I had not encountered “The Dignity Index” before today. You can imagine why it would catch my interest, as Ethics Alarms has presented several such scales, including The Knight Scale, The Apology Scale, The Protest Ethics Check List, and others.

The Dignity Index is the creation of UNITE, an organization founded in 2018 “to find ways to help ease divisions in the country.” The Index, say its creators, is based on these contentions:

• “Contempt causes division; dignity eases division.”
• “If we put a spotlight on dignity and contempt, we will use more dignity and less contempt.”
• “If we show Americans how they can help ease our divisions, they will jump on it.”

The Index was publicized in Utah during the 2022 mid-term elections, with UNITE scoring political speech with the numerical values on each level. “The Index was seen as reliable, fair, and intuitive,” we are told. By whom? Its creators? The score-keepers? “Voters from opposite ends of the spectrum were able to agree on scores” UNITE says. All voters? Some voters? (I am suspicious of that kind of vague validation.) “The media covered the Index eagerly on TV, newspapers, and radio.” I bet they did.  

UNITE says that it has identified three findings that “give us confidence the Index”:

Continue reading →

Well, having posted one brief ethics note not typically worthy of a full post, here are some more that just popped up…

1. On season two of “Broadchurch,” a quirky Netflix British drama that ran three seasons, there is an exchange in which a criminal defense attorney (that is, a barrister) in an intense and controversial trial excoriates her assistant by saying, “If you were doing your job, we’d have a chance at getting our client off!”

That is unethical and a false characterization of the defense’s job. It is also, I fear, what most people think the defense is trying to do.

A defense attorney’s job in a criminal trial is to ensure that the prosecution proves the defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in the assessment of the jury. It is not to get a guilty criminal “off.” It’s a subtle distinction but a crucial one. Every defendant deserves a fair trial, which means a competent, vigorous defense, so that if he or she is ultimately found guilty, due process has been served.

The defense attorney’s mission is to make the prosecution fulfill its mission. When the prosecution’s argument fails because the defense demonstrated that the case wasn’t clearly presented or strong enough, that is entirely the prosecution’s fault. If, despite a vigorous and zealous defense a defendant is convicted by a competent jury, the ethical defense attorney should feel satisfied. An attorney who is elated that she got a guilty defendant “off” is in the wrong profession. She did her job, but the prosecution didn’t, and the result, while the right one, is nothing to celebrate.

Continue reading →

The lab where I go to get my bloodwork, Sunrise Labs in Arlington, Virginia on Carlin Springs Road, has a spare, gray waiting room. There is only a single decoration: a framed color photograph of gravestones.

I kid you not, as Jack Paar used to say.

I have referenced the parable of “The Dishonest Waiter” here several times after first encountering it in the film, “Denial.” The point is that when a waiter gives you the wrong change it can be presumed to be a simple innocent mistake, but when all of the waiter’s “mistakes” go in one direction, to his own financial benefit, one can no longer give such a waiter the benefit of the doubt: he’s dishonest, and those weren’t mistakes. Ethics Alarms finds the Axis news media as a perfect equivalent of the Dishonest Waiter now: all of their “mistakes” go to the disadvantage of Donald Trump and his party. Those who insist, “Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias,” I fear, are as dishonest as the metaphorical waiter.

Our Dishonest Waiters has been a busy bee lately. A few examples among many more…

Continue reading →

Governor J.B. Pritzker attacked school choice and said its supporters "can F*CK ALL THE WAY OFF."

He went to private school.
He sent his kids to private school. pic.twitter.com/YKusZRFN9k

— Corey A. DeAngelis, school choice evangelist (@DeAngelisCorey) November 11, 2025

Imagine: this dishonest, repulsive* man really thinks he has a shot at the White House.

Meanwhile, Gov. Pritzker’s remarks neatly remind people to read Ethics Alarms:

1. Democrats want to make sure that parents have no choice but to submit their children’s vulnerable minds to radical, anti-American propaganda. As discussed here…

2. Here, on October 22, we discussed how prominent Democrats routinely demand that the “little people” eschew conduct that they happily engage in while appearing to see no irony or hypocrisy in their doing so. Of course, this is a hallmark of Communism and socialism, which the current leaders of the Democratic Party are currently promoting. As school choice advocate Corey de Anglelis correctly notes, Pritzker sent his children to private school.

