forward to his 9:30 pm jaunt to the Biscuit Box, but four nights ago both boxes and any sign of the red cardboard boxes had vanished. Spuds looked at me as if it was my fault. The next night, to be safe, I hid three biscuits in my pants pocket just in case, and sure enough, the firehouse had nothing. I fooled Spuds into thinking the treats had come from the mailbox on a nearby wall. On the third night, I had typed a letter to the firefighters and deposited it in the mailbox while again feigning biscuit retrieval. I explained what an excellent community relations gesture the dog biscuits were and how much my neighbors appreciated it. I also explained how much the ritual of walking to the firehouse brightened my sweet dog’s day. I urged them to reconsider the decision to end the tradition. Whatever it cost, I wrote, it was worth the expense to bring the community together, establish trust and affection for the firefighters, and make dozens of dogs happy. I signed my name, occupation, and address.
The biscuits were back the next night.
The Cornell Frat Rape Ethics Train Wreck, Part I
I was first made aware of the sudden re-emergence of a 2024 gang rape allegation as a media and social media obsession when a friend who was raped began posting furiously about the story on Facebook. A knee-jerk progressive, she is certain that there was a cover-up at Cornell and that the alleged victim is telling the truth, because all women must be believed.
I don’t know what really happened at the Chi Phi fraternity on a fateful October night in 2024, and neither do you, and neither does my friend. Anyone who presumes they do know based on a partisan or ideological bias has elected to board the newly launched Cornell Frat Rape Ethics Train Wreck in the dining car. Shame on them.
“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it” is having a bad year—look at the sudden resurgence of anti-Semitism here—and fraternity rape hysteria should be viewed with particular skepticism. The infamous Duke Lacrosse case occurred in 2006 and my commentary was lost when the old Ethics Scoreboard left the building, but it is still a tag on Ethics Alarms, with this the most directly relevant post. The imaginary gang rape that disgraced Rolling Stone was extensively covered here, however, as you can see. In 2014, “Rolling Stone” reporter Sabrina Erdly wrote a feature about an imaginary co-ed named “Jackie” being gang raped at a University of Virginia fraternity party. UVA president Teresa A. Sullivan, a good little feminist, suspended all fraternities with no actual evidence of wrongdoing. But you know, men are pigs, women are always the victims, and one must always believe all women, even imaginary ones (there was no “Jackie”) when they cry “Rape!”
Ethics Alarms has analyzed several instances of false rape claims as well as the cynical #MeToo fad, which, like the Cornell episode was weaponized by the Left for political gain. The hysteria got many sexual predators their just desserts, and also amassed many unjustly maligned male victims. I don’t know what happened at Cornell, but I do know that the case has already been co-opted by Democrats to inflame a core constituency, angry white progressive women convinced that the U.S. is an oppressive patriarchy that would have the culture emulating “A Handmaiden’s Tale” if it had its way. There’s an election approaching, after all. Hence the emergence of a mother who murdered her three children as the object of sympathy.
Here are what I consider salient facts based on what we do know:
Friday Open Forum, Plus An Addendum to the Zionism Post and a King’s Pass Exception
I had to cut it out of the last post (which is on the long side), but I was going to remind everyone or inform those who never knew that General George S. Patton was a vocal anti-Semite as well as a racist. He loved fighting anyone, but he made it clear in private conversations and letters that he thought we should have been fighting against the Russians with the Nazis. The Holocaust didn’t trouble him much. This charming feature was left out of the acclaimed movie starring George C. Scott as the batty–but effective!—World War II general.
My father, who fought under Patton at the Battle of the Bulge, detested the man primarily for his slapping of two (not just one, as portrayed in the movie) soldiers suffering from battle fatigue, or as we call it now, post-traumatic stress. Eisenhower didn’t like Patton either, and was very close to relieving him of command permanently , but ultimately decided that a lesser punishment was prudent because Patton was such a talented field general. (The Germans couldn’t understand why merely slapping a soldier would ever lead the Americans to sideline such a successful commander. Of course they couldn’t.) Thus the handling of Patton represents the Ethics Incompleteness Theorem regarding “The King’s Pass,” the exception that proves the rule (because all rules have exceptions).
Yet I wonder how much security Jewish people got from the knowledge that one of the key warriors who defeated the perpetrators of the Holocaust essentially agreed with Hitler regarding them.
Over to you, Clarence…
“The Unabomber Was Right”#11: Phone Wars
Lately that most familiar of technological marvels, the telephone, has been making me crazy and my life miserable almost daily because of abuse, misuse, and overuse.
Let me count the ways, as Elizabeth Barrett Browning would say:
1. I just saw an allegedly hilarious TV add about “multi-processing” showing people walking into poles, tripping over obstacles and falling into trash cans while walking in public while either staring at a smart phone screen or chatting away using the speaker. I don’t even recall the product (Effective ad there, guys!), but it did tick me off. it’s not a funny phenomenon. Just yesterday, and asshole walking along staring at his phone nearly collided with me and Spuds, startling both of us, and I had to fling all of my weight against the leash from keeping my protective dog from biting the asshole’s face off—which he deserved, but my dog would be the one blamed. One woman nearly did the same thing a few weeks ago jogging while looking at her phone. People who do this are inconsiderate, reckless and self-absorbed fools, and dangerous as well. Yet such conduct is rapidly becoming a social norm. Last week, also while walking Spuds, I noted that eight straight pedestrians I encountered including three dog-walkers, one mother pushing a toddler in a stroller and three teens were all proceeding while staring at a phone screen or talking into a phone held in front of them. They are effectively cutting off the world while they are in the world, furthering the isolation of humanity, and increasing the alienation of American from each other. It is uncivil—rude—as well. When ethics fails law takes over (and usually makes a mess of things), so I am not advocating a law, but social disapproval, beginning with parents telling their kids not to do this would be a nice start.
2. I recently had to call the D.C. Office of Corporate Registration (or whatever it’s called) to eliminate my still-born law firm, BernsteinMarshall, PLLC. Screwed up beyond belief like everything else in the District, the “convenient website” had no link for ending a company, so I had to call the office. The pert, friendly, chatterbox of a recording went on for ten minutes telling me all the things the office could do for me, then spent another five telling me about all the options (“which may have changed”), then after I pushed one button, started down another list of topics while I screamed, “SHUT UP!!!!!” like Michael Palin in the Monty Python Torremolinos” travel agent skit.
