U.S. Society

The Tragically Warped Legacy Of Martin Luther King, Jr.

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

King

Ethics Alarms has posted several paeans to the iconic civil rights leader on his “day” is the past, but it is time—past time, really—for a more rueful and honest assessment of his legacy. No one can (or should, anyway) deny King’s crucial role in eliminating segregation in the United States, killing Jim Crow, and prompting long-overdue legal and cultural reforms, epitomized by the 1964 Civil Rights Act. King’s words have continued to inspire while serving as guideposts for the nation’s journey, still infuriatingly incomplete, to a society where citizens are judged “by the content of their character” rather than the color of their skin. But in 2021, a celebration of King and his legacy seem particularly hypocritical. His alleged followers have transitioned to a cynical strategy of encouraging a national mentality that accepts that the color of an American’s skin defines the content of their character, or to put it another way, that race is the most important feature, factor and consideration in American life.

This is a perversion of what Dr. King stood for, but that is the status of his legacy today. Most of what I mention in this post is old news that we have discussed before, but there are, as there now are virtually every day, additional examples of this corrosive use of race to divide and corrupt society. In this morning’s New York Times Arts section, for example, an article headlined “Bringing on New Leaders For Diversity In The Arts” told us that “cultural institutions around the country are hiring their own diversity officers to increase the number of people of color on the staff and board, broaden their programming and address a widely acknowledged pattern of systemic racism.” Translated, all this statement means is that, cowed by routine accusations of racism, arts groups are substituting one undeniable system of racism for an unproven one. People are being hired and appointed because of their skin color alone, or certainly over all other reasons. This is not, of course, restricted to the arts. The idea that skin-shade equals talent and virtue has been embodied at the very top of our government. The soon-to-be official Vice-President of the United States is in that position solely because she is “of color” as well as female. Her character, ability, experience and accomplishments have nothing to do with the responsibility and high office handed to her: she was roundly rejected by the members of the public who belong to her party when running on the basis of those factors. “Diversity” is a cover-word for discrimination. Dr. King was not asking for quotas in his protests, speeches and marches: he was demanding that blacks like him be given the opportunity to succeed on the same basis as whites, judged, rewarded and advanced without regard to their race.

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Comment Of The Day: “Crowbar, ProBar, Whatever…”

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

poke the bear

Disclaimer:The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of Ethics Alarms or ProEthics, Ltd.

I probably should post that before every Comment of the Day. I don’t choose a COTD because I necessarily agree with it. In the case of Null Pointer’s Comment of the Day below, there are some conclusions I don’t agree with and some assertions I am dubious about, but the over-all thrust of the comment is spot-on.

There is also an Ethics Quote of the Week in there:

“I read this quote on some Lefty site tonight: “’Pretty funny, no? …On Fox & Friends, the nitwit anchors can’t even agree on what is wrong or right!'”

Journalists aren’t supposed to decide what’s “wrong or right,” but it is clear that progressives, and that obviously includes most journalists and their editors, do, and that’s exactly why they are tending toward totalitarianism and away from democracy.

Here is Null Pointer’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Crowbar, ProBar, Whatever…“

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From The “Scared Yet” Files: The Rest Of The Story On The Persecution Of Professor Charles Negy

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Nagy Tweet

As Ethics Alarms noted back in August (which seems like years ago), the University of Central Florida set out to destroy Professor Negy, who was tenured and has taught at the university for decades by inviting students to bring formal complaints against him “based on abusive or discriminatory behavior by any faculty or staff.” Students were already demanding his dismissal because he dared to post the accurate tweet above, but the institution knew it couldn’t fire him for that.

Negy’s lawyer,Samantha K. Harris, described the process:

Since June 4th, a litany (we don’t know the exact number, because they won’t say) of complaints has been lodged against Negy for his classroom pedagogy, for speech that allegedly occurred over a 15-year period from 2005 to 2020. The university charged Negy with discriminatory harassment on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, religion, sex, gender identity/expression, and disability…while providing him with only a handful of “examples” of his alleged wrongdoing. … the university subjected Negy to an “investigative interview” that was one of the most Kafkaesque things I have seen in my 15 years advising students and faculty about campus disciplinary matters. For four straight hours, UCF’s investigator grilled Negy about accusations stemming directly from his classroom pedagogy, having made no effort to weed out the countless accusations that were obviously just critiques of his choice of teaching material….When Negy, physically and emotionally exhausted after four hours of interrogation, asked if the interview was almost over, we learned that the investigator had not even gotten halfway through her list of accusations. Another five-hour inquisition was scheduled for the following week.

