U.S. Society

Historical Ignorance Is Dangerous: This Isn’t The Low Point In American Political History

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

I’ve been meaning to mention this for a while now.

I’ve been reviewing some Presidential history as I prepare to continue the Ethics Alarms search for the Worst President Ever, as more evidence of Joe Biden’s proper ranking accumulates. what has stood out is now much worse things have been in the past than they are now by any objective measure. The pundits and other hysterics currently opining daily that the nation is on the verge of unraveling either don’t know our turbulent history, or are deliberately trying to stir up fear and unrest.

They are underestimating the United States of America, and the intrinsic strength of its mission and values.

Take the 15 year period immediately after the Civil War—“Please,” as Henny Youngman would say:

  • Following a catastrophic conflict that left 2% of the population dead, the nation shattered, a whole region’s economy and society destroyed and the nation faced with somehow dealing with more than four million newly freed black slaves, President Lincoln, the one individual who had the brilliance and political skill to—maybe—navigate this confluence of crises was assassinated in a conspiracy that may have included powerful members of the government itself, or so it seemed.
  • The Vice-President who took over as President, Andrew Johnson, was a Southern Democrat who was distrusted and disrespected by the overwhelmingly Republican Congress. Worse, he was stubborn and averse to compromise. The nation’s work, at a critical time, with the nation divided and struggling,  quickly deteriorated into all-out political war between the Executive and the Legislative Branches, with Congress passing laws, some of which were unconstitutional, Johnson vetoing them, and Congress over-riding the vetoes. Members of Johnson’s own Cabinet, actually Lincoln’s Cabinet, were working with Johnson’s enemies in Congress and against him—talk about the “Deep State” !  Congress finally contrived reasons to impeach the President, who had no defenders in the press either, basing the action mostly on one of those unconstitutional laws. Johnson refused to follow it or obey it (the law prevented a President from firing a Cabinet member without Congressional approval, a clear breach of the Separation of Powers), and there it was: “High Crimes and Misdemeanors”! The Senate failed to convict Johnson by a single vote, with many believing that the pro-Johnson votes had been bought (and they might have been!).

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The Worst Sequel To “Home Alone” Yet

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Here I was, all ready to shut down Ethics Alarms posting for the day, and I ran across this awful story, which I honestly don’t understand at all. There have to be some basic equipment ethics alarms that have to work in everyone, right?

Charleston, South Carolina police were called to investigate the home of 24-year-old Donald Gekonge when an apartment manager reported that he had found a child alone in the apartment yesterday. They discovered the child sleeping in a bed in the living room. When they walked into the room, the child “immediately reached for an empty water bottle.” The child seemed to be in good condition. Police then spoke to an unnamed person who said Gekonge had sent a message that he was in New York City. Eventually police reached him, and he said that someone was caring for his son, he just wasn’t certain who.

This is always a bad sign.

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Friday Open Forum, “But It Feels Like Sunday” Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

I apologize: I didn’t focus on the fact that this was Friday until just now. Even at ProEthics, which never rests or takes a vacation, it has been so quiet that I was lulled into weekend mode. All the l-tryptophan didn’t help either. But there is still time to…

Ethics away!

(Ugh. I hate that fad Madison Avenue use of nouns, as in “Let’s movie!” I had to try it once to be sure just how much I hated it. Sorry.)

Pre-Thanksgiving Ethics Warm-Up, 11/23/2022: Dead Ethics Alarms, Good Ethics Advice From An Unexpected Source, And Other Appetizers

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

I know my wedding to Grace Bowen Marshall 42 years ago was important because virtually nothing else genuinely significant in world history happened on November 23. The date is amazingly weak on important birthdays too: the most impressive are Franklin Peirce, our tragically weak 14th President (just when the nation needed a strong one), and, in 1921, Jack Marshall, the Hollywoord musician, arranger and composer who wrote the theme music for “The Munsters,” among other things.

