Unless lists are based on on hard numbers, they are all subjective, based on opinion only. The worst lists are the ones that are opinion but that claim to be based on hard data. Lists are unethical when they mislead the lazy and ignorant, which is to say, most of the public and those who pay attention to internet lists. Again, as in today’s warm-up, the ethics issue is incompetence, and often breaches of honesty and responsibility as well.

The first of the unethical lists was this one, click-baited as “The Smartest Presidents, Ranked By IQ (Guess Who’s No.1)” It’s hard to imagine a worse hash could be made of that topic than the article prepared by Esther Trattner, who must have difficulty spelling IQ herself. This topic became popular during the Trump administration and the previous campaign, because Donald kept boasting about high his IQ is (which is a stupid thing for anyone to do.) There are a lot of these lists (Trattner’s is the worst, but they are all bad.) To begin with, IQ doesn’t measure “intelligence;” it measures, as one psychologist told me, “what IQ tests measure.” There is so much more to intelligence than what that test indicates that conflating the scores with intellect is absurd. Indeed, the man who invested the IQ test condemned using his creation to measure above average intelligence, since its purpose was to assess intellectual deficits.

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Interesting issues, dead traffic yesterday…just thought I’d mention it…

I’d like to propose this date,  September 18, as National Incompetence Day. On this date in 1962, preening slug of a Union army commander General George B. McClellan blew a golden opportunity to end the Civil War early, and for the usual reasons: he over-estimated the size of the enemy, and, some have concluded, he just didn’t like to fight. The Battle of Antietam had ended the day before after the bloodiest day of fighting ever to occur on North American soil. Lee’s forces were exhausted and depleted; McClellan’s army had just welcomed fresh troops. McClellan had an estimated three times as many soldiers as Lee after the battle, a stalemate, and was in a perfect position to wipe out the Confederate forces and end the war. But, as usual, he stalled. Certain that Lee had many times the men he actually had,  (or having conveniently himself so he could rationalize not continuing the battle) the Union commander allowed the Rebels to retreat from Sharpsburg, Maryland, and head back to the safety of Virginia unmolested, as Lincoln fumed. It was a real chance to deliver a knockout blow and end the Civil War quickly, but George didn’t believe in knockout blows. He specialized in training armies to deliver theoretical knockout blows. To be fair, the training came in useful when a general with guts and ability finally got McClellan’s job: Ulysses S. Grant.

Incompetence isn’t as sexy a breach of ethics as, say, disloyalty or dishonesty, but it probably does more damage than either. McClellan is as perfect a symbol of the often destructive influence it has has on U.S. history as I can think of. Like so many of his ilk, the tendency to screw up didn’t impede the general’s career as thoroughly or quickly as it should have. Amazingly, Lincoln put him in charge of the Union Army twice and the Democratic Party nominated him for President. Fortunately, the party has learned not to try to put total incompetents in charge of the government in the ensuing years…

1. Speaking of ethics incompetence…Faced with having to recognize an LGBTQ student group until its appeal of a lower court ruling worked its way through the courts, Yeshiva University announced last week that it was suspending all undergraduate club activities, punishing everyone in order to get away with discrimination. The issue is, again, religious freedom: Yeshiva’s claim that the New York civil rights laws don’t apply is shaky because the university is incorporated as an educational institution and not a religious one.

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Ann Althouse has been annoying me lately. The liberal (of course) Madison, Wisconsin blogging ex-law prof has been gradually red-pilled, and she is increasingly issuing posts on the same topics as Ethics Alarms, sometimes before, sometimes after, often on the same day. Such was the case with David Brooks’ throbbingly partisan and biased “Why Is There Still No Strategy to Defeat Donald Trump?”last week. I started my post about it, checked Ann’s blog and found that what she had posted that morning was so close to what I was writing that I would look like a plagiarizer.

So I’m starting again, and using Ann’s post as a foundation for mine. (Maybe that will teach her.) She took the same passage that I was going to use from Brooks’ outburst…this one:

“We’re locking in the political structures that benefit Trump…. We are in the middle of a cultural/economic/partisan/identity war between more progressive people in the metro areas and more conservative people everywhere else. To lead the right in this war, Trump doesn’t have to be honest, moral or competent; he just has to be seen taking the fight to the ‘elites.’… Trumpists tell themselves that America is being threatened by a radical left putsch that is out to take over the government and undermine the culture. The core challenge now is to show by word and deed that this is a gross exaggeration. Can Trump win again? Absolutely. I’m a DeSantis doubter…. And then once Trump is nominated, he has some chance of winning, because nobody is executing an effective strategy against him.”

Ann’s contempt is palpable, and justly so:

The needed “effective strategy” against Trump is “to show by word and deed” that it’s “a gross exaggeration” to think that “a radical left putsch… is out to take over the government and undermine the culture.” I’m not even persuaded that Brooks believes it’s all that much of an exaggeration to think there’s a “radical left putsch… out to take over the government and undermine the culture.” He just wants Trump defeated and hopes anti-Trumpsters execute a good strategy to take him out…The fact that Brooks talks about a “gross exaggeration” reveals that he thinks there is something true. If there weren’t something true, you’d call it a lie, not an exaggeration. 

Althouse commenter “Drago” has this gem:

David Brooks and Mo Dowd and all the others just keep writing the same column week after week, month after month, year after year.Brooks’ column is a cry for help on all levels. He doesn’t understand what happened in the past, he doesn’t understand what is happening now and he is semi-aware of his complete ignorance which explains this plea for someone, anyone, anywhere, to come up with a “plan” to remove all the uncomfortable truths poor David is forced to confront. And deep down, Brooks knows perfectly well what his fellow leftists are up to. And he clearly approves of it based on his “hot takes”….but apparently doesn’t want to be seen as too-approving of the Stasi tactics.

Why oh why can’t we just have a vast New Soviet Democratical majority with a completely tamed, and very small, “republican” minority that knows its place, and a populace that is happy to await their destruction while David attends the best of the best parties on Manhattan or in the Hamptons where no difficult questions are ever asked of the FakeCon “Republican” on the Times staff?

To which the reasonable response can only be, “Bingo!”

Now the Ethics Alarms Observations:

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Today marks the anniversary of the writing of “The Star Spangled Banner” in 1814, which officially became our national anthem in 1931. Francis Scott Key wrote the poem, originally titled “The Defence of Fort M’Henry,” after he witnessed the fort being bombarded by the British during the War of 1812. Key saw the lone (and huge—you can see it at the Smithsonian) U.S. flag still flying over Fort McHenry at daybreak, inspiring the most famous words of the song: “And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air, gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.”

I love the story, and love the song. Always have.

1. To nobody’s surprise, certainly not mine, Georgetown University was the 4th worst in FIRE’s annual ranking of universities based on their support of free speech. #1, the best, is the University of Chicago. Harvard finished in 170th place, a few slots short of the bottom fourth. Dead last, at #203 with a speech climate rated “abysmal,” is Columbia.

The whole report is here.

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