That’s a paraphrase; what Ben really said was “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” More than two centuries later, his words remain prescient and wise.

Dr. Anthony Fauci’s words below, in contrast, words should bring chills to the bones of any civically educated American:

“Put aside all of these issues of concern about liberties and personal liberties and realize we have a common enemy…”

Yes, that statement has a context, but it also has a dark and frightening history. The call to put aside “concern about liberties and personal liberties” in order to battle a “common enemy” has been used for centuries in the pursuit of evil agendas. It has been exploited by supposedly benevolent leaders to seize dictatorial powers for short-term emergencies, and those powers somehow never were surrendered. This is why Obama’s ruthless aide Rahm Emanuel said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.”

Sometimes the common enemy really is one, and sometimes the aspiring totalitarian party manufactures a useful target of public fear and hate, like “the Jews.” Sometimes the enemy is real, but the danger posed by it is hyped, as with the Red Scare. For four years, progressives, Democrats and the news media used a series of Big Lies to portray President Trump as a “common enemy” of democracy, even as they used the false narrative as an excuse to weaken the Constitution, freedom of speech, due process, equal protection under law and the integrity of elections.

Here is Fauci’s whole quote:

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Valentine, a physician at Diagnostic and Medical Clinic Infirmary Health in Mobile, Alabama., posted that photo on Facebook this week. If the Alabama medical board has any integrity whatsoever, he will be cited for an ethical violation. If I were in charge, I’d suspend his license. Id’ revoke his license. He should not be trusted.

The Washington Post article about Valentine’s unethical stand concentrates on the problem unvaccinated citizens (and non-citizens) are causing in the nation’s effort to get past the pandemic. All of it is irrelevant. So are Valentine’s various explanations for his position, like “[C]ovid is a miserable way to die and I can’t watch them die like that,” and “We do not yet have any great treatments for severe disease, but we do have great prevention with vaccines. Unfortunately, many have declined to take the vaccine, and some end up severely ill or dead. I cannot and will not force anyone to take the vaccine, but I also cannot continue to watch my patients suffer and die from an eminently preventable disease.”

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1. Ethics Quote of the Week? I’d say it’s rebel progressive and former Rolling Stone pundit Matt Taibbi in “The Vanishing Legacy of Barack Obama.” (Of course, Obama’s real legacy, toxic racial division in America, hasn’t vanished at all, more’s the pity.) Taibbi writes,

“Obama was set up to be the greatest of American heroes, but proved to be a common swindler and one of the great political liars of all time — he fooled us all. Moreover, his remarkably vacuous post-presidency is proving true everything Trump said in 2016 about the grasping Washington politicians whose only motives are personal enrichment, and who’d do anything, even attend his wedding, for a buck. Trump’s point was that he, Trump, was already swinishly rich, while politicians have only one thing to sell to get the upper class status they crave: us. Obama did that. He sold us out, and it’s time to start talking about the role he played in bringing about the hopeless cynical mess that is modern America.”

Were Matt and his fellow progressives really fooled that badly? Wow. Times Queen of Snark Maureeen Down, like Matt writing about Obama’s deliberately offensive birthday bash, what Taibbi calls his “Fuck it moment,” writes,

“The party crystallized the caricature of the Democratic Party that Joe Biden had to fight against in order to get elected. It was as far from Flint and Scranton as you can imagine: an orgy of the 1 percent — private jets, Martha’s Vineyard, limousine liberals and Hollywood whoring — complete with a meat-free menu. The disinvitados, as one referred to them, were in four camps: Some didn’t care; some pretended they didn’t care; some were annoyed; and some were deeply hurt, especially loyal former staffers who felt they had contributed more to the Obama legacy than the likes of George Clooney, John Legend and Don Cheadle.”

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Lots of small and annoying stuff today….

1. I left “Bite me!” unsaid, but I admit, I thought it. Picking up a prescription at the pharmacy, a woman about my age wearing a big enough mask for three heads shielded her face with her hand as I passed her on the way to the counter. It really pissed me off, and after two steps, I wheeled around, raised my hands, wiggled my fingers, and wailed at her in my best Biblical leper imitation, “Unclean! Unclean!” Several customers laughed. I’m not putting up with that crap…

2. Related to this post and the one that spawned it: Broadway star Laura Osnes—never heard of her!—was fired from the cast of a one-night production of “Crazy For You” in the Hamptons. The theater required all staff and cast to be vaccinated, and Osnes refused. The two-time Tony nominee revealed that she hadn’t been vaccinated and won’t be, because she doesn’t trust the vaccine.