The calendar this year is, as it happens, like it was the year we got married. We had changed the date from the 22nd to the 23rd because neither of us wanted Kennedy’s assassination on our minds. After a wedding presided over by Grace’s dad, a Methodist minister, we enjoyed a wild reception highlighted by a performance by the combined talents of the two musical revue groups I had performed in and directed, The Showstoppers and the political satire group, The Music Lobby. Then it was off to a romantic evening at the historic Hay-Adams hotel, across the park from The White House. The next day was Thanksgiving, which we celebrated by having a turkey picnic on the floor of our just-purchased, unfurnished home in Alexandria, Virginia. Then it was off to Zion’s Crossroads, near Charlottesville, for a brief honeymoon at an inn converted from an old plantation. They had a honeymoon cottage, and today we would be expected to be horrified by its history as the slave overseer’s residents. We weren’t then, and I’m not now.

As Gus says to Woodrow call as he dies in “Lonesome Dove,” “It’s been a hell of a party.” And we still haven’t opened all the presents…

1. When Ethics Alarms don’t ring: Fashion company Balenciaga has withdrawn a really oogy advertisement campaign featuring children with sexualized teddy bears, but such an ethics botch is signature significance. In one photo, one of the little girls poses on a sofa by one of plush bear bags, surrounded by wine glasses and branded bondage gear.

A sharp-eyed viewer spotted a copy of a Supreme Court opinion declaring pornography protected speech in another photo with a child. Here’s another one in the series:

The company’s apology as it abandoned the ads also doesn’t suggest familiarity with basic ethics alarms. “We sincerely apologize for any offense our holiday campaign may have caused. Our plush bear bags should not have been featured with children in this campaign. We have immediately removed the campaign from all platforms,” the apology posted on its Instagram page read in part. “We take this matter very seriously and are taking legal action against the parties responsible for creating the set and including unapproved items for our Spring 23 campaign photoshoot. We strongly condemn abuse of children in any form. We stand for children’s safety and well-being.”

Someone just sneaked those ads into publication without the company’s knowledge, eh? Sure.

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Chaos Theory Day Ethics, 11/22/22: What Might Have Been, Or Not Have Been? [“Booby Orr” Corrected!]

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Few days in American history set the trillions of marbles on the boundary-less billiard table rolling quite as wildly as this one, in 1963, when President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated. If a butterfly fluttering its wings in the Amazon could start a chain reaction resulting in a rainstorm in Central Park, imagine what might be different today if the motorcade had taken a different route that sunny day in Dallas. The answer: anything and everything. It’s very likely that there would be no Ethics Alarms, for example, to pick a tiny example at random.

1. Continuing on that theme…a new study from the WeCount coalition, a pro-abortion organization, estimates that the number of abortions nationwide fell by 10,000 in the first two months following the Dobbs decision. According to The New York Times,WeCount found that 22,000 fewer induced abortions were performed in states with pro-life laws in July and August, compared with the baseline beginning in April, before Dobbs. In states where abortion-on-demand remained legal, abortions increased by roughly 12,000, leading to a net decline of 10,000. There were just under 7,400 fewer abortions in August than in June. Extrapolating that figure over 12 months, you nearly 90,000 fewer abortions per year.

What changes in our world, our lives and our future might those 90,000 human beings cause? A President could be among them, or several. A presidential assassin. The next Ted Bundy, Steve Jobs, Orson Welles, Thomas Edison, Tom Brady, Bobby Orr, Paul McCartney, Bill Russell or Martin Luther King. We don’t know, and will never know. [Pointer: The Federalist]

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Comment Of The Day: “More “Good” Segregation And Racial Discrimination On Progressive College Campuses”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

I learn something almost every day from the comments on Ethics Alarms. This Comment of the Day, by the peerless Mrs. Q, enlightened me regarding a phenomenon that had never registered on my consciousness.

Here it is…an observation on the post,“More ‘Good’ Segregation And Racial Discrimination On Progressive College Campuses”:

***

“When exactly did racial segregation pass from the agendas of racists, bigots, white supremacists, KKK members and Jim Crow enthusiasts to the playbook of progressive black activists?”

