U.S. Society

Easiest Ethics Quiz Ever: Which Rationalizations Are Rep. Santos Using To Defend Himself?

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

This was so predictable it’s almost funny. Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.), one of the most slimy and unqualified members of Congress in U.S. history, is about to be expelled after an epic Ethics Committee report on his myriad crimes and ethical lapses.

The 56-page report said the panel’s bipartisan investigation found a “complex web of unlawful activity involving Representative Santos’ campaign, personal, and business finances.” The committee’s investigation found that Santos had committed multiple frauds and thefts from his campaign while falsifying campaign and personal finance reports. This is all on top of the nearly two dozen federal criminal charges that Santos faces from two indictments, including wire fraud, money laundering and theft of public funds. And, of course, it has long been established that virtually his entire resume was fiction.

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The DEI Debates: Appeals To Aristotle

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Recently, I read an argument from a conservative pundit that Aristotle perfectly summed up why the “diversity/equity/inclusion” movement (fad, cant, scheme) is foolish and destructive. Primarily the author’s approach was to appeal to the authority of the philosopher, who lived in ancient Greece about 2,500 years ago. Aristotle is one of handful of amazing human beings, like Shakespeare, Leonardo Da Vinci and Ben Franklin, who seem to have been visitors from another planet, so freakishly talented and astute were they for their times, indeed any times. If you are going to use the Appeal to Authority fallacy as the foundation of your arguments, it is certainly an optimum strategy to employ an authority who was much smarter than you or anyone you could possibly argue with.

Indeed, Tottie (his friends called him “Tottie”) did warn about the perils of too much diversity of culture and language in a democracy like the one he lived in. The likely consequences of unassimilated immigration were, he concluded, dire:

“Heterogeneity of stocks may lead to faction – at any rate until they have had time to assimilate. A city cannot be constituted from any chance collection of people, or in any chance period of time. Most of the cities which have admitted settlers, either at the time of their foundation or later, have been troubled by faction. For example, the Achaeans joined with settlers from Troezen in founding Sybaris, but expelled them when their own numbers increased; and this involved their city in a curse. At Thurii the Sybarites quarreled with the other settlers who had joined them in its colonization; they demanded special privileges, on the ground that they were the owners of the territory, and were driven out of the colony. At Byzantium the later settlers were detected in a conspiracy against the original colonists, and were expelled by force; and a similar expulsion befell the exiles from Chios who were admitted to Antissa by the original colonists. At Zancle, on the other hand, the original colonists were themselves expelled by the Samians whom they admitted. At Apollonia, on the Black Sea, factional conflict was caused by the introduction of new settlers; at Syracuse the conferring of civic rights on aliens and mercenaries, at the end of the period of the tyrants, led to sedition and civil war; and at Amphipolis the original citizens, after admitting Chalcidian colonists, were nearly all expelled by the colonists they had admitted….”

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Friday Open Forum, Late Edition…

/ Jack Marshall / 37 Comments

I’m sorry! The Thanksgiving/ 43rd wedding anniversary disruption of yesterday threw off my Friday-dar, and I only just now realized that I owe readers an open forum. Judging from the activity on Ethics Alarms the past two days, it’s going to be a sparsely attended event, but you all have surprised me before.

Boomerang! The Unethical Law New York Passed To Get Donald Trump Just Nailed NYC’s Black, Democrat Mayor!

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

If anything rates a Nelson, this does.

Back in May, I posted an Ethics Quiz asking if the Adult Survivors Act signed into law by Gov. Kathy Hochul in 2022 to suck up to #MeToo voters was ethical. It provides a one-year window for people (aka women) to bring lawsuits over alleged sexual assaults occurring years or decades ago. Now a #MeToo law suit against New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been filed in the New York Supreme Court just before the law’s grace period expires today.

I wrote,

It was and is a blatantly political measure, pandering to the #MeToo crowd, which itself is deeply conflicted and corrupt. Now bad, bad men like Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby and…surprise! Donald Trump, can be sued during a convenient one year window no matter how long ago their alleged sexual misconduct took place, or how blurry memories of the details may be. Never mind that the protection against unfair sexual assault and sexual harassment lawsuits based on accusations that only surface when the accuser calculates that there are forces at play in society (like “Believe all woman”) making a victory likely should be available to all citizens. Never mind that such late-hit lawsuits rely on emotion and politics as much as evidence…

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Something To Be Thankful For: Transmania In Women’s Sports Is Finally Reaching Its Tipping Point

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Little by little, bit by bit, this insanity is being exposed and opposed…

Item: The International Cricket Council this week barred transgender women from competing against biological females. The organization says the “new gender eligibility regulation” is intended to protect the integrity of women’s cricket and was established in the name of safety.

Item: Mid Vermont Christian School is suing after it was barred from all athletic competitions when the team refused to play against a Long Trail girls high school basketball team that had a (big and strong) biological male on their team earlier this year. The Christian school’s complaint alleges that it was “irreparably harmed by being denied participation” and “losing out on playing competitive sports as well as academic competitions.” Ethics Alarms designated the team an Ethics Hero here.

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How Can A Cheater Make Amends For A 50-Year-Old Double-Cross?

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

He can’t.

Next question!

