U.S. Society

When Ethics Alarms Don’t Ring: Fun At Auschwitz!

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

That’s an ice cream stand just outside Poland’s shrine to the victims of the Holocaust, the Auschwitz death camp. Isn’t it nice that tourists there will be able to grab a delicious ice cream cone for refreshment? Now here…

…a woman posed glamorously on the tracks that brought the railroad cars stuffed with captive Jews to be gassed. If I had to wager, I’d say the couple is American. In my various adventures abroad, I wanted to hide my head under a bag many times as I saw American tourists behaving abominably at such locales as Westminster Abbey and the Tower of London. But it isn’t just Americans: my wife’s sister reported that at Pearl Harbor she witnessed smiling Japanese tourists posing by the memorials to the Arizona, the Oklahoma and the Utah.

Where does this attitude come from? Over at Victory Girls, Kim Hirsch writes, “Money and fame have replaced honor and memory of the history which changed the world.” I’d put it a little differently: as our culture increasingly sends the message that history is just another tool of politics, the public is either ignorant of the facts of the past, unable to understand why those facts are still important, or believe that history is irrelevant to their lives.

Assorted Ethics Observations On The Durham Report, Part II: The Substance

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

[The first installment, regarding the news media’s ongoing effort to bury this story, is here. Humble Talent’s invaluable summary of the Durham Report is here.]

1. The nice thing about waiting a day or so is that some other qualified commentators were likely to write virtually what I would write, saving me time. That was especially true in this case. Here’s Andrew McCarthy:

Perusing the report, I find it impossible to draw any other conclusion than that the FBI, and the Obama administration more broadly, did not ignore the intelligence about Clinton’s strategy but rather that the law-enforcement and intelligence apparatus of the United States government knowingly abetted Clinton’s implementation of the strategy….

Clearly, there was a Clinton campaign strategy to frame Trump. Yet the most sensible interpretation of the evidence Durham has amassed is not that the FBI, in evaluating its collusion evidence, failed to weigh intercepted Russian intelligence about that strategy. It is that the FBI was well aware of Clinton’s strategy, fully expected Clinton to be the next president, and helped implement the strategy, regardless of what Russian spies may or may not have thought about it…

The FBI knowingly treated Clinton with kid gloves. FBI lawyer Lisa Page warned the bureau’s senior intelligence investigator, Peter Strzok, to tread lightly in interviewing Clinton about the email scandal — fearful that, upon winning the election, Clinton would otherwise be vengeful against the FBI…

Durham documents that President Obama, Vice President Biden, top intelligence officials, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and FBI director Comey were fully briefed by CIA director John Brennan on Russia’s assessment of Clinton’s plan to frame Trump.

2. At the last moment, I decided in 2016 that I could not vote for either Trump or Hillary after spending the previous months saying that Trump was so unethical that I was forced to vote for his opposition, who I found reprehensible. Then I found out that Clinton and the Democrats were cheating, and as a party the clearly did not respect or revere democracy, the Democratic Party was even a greater existential risk than Trump; I just didn’t know how much they were cheating.

3. Barack Obama and Joe Biden actively participated in the scheme, as McCarthy’s last paragraph above reminds us. This was genuinely impeachable conduct, far, far worse than the contrived grounds for Trump’s two impeachments.

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Comment Of The Day: “Let’s Play “What’s Wrong With This Guy?”!”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

There I was, thinking dark thoughts and moping about the horrible traffic here over the weekend, and along comes A.M. Golden to remind me that this blog has always sought to inspire quality rather than quantity, with this superb Comment of the Day on the post about the enterprising Mr. Clifford, who feels that IBM isn’t him paying him enough not to work for 30 years, Let’s Play “What’s Wrong With This Guy?”! Here it is; it even has a “Facts of Life” reference!

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Stipulated: The plaintiff’s disability could be a legitimate one. We don’t know. That doesn’t really change my answer.

How did we get here?

The Deep Pockets Rationalization aka The Jo Polniaczek Excuse: Named for Nancy McKeon’s character on the ’80s show “The Facts of Life.” In one episode, Jo borrows a watch belonging to her frenemy, wealthy Blair Warner, without asking so she can time herself while taking an exam. On her way back, the watch is damaged when she jumps into a quick basketball game. She blows it off because Blair is wealthy and has a lot of watches.

The Deep Pockets Rationalization states that the person with the most money should pay even if not at fault. A guy driving a Hyundai hits a guy driving a BMW. The Hyundai driver tries to argue that the BMW driver should pay for everything because he has more money. A person trips in a store and tries to compel the business to pay even though she tripped because she wasn’t paying attention to what she was doing. Or a restaurant is pressured to pay for a disfigured child’s surgery after the family failed to extort money with false allegations against employees (Remember the KFC incident from a few years’ back?).

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Let’s Play “What’s Wrong With This Guy?”!

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

“Hi there, everyone! It’s time to play the exciting ethics game that’s sweeping America: “What’s Wrong With This Guy?”! As you know, contestants are asked to name which ethics virtues are missing from the miscreants in our stories, and, if they can, explain how they got the way they are.