I suspect, in the US at least, the origins of this phenomenon began when black slaves hunted other black slaves to get the “runaways” back on a particular plantation.

It’s not fun to talk about among blacks, but there has been, for hundreds of years, what Burgess Owens might define as a “royalty black class.” That class is allowed to “show” other blacks how they should be and what they should clamor for.

Blacks who don’t fall in line and believe they don’t need the benevolence of whites to prosper are today called ironically “house negros” or “Uncle Toms,” when actually it’s the Stacey Abrams of the world (doing the dirty work of white bigots) telling black men they’re too dumb to know how to discern propaganda and misinformation. Continue reading →

I Just Signed An Open Letter. This is Why:

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Last week, professors, lecturers and academics across the country began signing the “Stanford Academic Freedom Declaration.” It is an open letter that calls on universities to restore free speech, academic freedom and institutional neutrality. The open letter asks universities and professors to adopt and implement the “Chicago Trifecta” — the Chicago Principles on unilateral free speech, the Kalven report that requires institutional neutrality on political and social topics, and the Shils report, making “academic contribution the sole basis for hiring and promotion.”  It is picking up metaphorical steam: several hundred new signatures have been entered since I first saw the document last night. One of them is mine: I qualify as a former adjunct professor of legal ethics.

Stanford economist and co-author John Cochrane is the first name on the list and presumably launched the letter. He told College Fix:

The larger hope is to bring back academic freedom on campus and in the academic enterprise more generally. Only with robust academic freedom, the ability to investigate ideas and bring out uncomfortable facts, does scholarship bring about new and reliable knowledge, especially on crucial issues to our society.

Who knows if this will have any impact or persuasive power? I am dubious about the use of such protest tools, but at least this one causes no harm even if it like the lonely tree falling in a forest. Trying to ensure that the letter has no effect is, of course, the mainstream media, which so far, at least, hasn’t deemed the effort newsworthy for a week. In the meantime, several news sources have devoted space to the fact that in China, a massive flock of sheep has been walking in a circle for 12 days straight. Priorities!

I’m grateful for the opportunity to do something proactive about this problem, which I view as an existential threat to American culture and society. Boycotting the recent class reunions of my college and law school was mandatory for me but also the equivalent of Grandpa Simpson shouting at clouds. My  Harvard reunion book essay explaining my position did attract a few kudos in the mail, all of which opined that there were many other class members who felt as I do but were afraid to make their views public.

Wow. Harvard apparently has graduated a lot of weenies. But I knew that.

I’ll be circulating the letter to my friends and associates who can sign it. It’s awfully open, which mean that if someone wanted to muck it up with fake names, gag names and other graffiti, they could. Right now, I’m the last name on the list, number 1,241. It will take about a hundred times that to make a ripple, I know.

It’s worth a shot.

Ethics Quiz: The Elizabeth Holmes Sentence

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

A Federal judge sentenced Theranos, Inc. founder Elizabeth Holmes  to eleven years and three months in prison last week. Essentially the judge had limitless options, with only execution being off the table. Based on the maximum sentences for each the four crimes she was convicted of, she theoretically could have been given the equivalent of life in prison.  Prosecutors asked for a 15-year sentence, three years of supervised release, and more than $800 million damages. The layers for Holmes, now 38, had asked for home detainment, community service, and no more than 18 months in prison. (My son spent half that in jail for a reckless driving offense when he was 18. Just for perspective….)

What did Holmes do? Wikipedia has an excellent one-stop summary: the short version is that she invented a purported blood testing system that didn’t work, faked data, sucked in investors, doctors and patients, made billions, and engaged in all manner of lies, threats, manipulations and schemes to avoid the consequences of her actions. The government argued that Holmes deserved a severe punishment because “dozens of investors lost $700 million and numerous patients received unreliable or wholly inaccurate medical information from Theranos’ flawed tests, placing those patients’ health at serious risk.” This is undoubtedly true. Her defenders counter than “she didn’t kill anybody,”  she is a first time offender, and her crime was one of non-violence. This is also true.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is….