Well, let me expand on that a bit. The Ethicist received this query from someone with a guilty conscience:

“I’m from a West African country, and I moved to the United States to attend graduate school. I am a recipient of two academic scholarships, sponsored by the local and federal governments of my birth country. The paperwork I signed before departing for the United States specifically stated that, on completing my studies, I would return to assume a government post commensurate with my academic accomplishments and professional experience. [Instead of following through on this commitment] I stayed, became a naturalized citizen, raised a family, held several academic and administrative positions in the United States and retired in the thick of the pandemic.

I had long concluded that my research activities — e.g., publishing peer-reviewed research in books and journals, reviewing research proposals and doctoral theses, presenting conference papers and giving workshops — could serve as an acceptable proxy for returning to my birth country after graduation by contributing directly to its economy and well-being. Now I am increasingly concerned about such a justification, particularly in the absence of data that my academic products had any measurable impact on government policymaking. How do I make taxpayers in my home country whole, following a robust government investment in my master’s and doctoral education?”

The Ethicist, being more diplomatic than I and having to fill his column, says, “I’d urge you to turn your gnawing guilt into something of genuine value.” His suggestions: “In this age of Zoom, would you be able to provide expertise as a consultant to worthwhile development projects in your home country? Is there a charitable venture there that you could help raise money for? Could you help create a partnership between a research institution in this country and that one? Could you serve as a mentor to students or young professionals there?” Prof. Appiah also muses, “One way to think about what you owe is to ask what the current value of the money would have been if it had been a loan, assuming a modest percentage of interest for intervening years. You could consider spending that much on projects in your country of origin over the next few years. But I doubt you could afford to do it.”

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What Do You Conclude From This Woman’s Head-Exploding Rant?

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Trust me, I know this thing painful to watch all the way through, but please do it, and then reflect with me upon what this ridiculous person’s monologue portends. Her name is Savrienna Abrre, and she is now residing in Canada, as she tells us repeatedly, compelling the response, “GOOD!” That’s one less vote for, oh, I don’t know, Robert Kennedy Jr, or maybe Woody Woodpecker.

Savrienna is the kind of person, apparently, who becomes a social media star, which is to say, she’s a narcissistic cretin. It does take some kind of talent to babble on like she does so assaultively and continuously, smiling like a zany and never thinking, “Wow, like, I’m sounding like a complete idiot!,” but I don’t know what that talent is called. I am willing to lay odds that she is courting the same fate at the hands of her husband as the subject of this limerick by the late, great Edward Gory:

There was a young woman whose stammer

Was atrocious, and so was her grammar.

But they were not improved

When her husband was moved

To bash in her teeth with a hammer…

Savrienna blames the American public school system. As I am a constant critic of that institution, aka, “smoldering ruin,” you might think that I sympathize with her, but I do not in the least. She is an incurious fool of stunning intellectual laziness, whose choice of friends and associates has reflected her shallowness.

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How DEI Is Systemic Racism: A Case Study

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion ideology essentially addresses “systemic racism” by enforcing and advocating systemic racism. It would be difficult to envision a scenario that better illustrates this than the scandal now being revealed at the University of Washington, where the Department of Psychology hired a black candidate for a professor position despite the hiring committee’s assessment that an Asian applicant and a white one had superior qualifications, with the white candidate rated the strongest of the group.

The decision violated a university policy barring discrimination on the basis of race and sex, as well as the law banning affirmative action practices—that is, racial discrimination for “good” reasons— in the state of Washington. An investigation was launched after a whistleblower complained about the process, and the resulting report by the university’s Complaint Investigation & Resolution Office found that the psychology department distorted its hiring process to give the black applicant an assistant professor’s position titled “Diversity in Development,” though it had ranked a white academic first out of 84 applicants.

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The Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: Yeah, Thanks Lincoln Center, But I Think I’ll Skip “Jungle Book Reimagined”

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Surely there are still some live theater production that are not arm-twusting agitprop and woke propaganda. Surely.

The production is described on the Lincoln Center website as a “rethinking of the Rudyard Kipling classic ‘The Jungle Book'” that “updates the original’s colonizer-centric perspective.” More specifically, the New York Times review tells us,

“Instead of a boy raised by wolves, Mowgli is a refugee girl separated from her family as sea levels surge. She is adopted by animals who have formed a peaceable kingdom in a city that humans have left behind. Many familiar characters appear, slightly altered. Baloo the bear is now a bear who was forced to dance by humans before escaping the humiliation. The Bandar-log monkeys are now former lab specimens, still traumatized by being experimented on but longing to replace their former masters. Kaa the python is dangerous and hypnotizing but also hung up on memories of captivity in a zoo.”

Gee-what-fun. Can a Disney version be far behind?

The Great Stupid, Child Abuse Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Guess why the Muirlands Middle School student above was suspended and barred from attending future sporting events in the La Jolla school district. Yes, a hysterical school administrator, almost certainly pushed by racial-grievance obsessed CRT fanatics, said that the boy wore “blackface” at a school football game. The disciplinary notice describes the student, only identified as “J.A.” as engaging in serious misconduct because he “painted his face black at a football game” making the incident an instance of “Offensive comment, intent to harm.” 

That’s odd; I’ve studied blackface and its history, and I don’t recall any minstrel shows with performers painting only half their faces black. By that standard, Star Trek was using blackface in this episode…

…which was bad enough as it was.

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