This investigation was obviously undertaken in retaliation for Negy’s protected tweets… How many professors are going to be willing to speak out if the result is a nine-hour inquisition followed by an almost inevitable punishment?…Cases like this are canaries in the coal mine: if a public university—a government agency—can treat someone this way for deviating from the university’s orthodoxy, and face no accountability for doing so, then what (and who) is next? The answer, of course, is you and me. We are next. If decent people do not take a stand against these abuses, it’s not a matter of if the state-endorsed mob will come for us—it’s only a matter of when.

When, as we now can see, has arrived.

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Return To “Pleasantville”

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

I just watched “Pleasantville,” the 23-year-old comedy/drama/ allegory/satire/pseudo-“Twilight Zone” rip-off film produced, written and directed by Gary Ross. I’m not going to write as much about the film now as I will later; instead, I’m going to ask everyone to watch (or re-watch) the film so we can have a rich discussion about it at a future date, maybe in a month, maybe less. It might even be a good topic for the Ethics Alarms Zoom conference I’m planning on having (No, I haven’t forgotten!)

Ross is unusual for Hollywood, thoughtful and interested in ethics. He is more of a screenwriter than a director, and I would categorize most of his work as centered on ethical conflicts, dilemmas and values: “Big,” “Sea Biscuit,” “The Hunger Games,” and “Pleasantville.” He is also a smug liberal who worked for the Presidential campaigns of Ted Kennedy, Mike Dukakis and Bill Clinton. The smugness bothered me the first time I saw “Pleasantville” two decades ago, but it is absolutely blinding now.

“Pleasantville” is still an excellent and thought-provoking movie, certainly as compared to most movies today; it’s just that the thoughts it provokes are disingenuously manipulated, and the movie isn’t quite as excellent as it obviously thinks it is. (Full disclosure: I grew up on Pleasant Street in Arlington, Massachusetts.)

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It’s Friday Again Already? Open Forum, Then!

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

come-in-were-open

Gee, I’m still catching up on the last one!

My only comment right now is, “Boy, it’s been fun watching my Facebook progressive friends try to rationalize viewpoint censorship!

Stay on topic, please!

Sunset Ethics, 1/13/21: Accusations Amuck! [Revised]

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

Cape Charles Sunset

Yup, it’s true: the “You Have No Enemies” By Charles Mackay post, which consisted of virtually no content from me at all, but was mostly an obscure poem by an even more obscure 19th century English poet, was the most-accessed post of the past 365 days. Not only that, it lapped the field, since it wasn’t offered until November 16. That’s right: more people wanted to read that poem in less than two months any of the over 12,000 posts on ethics that were available all year.

What are you trying to tell me?

1. About that spite impeachment, or “snap” impeachment (Jonathan Turley’s term): It’s not going to get to trial in the Senate, meaning that it’s a) pointless b) a waste of time c) a personal, childish, “Nyah, nayah! We hate you!” taunt as Donald Trump does out the door, and d) one more way for the Democrats, plus Joe Biden, to ensure that half the country detests the other. Good plan!

A spokesman for the Senate Leader Mitch McConnell informed Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer that McConnell would not reconvene the Senate before the 19th, the day before Biden’s inauguration.That means a trial and conviction, assuming Democrats disgrace themselves and vote for a phony impeachment resolution that is even less legally and constitutionally valid than the first one, can’t possibly get underway until Trump is no longer President, and that means he can’t be impeached. Yes, yes, some Trump Deranged lawyers argue otherwise, just as they argued that Trump should be impeached before he took office.

Earlier this week, Fox News and other news organizations ran with anonymous sources who quoted McConnell as saying he thought impeaching Trump would be a good thing. McConnell is a despicable weasel, as bad if not worse than Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi, so this was plausible but not news, as indeed no “un-named sources familiar with the situation say X is thinking Y and said Z” report is news under journalism ethics standards. These are called “rumors” and “gossip.” In the Trump years, however, such speculation and hearsay has been treated as news, at least when it reflected poorly on Republicans or advanced a Democratic big lie or narrative.