Is Holmes’ 11 years+ sentence for her massive, 15-year fraud fair, just, proportionate and in the best interests of society—in short, ethical?

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And Yet, Against All Odds, Karine Jean-Pierre’s Was NOT The Most Outrageous Package of Deflections, Excuses And Rationalizations Concocted Last Week By A Prominent Public Figure To Avoid Accountability…

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

No, the winner, and by a lot, was the blather spewed out by the head of the International Federation of Association Football, Gianni Infantino, to justify…well, to mitigate…well, to throw up so much dust that the general disgust at the World Cup being held in Qatar might be forgotten, or at least controlled.

All of the international sports organizations are corrupt, FIFA being among the worst. The soccer organization must have reaped quite a bonanza to take the World Cup to Qatar, which is a miserable human rights abuser, different but almost as despicable as China, where the Olympics allowed those champions of slavery, oppression and pandemic-launching to use the Games as a propaganda platform, just like Adolf in 1936. (The United States should have refused to “play” in both instances.) At a press conference last week, Infantino, defended Qatar against those condemning the Muslim nation for its treatment of immigrants, gays and women, with a flood of terrible analogies, excuses and rationalizations, saying in part:

Today I feel Qatari. Today I feel Arab. Today I feel African. Today I feel gay. Today I feel disabled. Today I feel a migrant worker I feel this, all this, because what I’ve been seeing and what I’ve been told, since I don’t read, otherwise I would be depressed I think. Of course, I am not Qatari, Arab, gay or disabled. But I was the son of a migrant worker, saw their conditions. Not in Qatar, but Switzerland. What I’ve seen brings me back to my personal story. I am a son of migrant workers. My parents were working very very hard in difficult situations. I know what it means to be discriminated and bullied as a foreigner in a foreign country. As a child, I was bullied because I had red hair and freckles. I was bullied for that…. We need to invest in education, to give them a better future, to give them hope. We should all educate ourselves. Reform and change takes time. It took hundreds of years in our countries in Europe. It takes time everywhere, the only way to get results is by engaging […] not by shouting…For what we Europeans have been doing in the last 3,000 years around the world we should be apologizing for [the] next 3,000 years before starting to give moral lessons.

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Unethical Quote Of The Month: Karine Jean-Pierre

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

This is great huminahumina even for the President’s paid liar. Asked directly about growing evidence that President Biden and his family benefited financially from black sheep son Hunter’s influence peddling, Jean-Pierre blathered,

“So, look, uh, you know, um, there’s — there’s some — a little bit of, uh, interesting, uh, you know, kind of, on-brand, uh, thinking here, because, um, you know, congressional Republicans, uh, ran, uh, saying that they were going to fight inflation. Uh, they said they were gonna make that a priority. They were very clear about that these past, uh, several months, and instead, what they’re doing is they’re focusing, uh — you know, they’re focusing — they’re making their top, top priority — they get the majority, and their top priority is actually not focusing on the American families but focusing on the President’s family.”

Wow. It was such an obvious deflection that she might as well have begun by saying, “I’m now going to avoid this issue completely because I don’t have a good response for it.” It’s also an ineffective deflection. This is condign justice, and self-inflicted by Biden: the U.S. President who most desperately needed a competent, articulate, quick-thinking press secretary is burdened by the most inarticulate, dull-witted individual in the position ever. She was hired because she would be “historic”—first black, foreign-born lesbian, or something—but those features are completely irrelevant to the job. “Most flagrantly incompetent White House mouthpiece” is a genuine historic accomplishment, especially when one considers some of Karine’s predecessors like Sean Spicer and Joe Lockhart. I have a fertile imagination, but I cant conceive of how any press secretary could be worse than Karine. There are more articulate and persuasive mimes.

It’s wonderful, don’t you think, that the President can’t possibly fire her? Continue reading →