I’d fire her too.

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1. Related to my comment yesterday (I expected to get flack, but it never arrived) about how female commenters on Ethics Alarms tend to raise objections to the occasional pitched battles and harsh argument styles here, while the male participants largely take it in stride: I just saw an old interview with famed film director John Huston, in which he said, “One of the best ways to become friends with a man is to fight him.”

I don’t think a woman’s ever said that…or thought it. To be fair, neither have I.

2. Speaking of things women don’t do: Taunting, mocking, gloating and generally being what used to known as a bad winner is obnoxious, mean, bad sportsmanship (or course), a Golden Rule violation and wrong. Fans think its entertaining, however, so the various pro sports leagues tend to permit such antics. Football has, as with most matters, encouraged the most unethical conduct of the sort, but now the NFL’s officials have decided that on-field taunting is “out of hand.”

The new NFL rule: You can be an asshole, just not too much of an asshole. The league told officials to strictly enforce taunting rules, with automatic ejections of players who get two taunting penalties in a game. The player may also be fined or suspended, or both, depending on the severity of his transgression.

The renewed effort to enforce taunting rules will target “baiting or taunting acts or words” and “abusive, threatening or insulting language or gestures” toward players, coaches and game officials, as defined by the N.F.L.’s unsportsmanlike conduct rules.

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1. Let’s begin with an update, Great Stupid Division...Remember this idiotic story? You probably don’t; at the time, I thought it was almost too silly to write about: a 70 ton boulder that students at the University of Wisconsin were protesting as racist because of what it was once called. I wrote in part,

“Over 10,000 years ago, pre-Cambrian bedrock drift from Canada left it on what would become the campus of the University of Wisconsin in Madison…The rock was extracted from  the side of a hill in 1925, when Calvin Coolidge was President, and my father was five-years old, and placed in its current spot. It was dubbed “Chamberlin Rock” after Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin, a 19th century glaciologist and University of Wisconsin president, given its  plaque memorializing him and placed at the university’s Washburn Observatory. Suddenly, after 95 years,  the rock has become racist, and black students are demanding that it be removed. You see, long ago, the term “niggerhead” was commonly used to describe large dark rocks….Isn’t it also obvious that this is, like so many of the demands during the George Floyd Freakout, just a contrived power play, as in “Watch this! We’ll make Whitey move a 70 ton rock just because we ordered them to do it!” Why can’t University officials end the “controversy” by saying, “No, children, we are not going to move a 70 ton rock because you have made the calculated decision that it hurts your boo-boo. You’re here to grow up: start doing it.”? If society won’t  reject demands this stupid,  why would any demand seem unreasonable?…”

That last question is still in play: The university, being run by weenies and fools, removed the rock last week, at a cost of more than $35,000, probably closer to twice that amount.

2. Here is a correction from CNN that tells us much about a lot of people and things, but especially CNN:

“After CNN aired a story about her potential eviction, Dasha Kelly clarified to CNN that she is not the mother of the three children featured in the story. CNN has verified she takes care of the children in her home for periods of time. She says she originally described herself to CNN as a mother because she considers herself to be like one to them. CNN has learned the children are also cared for by their mother, Shadia Hilo, and their father, David Allison, who is Kelly’s boyfriend. GoFundMe tells CNN they are in close contact with Kelly and funds will stay on hold until they verify her information. GoFundMe says no funds have been withdrawn.”

Kelly didn’t “clarify” her lie…here is how she presented herself and “her” children to CNN viewers…

…until after a GoFundMe page set up to help this poor, overwhelmed mother raised over $230,000. It did so in response to the scam CNN aided and abetted by being so eager to make an emotion-based case for the illegal eviction moratorium that it didn’t check before letting this women pull off her lucrative hoax.

I especially like the “she considers herself to be like a mother to them” argument. In fact, it wasn’t even Kelly who exposed the scam, it was the kids’ real mother. CNN couldn’t even make its correction correctly. Before all this, the shameless news network even brought the fake mother back on live TV, with the children that weren’t really hers, for a follow-up interview. That one included Democratic Congresswoman Cori Bush, who has championed the scam being dishonest herself as well as dumb as a box of racist rocks:

I’m sorry to begin the day by reminding you of the quality of the people making our laws and the level of trustworthiness of the news media, but as Walter Cronkite used to say, “That’s the way it is.”

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