2. Spittin’ mad former and self-banned EA commenter Jeff Field continues to drop hate mail in my mailbox (three more pieces since yesterday), though now it goes straight to spam. In the last such poison pen missive that I read, he accused yet another commenter—a sane one— of a falsehood for writing that Ethics Alarms never agreed that the 2020 election was rigged. Who knows what poor Fattymoon was really told, but I have been clear and consistent. The mainstream media attempted to “rig” the election for four years, always reporting the words, actions and character of President Trump negatively, attacking him for what it praised in previous Presidents, virtually never giving him credit for his successes, refusing to do critical analysis of his political foes’ charges, elevating non stories to week-long “scandals,” burying actual stories that might undermine the AUC agenda.

This is beyond dispute; I documented the process thoroughly, as it was the greatest professional ethics breach in modern U.S. history, and I still didn’t cover its full extent. Coverage of the Trump presidency was warped to ensure that he would be unsuccessful, that the public would distrust him, and that he would not be re-elected. In the post about this, I used the term “steal,” not the President’s term “rig.” In a subsequent post focusing on the embargoed Hunter Biden story, I used “rig” with quotation marks, because it’s not my term, and it has been used misleadingly by the President. However that was a direct deception of the American people right before the election with the intent of affecting the election. The word isn’t that far removed from what happened.

I have never said that the election was stolen or rigged by voter fraud, as Trump and many conservative sources claim it was. Nobody should make that assertion at this point, especially President Trump. I have agreed that the use of mail-in ballots ensured that there would be some voter fraud, and that there is much circumstantial evidence to indicate that vote totals were manipulated in various ways to help Biden. Some of that circumstantial evidence is the refusal of Democratic officials to want to investigate the matter.

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Prelude To “The Pandemic Creates A Classic And Difficult Ethics Conflict, But The Resolution Is Clear,” Part III… Ethics Quote Of The Century: President Donald J. Trump

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

abusive-relationship-larger

“Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life.”

—–President Donald J. Trump, writing on Twitter in October, after he tested positive

When everybody is attacking and insulting the President now, especially those who didn’t have the guts to do so when he wasn’t a lame duck and they were still afraid of him, this seems like a propitious time to give him due credit for an important and perceptive statement that perfectly expresses the message of the final installment of an Ethics Alarms series that began way back in May.

The sentiment the President succinctly and eloquently expressed was quintessentially American, as well as identical to what other leaders have been lauded for in the past. President Trump, in contrast, was attacked and condemned for expressing this simple truth. He “downplayed the deadly threat of the virus” said the Times. “He isn’t taking the pandemic seriously!” erupted Vogue. After all, the virus “ruined” Amanda Kloot’s life! How dare he not tell as all to be terrified, and to make all of our plans and calibrate our decisions and goals based on the assumption that doom was nigh.

Funny, I don’t recall historians condemning FDR for “downplaying” the threat of the Great Depression when he said,

I don’t recall the British accusing Winston Churchill of downplaying the threat posed by Nazi Germany while hundreds of thousands of British troops were nearly trapped an Dunkirk, and he announced to Parliament, “We will never surrender!”:

This is because the news media, tunnel-visioned health experts, and elected officials who want to make Americans dependent of the government psychologically and factually, want the nation to be fearful. They want us to surrender to the pandemic. They want us to allow it to control out lives. And for most of this year, it has.

President Trump is among the Americans I would view most unlikely to utter an ethical statement, much less a great one, but this was a great statement, essential, inspirational, and right.

I assume this is sufficient notice of what the conclusion of Part III will be.

[If you review the linked post, note that every one of the ten stipulation I laid out in May are still accurate.]

Ethics Coda, 1/11/21, At The End Of A Long, Bad Day…

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

end

1. Let’s start with an Ethics Alarms project…I’d like to see as many people as possible to post this story on Facebook: “Facebook Suspends Ron Paul Following Column Criticizing Big Tech Censorship.” I did, just to see if Facebook would suspend me. After all, it banned Ethics Alarms for two years because I dared to question whether it was fair to regard Fred Astaire’s use of dark make-up to portray Bill Robinson in a “Top Hat”number as racist. Ron Paul did nothing except share an article he wrote criticizing Twitter and Facebook for banning President Donald Trump from their platforms. Paul wrote in part,“The justifications given for the silencing of wide swaths of public opinion made no sense and the process was anything but transparent. Nowhere in President Trump’s two ‘offending’ Tweets, for example, was a call for violence expressed explicitly or implicitly. It was a classic example of sentence first, verdict later.”