3. “They want to punish teachers for telling the truth.” As debated here, “telling the truth” in our educational institutions means suffocating independent thought with Leftist cant, narratives and propaganda.

4. Here EA recently pondered what the Democratic Party calls “supporting” trans individuals. Of course, there are many posts, over many years, holding that our primary schools schools should not be promoting any sexual orientations or conduct whatsoever.

5. Finding himself devoid of valid arguments, Pritzker follows the current fad of his flailing, tantrum-addicted party, and continues the coarsening of public discourse by resorting to “fuck.”

Boy, Democrats have some terrible, unethical governors! Which do you think is the worst of the batch? J.D. Pritzker (Ill.)? Kathy Hochul (NY)? Tim Walz (Minn.)? Gavin Newsom (Cal.)? Gretchen Witmer (Mich.)?

Tough choice.

__________

* I am not using “repulsive” as an ad hominem insult, but simply making a factual observation. Since the arrival of TV, no credible Presidential candidate has ended up on a ballot who was morbidly obese (like Taft) or whose face could stop a clock (like Lincoln). Running in his party, Pritzker is also handicapped by being white, heterosexual, and male. The guy is deluded.

Another metaphorical shoe dropped in what promises to be a veritable centipede-level shoe shower as the major league sports leagues finally get what they asked for by greedily getting into bed with online gambling interests. Let’s’ count those shoes, shall we?

In this 2023 post, I wrote in part,

The theory is that players make so much money that they won’t be tempted to engage in the addictive activity their own teams are promoting with the general public. It is a stupid, naive and ignorant theory. Rich gamblers don’t gamble for the money. Athletes, moreover, are not generally known for their intellectual acumen, ability to resist temptation, or skill at navigating mixed and contradictory messages.

Sports leagues can’t have it both ways. They can’t make millions off of gambling, and simultaneously insist that players gambling threatens the integrity of the game. If the team owners really cared about the integrity of the game and wanted to avoid the betting and game-fixing scandals that surely are coming (baseball will have a team in Las Vegas next year, and Moe Green is licking his metaphorical chops), it would stick to the policy that sports and gambling is a volatile mixture that must be avoided.

This will not end well. You can bet on it.

Continue reading →

I’m having trouble waking up this morning sufficiently to write a full post, so I’m going to break form and just issue some random observations:

One reason I suspended the tradition here of giving out year-end ethics awards was that “Most Unethical Profession” never changed. It was always a tie between educators and journalists, and both their race to the bottom.. In the post-debacle analyses of Zohran Mandani’s election as mayor, two themes keep surfacing. One is that young college-educated voters strongly favored Mamdani while young non-college grads did not. “It’s almost as if going to college now makes people stupid,” a guest on Fox News said this morning. Yes, graduating from college without learning that communism never works and gets people killed is evidence of a failed educational system. President Trump’s efforts to force universities to eschew progressive indoctrination for actual education is one of the most important and crucial aspects of his Presidency. Regarding our “enemy of the people” news media, Prof. Glenn Reynolds wrote today of Mamdani, “He’s an ignorant, angry leftist, who believes what ignorant, angry leftists always believe. The press should have been pointing this out all along. I mean, the leftist press, but they don’t do this kind of thing to leftists.” Bingo! The biased and unethical educators are making our rising generations stupid and ignorant, and our biased and unethical news media is aiding and abetting by refusing to enlighten them.

***

I sure wish Curmie, the erudite, once open-minded progressive-ish columnist here would shake off his Trump Derangement and return to offer EA readers perspective on issues like the one above. He would be welcomed with open arms. I continue to be amazed at the stuff he posts on social media. Curmie is trapped in the same state of mind as Jimmy Kimmel’s wife (pity her!) who says that she can’t abide being around family members who voted for President Trump.

***

Continue reading →