“Are you ready, contestants? Then let’s play, “What’s Wrong With This Guy?”! Introduce our subject for Round I, Johnny!“

“Sure thing, Jack! Meet Ian Clifford!

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Comment Of The Day: “Unethical Quote Of The Month: President Joe Biden’s Howard University Class of 2023 Commencement Address”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Perhaps you could tell: I was disgusted by President Biden’s speech at Howard. Was it more destructive demagoguery than his “Soul of the Nation” speech last fall? At such unethical depths, comparisons don’t matter. Is it worse to try to turn half the nation against the other half, or to poison the minds of young college graduates by using the authority of the Presidency to convince them that their own country is a dark and dangerous place with large segments of the public determined to harm them because of the color of their skin?

For those sufficiently independent-minded, Biden’s speech was not just hypocrisy, but stunningly thinly-veiled hypocrisy. Ann Althouse focused on one example, Biden referring to SCOTUS Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson as “one bright woman.” The blogging retired law professor wrote,

“Isn’t that a microaggression? It’s my subjective experience — disagree with me if you want — that “bright” is a patronizing word. It’s used for children, and when it’s used on an adult, it’s looking down on the person as if they are something like a child. It expresses vague surprise that the person stands out and can do reasonably difficult tasks, but it sets them apart as not able to do the most sophisticated things that the speaker imagines himself to be doing. Older men in superior positions have said it through the years about younger associates and, especially, women. And I think it’s what a racist would say about a capable black person.”

The routinely perceptive and incisive Mrs. Q. picks up on the same vibes in her Comment of the Day on the post, “Unethical Quote Of The Month: President Joe Biden’s Howard University Class of 2023 Commencement Address”:

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Where to begin…

Who was Biden’s mentor? An Exalted Cyclops who recruited at least 150 members into his chapter of the KKK.

What did Biden tell a digital audience on a black man’s podcast?
That if they had trouble deciding if they were for him or Trump, then they “weren’t black.” Last I checked an old white guy mentored by a formerly virulent white supremacist should be last person to tell blacks if they were in fact black.

Who said this about Obama?
“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.” That was Biden.

Who said this during his campaign?
“…poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.” That was Biden.

And who said this gem?
” You cannot go to a 7-11 or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking.” Biden of course!

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Oh-Oh…Apparently Ethics Alarms Spreads “Misinformation”

/ Jack Marshall / 35 Comments

A “misinformation expert” was given a platform by a TV news staff apparently managed by armadillos to pass on the fascinating in formation that opinions and statements that includes these phrases are likely to be passing along “misinformation”:

  • “Let that sink in”
  • “The media won’t report this”
  • “Make this go viral”
  • “Do your own research”
  • “There are no coincidences”

Oh-oh…Ethics Alarms definitely uses two of these or their equivalents (especially the second one). As for the others, I see nothing wrong or misleading about suggesting that readers circulate an article, and I don’t see anything sinister about suggesting that people do their own research. The last is just a stupid thing to say or believe to be literally true.

Here’s the clip:

I’m trying to find out who this fake “expert” is, where she came from and who was so irresponsible as to give her sufficient credentials that allowed her to claim to be an “expert.” Meanwhile, the TV station that put this garbage on the air needs to have its license pulled for pure incompetence.

It is pretty clear what this woman is doing, isn’t it? Her mission is to convince the public that challenging the narratives of the mainstream media is automatically sinister and seeks to create “misinformation.” This is a misinformation expert spreading the falshood that the news media fairly and competently reports facts and events without delay, spin or distortion, that anyone who tries to challenge these propaganda agents’ primacy is obviously spreading lies, and that the public should trust and completely rely upon a news media that has repeatedly lied, buried stories and actively manipulated what information the public gets to read, see and hear. (The bit about coincidences I take as a slap at the religious Right.)

Let that sink in.

“Dear Inquirer: Your Boyfriend Just Informed You That He’s An Unethical, Insecure Jerkwad. Thank Him, And Run For Your Life!”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

That is how I would answer a question that came into the New York Times’ “The Ethicist” advice column this week. Maybe this is why nobody asks me to apply when the long-time feature is looking for new ethicist. But boy, I don’t think I’ve ever read a letter to Kwame Anthony Appiah that demanded such an obvious response.

Name Withheld, who sends an awful lot of questions to “The Ethicist,” explained that her former live-in boyfriend adopted a dog while they were together. When they parted amicably, they agreed that she would take the pet (she is a veterinarian, after all) and he would have visiting rights. Now she is in a new relationship and thinks this guy may be “the One.” But he objects to her old beau coming by occasionally to see the dog.

“I am at a loss about what to do,” she says. ” I don’t want to upset him by letting my ex have time with the dog. I also feel so guilty about not letting my ex have time with her….My partner says that people he has known have gone through similar things and says they all agree it is unusual to keep my ex involved in my dog’s life.”

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Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 5/13/22: Everything Is Seemingly Spinning Out Of Control!

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Today is the anniversary of one of the United States’ more unethical international adventures, and one of its more successful ones.