Yup. That makes sense. It makes more sense than a lot of what Paul says. There is no possible justification for what Facebook did. (So far, I haven’t been “deplatformed.” I just checked.)

What’s going on here?

2. Race-baiting at its worst. Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA)—yes, the same guy the expressed concern that U.S. troops on Guam might cause it to “tip over”—told a nodding Al Sharpton that he has “no doubt” that the Trump supporters who raided the U.S. Capitol would have “lynched” black lawmakers like him had not police prevented it. He really said this. He may even believe it. He is part of the Democratic House majority. Does anyone in that majority have the integity to tell him he’s an irresponsible fool, or is this the accepted narrative: that Americans who don’t trust the election results want to kill African Americans? That’s funny: it’s a lot like the idea behind the riots the Democrats and mainstream media were justifying over the summer,

But it’s not just Johnson, though he’s special.

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Pelosi’s Unconscionable “Snap Impeachment,” Part II: If This Happens, It Will Be Time To Release A Real “Kraken,” And I Hope I Can Help Feed Pelosi To It…[Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 49 Comments

clash-of-the-titans-2010-kraken

Plan T, the apparent plan to impeach President Trump for a crime he clearly did not commit, is arguably the worse of the various AUC-contrived removal plots, because it will do the most damage by far. Even the actual impeachment, the ridiculous Plan S, had little long-term effect, and the Democrats abandoned it even as a campaign issue. Even they didn’t take it seriously: like so much of the rest, it was just one more way to denigrate, obstruct and weaken the leader of their own nation. It was part of strategy, that’s all. As I wrote in Part I, this is different in kind:

Plan T must be recognized for what it is: an act of pure hate and vengeance, and a deliberate, calculated insult to Trump’s supporters as well as those citizens who believe that that their government should not behave like third-world failed state.

I admit it: I am angry about this, and if it occurs, I will not forget it or forgive it—and I do not consider myself one of the Trump supporters being ostentatiously slapped in the face. I am angry because this is not how the United States of America behaves towards its leaders. I know readers here are sick of me saying this, but I will say it again because it is true: the nation owes respect and debt of gratitude to every President of the United States, without exception, when they leave office, and that respect should continue to the end of their days, and throughout our history. That’s right, every single one of them, the skilled and less-than-skilled, the competent and incompetent, the best and the worst of them, Andrew Johnson as well as Lincoln, Nixon as well as Eisenhower, the Bushes as well as Reagan, Hoover as well as FDR, Carter, Clinton, Obama, and yes, Donald Trump.

The job was always a killing one and a near impossible, one, and it has only become more difficult and unpleasant. Taking the job is an act of patriotism, and enduring it is an act of courage and character. No President has been treated as atrociously by so much of the public, the opposing party, his own party and the news media as Donald Trump, and it is remarkable that he accomplished as mach as he did under continuous attack. Nearly every other President has been accorded a “honeymoon,” the occasional benefit of the doubt, the opportunity to just play the head of state and accept the pomp, ceremony and traditional acclaim that comes with it. Not President Trump. He was not permitted a peaceful inauguration, nor respectful audiences in Congress to his State of the Union messages, nor the pleasure of throwing out the first ball in the baseball season, nor the host role in the Kennedy Center Honors, nor even an invitation to attend state funerals. Yet President Trump buggered on, as Winston Churchill said, doing his best to try to fulfill his promises and do what in his view was in the best interests of America.

He has been kicked virtually every day of his four years in office, and now his repulsive, vindictive, thuggish foes want to kick him as he goes out the door.

The effort to lay lat weeks riot at the Capitol at Trump’s feet is too cynical and false to be tolerated. Professor Turley had a succinct summary of how disingenuous that is in his recent column in the Hill:

We have had four years of violent protests, including the attacks on federal buildings, members of Congress, and symbols of our democracy. Former Attorney General William Barr was heavily criticized for clearing Lafayette Square last year after protesters injured numerous law enforcement officers, were injured themselves, burned a historic building, caused property damage, and threatened to breach the White House grounds. There were violent riots during the inauguration of Donald Trump and a lethal assault on some Republican lawmakers playing softball. Indeed, this year started as last year ended, with attacks on federal buildings in Portland and other cities.