Mexico had threatened to declare war after the U.S. took Texas into the union, but that wasn’t going to happen, and the U.S., under expansionist President James K. Polk, was hungry for more Mexican territories. In November of 1845, Polk sent the diplomat John Slidell to Mexico to bargain for boundary adjustments in return for the U.S. government’s settlement of the claims of U.S. citizens against Mexico. He also offered to buy California and New Mexico.

When the offers were rejected, Polk ordered the U.S. army to advance to the mouth of the Rio Grande, the river that Texas, and now the U.S., claimed as its southern boundary. Mexico had maintained that the boundary was the Nueces River to the northeast of the Rio Grande, so in the absence of a treaty or agreement, Polk was challenging Mexico to start a war. It worked: when Mexico sent troops across the Rio Grande to defend against what it regarded as a U.S. invasion, Polk could declare the Mexican advance to be an invasion of U.S. soil, and on May 13, 1846, Congress declared war on Mexico. The war created widespread resistance and dissent that foreshadowed citizen protests over the Vietnam war, but in the end, the United States got the land it had offered to buy without paying for it, and more.

1. And speaking of the Mexican border, the spin, propaganda and distortions being presented by the news media is staggering, or would be if we weren’t so accustomed to our so-called journalists campaigning for open borders. On local news in Norther Virginia this morning, we were told that “migrants” (they are illegal immigrants) were involved in a “humanitarian crisis” (it’s a law enforcement crisis) and that all the people trying to break our laws were doing was “escaping poverty” and seeking a “better life” for their children. How could any one with a heart oppose such a thing? Then can the interviews with “good immigrants” explaining their “dreams.” No mention of criminals, disease or fentanyl entered the conversation, of course.

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Push-Up Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I don’t know why this took so long…

The Washington Post reports that there is a movement afoot to stop allowing young women to substitute so-called “girls’ push-ups” (with the knees on the floor) for the actual toes-on-the-ground exercise while males are still required to do the real thing. The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), which provides guidelines for exercise testing by fitness and medical professionals, still uses the modified push-up to assess women’s upper-body strength in its latest exercise testing textbook, published in 2021. Male strength is measured in part using the full push-up.

But Melanie Adams, a professor of exercise science at Keene State College in New Hampshire, told the Post that based on a 2022 study of female college students and push-ups that she led, the assumption that women could only do the weenie version was unwarranted. Some female college students could perform more than 20 full push-ups in succession, a total many men can’t match. Because the root exercise builds strong, important muscles in the upper-body and core, however, starting boys on real push-ups while girls are told to use the inferior version gives males a head start on superior strength that women will have a hard time overcoming.

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Comment Of The Day: “Comment Of The Day: “Ethics And The Death Of Jordan Neely”

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Further discussion of the Jordan Neely case is appropriate, as Daniel Penny, the US Marine veteran who apparently killed Neely, a homeless and mentally-disturbed man, while trying to protect passengers on a New York City subway train earlier this month, has been charged with second-degree manslaughter.

I expected that, and while the pressure being placed on authorities by race-hucksters trying to make this tragedy into George Floyd II probably played a part, I think Penny had to be charged. He used excessive force to engage in a defensible act of civic responsibility, and a man died. That’s manslaughter. “We believe that the conviction should be for murder because that was intentional,” said Neely family attorney Lennon Edwards said today. Right: it must have been intentional, because all white people are looking for excises to kill blacks. I can forgive the family for being angry, bitter, and legally ignorant, but Edwards’s statement is unforgivable.

Then there is the news media spin, with outlets like the Associated Press describing Neely as a “homeless street artist” to make him sound like he was restrained for painting portraits of subway riders without their consent. He was screaming at them and threatening them, and had harmed strangers before. The news media is already doing its Kyle Rittenhouse act on Penny. They want him to be tarred as a racist and murderer.

Here is Null Pointer’s Comment of the Day on Humble Talent’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Ethics And The Death Of Jordan Neely”:

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In order to live in a civilized society, citizens must agree to abide by a the rules of a social contract. No defecating in the streets. No fornicating in public. No random acts of aggression or violence. Things like that. Over the last few decades, a portion of the citizenry has decided to unilaterally rewrite the underlying rules of the social contract without any buy-in from the rest of the citizenry. What they don’t seem to understand is that this buy-in is necessary. If the vast majority of the citizenry does not agree on a new social contract, and the old contract is destroyed, then the civilization is destroyed. It reverts to fragmented tribal groups who refuse to cooperate with one another.

The attempt to normalize random acts of violence and aggression will never be agreed to by the majority of the citizenry. Safety is one of the base blocks in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. If civilization cannot offer a baseline level of safety to its citizenry, then there is no reason to buy into it. The entire reason people form civilizations is to obtain a baseline level of safety. If a civilization does not offer a baseline level of safety, then what reason is there for people to subvert their own desires, customs, culture and beliefs to a larger group? Especially when that larger group also demands a large portion of the fruits of individual’s labor to be handed over to them to support that civilization.

The civilization saboteurs can keep kicking the pillars out from under the civilization, but they will not be able to stop the collapse that occurs as a result. More riots may not have the effect they are hoping for.