It is beyond hypocritical for the same people and party that largely encouraged, enables and rationalized these and more to now pretend to be shocked, call a single, particularly stupid and pointless riot at the Capitol a “threat to Democracy,” and to attempt to impeach the President for his role in it, which consisted of endorsing a Constitutionally protected protest. The true threat to Democracy has been ongoing for four years, and it was called “the resistance.” I find it hard to believe that the American people will accept such a transparent and Orwellian distortion of reality, but I know that I won’t.

If the Congress wants to censure President Trump or some other symbolic gesture, fine. As I have written here, it was inappropriate for the President to be challenging the validity of his defeat, even more so than it was for Hillary Clinton to challenge the validity of her defeat, by Trump. Doing so was, in sequence, predictable, irresponsible, dangerous, in many ways justified, and completely in character. I would not object to an official precedent being established holding that no matter how close or dubious an election is, challenges to the results must not be pronounced in public, by POTUS.

Impeachment on this basis, however, is pure lawlessness. Here’s Turley again in another column (this is his specialty, after all). The emphasis is mine:

‘“..Democrats are seeking to remove Trump on the basis of his remarks to supporters before the rioting at the Capitol. Like others, I condemned those remarks as he gave them, calling them reckless and wrong. I also opposed the challenges to electoral votes in Congress. But his address does not meet the definition for incitement under the criminal code. It would be viewed as protected speech by the Supreme Court.

When I testified in the impeachment hearings of Trump and Bill Clinton, I noted that an article of impeachment does not have to be based on any clear crime but that Congress has looked to the criminal code to weigh impeachment offenses. For this controversy now, any such comparison would dispel claims of criminal incitement. Despite broad and justified condemnation of his words, Trump never actually called for violence or riots. But he urged his supporters to march on the Capitol to raise their opposition to the certification of electoral votes and to back the recent challenges made by a few members of Congress. Trump told the crowd “to peacefully and patriotically make your voices be heard.”….

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Weekend Ethics Warm-Up, 1/10/2021: Onward!

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

We need a rousing hymn today!

Today marks two major milestones in the largely failed effort to use international bodies to promote world peace.

On January 10, 1920, the League of Nations formally was launched when the Covenant of the League of Nations, ratified by 42 nations in 1919, took effect. Unfortunately for the body, the United States was not one of the 42, the Republican-controlled Senate having rejected the pact after President Woodrow Wilson had condemned the world to another world war by enabling brutal revenge on Germany by the winners of the Great War in order to get his dream off the drawing board.

The League of Nations proceeded without the United States, holding its first meeting in Geneva on November 15, 1920. During the 1920s, the League, headquartered in Geneva,successfully mediated minor international disputes. But when serious international tensions rose in the early 1930s, the League proved tragically ineffectual. After its invasion of China was condemned, Japan just quit the organization. Nor did the organization deal with the rearmament of Germany and the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. By the time World War II began, the League was silent and effectively defunct. In 1946, the League of Nations was officially dissolved with the the first meeting of the United Nations, which, coincidentally or by chance, also occurred on January 10. Whether its successor at this time in its history is any more effectual than the League of Nations was a topic for another day.

1 You think we’ve got ethics problems? If Rationalization #22 works for you, here’s something to ponder: I June, the Pakistani aviation minister told the nation’s Parliament that around a third of the pilots working for Pakistan air carriers had fraudulent pilot licenses.

2. Let’s see: is it possible for me to disagree with anyone more than I disagree with this guy? I don’t think so. Michigan State Professor Peter De Costa told MSU Today that it constituted “linguistic racism,” which he defines as “acts of racism […] perpetuated against individuals on the basis of their language use,” to ask a person to repeat what he said because you can’t understand what he or she said due to a strong non-English accent. [Pointer: The College Fix]

I guess its better to just pretend you understand, and make a mistake, or not to be able to respond to what the individual asked.

De Costa’s article “Linguistic racism: its negative effects and why we need to contest it” was published in the “International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism.” Note that when someone boasts of having a “peer-reviewed article” published in a scholarly journal, that doesn’t mean the article isn’t utter crap, or that the author is worth paying attention to.

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