U.S. Society

There Is No Justification For This Action By The Paducah (Ky.) Public School Board In Logic, Law Or Ethics [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

I considered several of the Ethics Alarms movie clips for this one, finally settling on the standard “The Bridge Over The River Kwai” moment above. I easily could have chosen this one…

or even this one…

…but “Madness!” won out.

The College Fix reports that Paducah Superintendent of Schools Donald Shively has been suspended by the School Board for 40 days without pay because an 18-year-old photo of him in blackface at a Halloween party came to public attention. Shively will spend his exile “engaging in additional education, training and community involvement.”

It would have made sense, at least by the Naked Teacher Principle logic, to fire Shively. That would be based on a straightforward calculation that students could not ever come to trust an administrator who had engaged in conduct many (erroneously) believe is always indicative of racist views and intent, just as, in the cases involving teachers who allowed themselves to be photographed naked or in otherwise sexually provocative poses and the photos that have been discovered on the web by students, what has been seen cannot be unseen. If there is a judgment made that such photos permanently undermine the ability of a teacher to do her job, then she (or he, in a few cases) must be fired.

Similarly, firing may be the only remedy, by that reasoning, for a superintendent haunted by photographic evidence that he engaged in conduct now viewed as per se taboo, unless the former blackface virtuoso is the Democratic Governor of Virginia, a strange exception but a real one.

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Ethics Dunce, Rogue And Fool To Be Held Up As An Example Forever More: Dr. Anthony Fauci

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Fauci

From the New York Times:

“In the pandemic’s early days, Dr. Fauci tended to cite the same 60 to 70 percent estimate that most experts did. About a month ago, he began saying “70, 75 percent” in television interviews. And last week, in an interview with CNBC News, he said “75, 80, 85 percent” and “75 to 80-plus percent….In a telephone interview the next day, Dr. Fauci acknowledged that he had slowly but deliberately been moving the goal posts. He is doing so, he said, partly based on new science, and partly on his gut feeling that the country is finally ready to hear what he really thinks. Hard as it may be to hear, he said, he believes that it may take close to 90 percent immunity to bring the virus to a halt — almost as much as is needed to stop a measles outbreak.“

No, what is hard to hear, though at this point hardly a shock to anyone with a functioning brain, is that Fauci now admits he’s been lying….you know, “for our own good.”

Don’t heed the spin, the double-talk and the euphemisms: when someone tells you something other than what he or she knows to be true or believes to be true, that individual is deliberately attempting to deceive you by communicating what they believe to be untrue as true. That’s lying. No debate. No defense. That’s what it is, by definition. “I did it for your own good” is a rationalization.

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And The Latest Honoree In The Ethics Alarms “Presumed Racism Hall of Fame” is . . .

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

White judges

Among the bulwarks of the George Floyd Freakout and its accompanying “anti-racism” hustle is that all whites are racists, non-whites cannot succeed, prosper or find justice in the United States, and that anti-black racism should be presumed in any situation where that presumption might advance the cause of a black citizen.

Here is a blazing example, out of Fairfax County, Virginia, virtually in my back yard. Fairfax County Circuit Court Judge David Bernhard issued an opinion his week that the portraits of past judges from the Fairfax County Circuit Court might create the impression that the court itself biased. Bernhard won’t allow any portraits to be on display for any trial he presides over going forward.

“The Court is concerned the portraits may serve as unintended but implicit symbols that suggest the courtroom may be a place historically administered by whites for whites, and that thus others are of a lesser standing in the dispensing of justice,” Bernhard wrote. “The Defendant’s constitutional right to a fair jury trial stands paramount over the countervailing interest of paying homage to the tradition of adorning courtrooms with portraits that honor past jurists.” The judge’s opinion observes that the U.S. is experiencing “heightened attention to the past inequities visited upon persons of color,” so the fact that 45 of the 47 past judges whose portraits hang in the Fairfax County courthouse were white is now an implicit threat to black defendants.

His grovel came in response to a request to remove the portraits in a motion from the layer for Terrance Shipp Jr., who is scheduled to stand trial on charges of eluding police, assault on a law enforcement officer and other counts.

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On Revenge, Tit-For-Tat And The Biden Presidency

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

tit for tat

I would really like to accept the Biden Presidency as I have accepted every Presidency in my life so far, and without giving away secrets, there have been a lot of them. You see, I really believe what Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton lectured Donald Trump about when they were certain Hillary would win the 2016 election. I believe that the American public, no matter who each individual voter may have favored, ought to welcome the newly elected President with hope and good will, pronounce the past irrelevant, and pledge to do whatever is necessary to make the incoming administration successful. In other words, every American should behave exactly as Democrats (including Hillary and Nancy), progressives, the resistance, numerous professional groups and the vast majority of the news media did not behave when President Trump was elected.

Why do I believe this? As I have said so many times I am sick of me, I believe this because that response is the only way republics can survive, and because that is how this republic has survived and thrived since the Civil War. If you would peruse the Ethics Alarms posts on the topic and related ones since November 2016, as I viewed the impending Presidency of Donald Trump with the approximate enthusiasm of one diagnosed with genital warts, one message was consistent: we break this tradition at great risk. If the Axis of Unethical Conduct (I didn’t call them that for a while, but that’s the alliance that was responsible–-the resistance, Democrats, and the news media) devotes itself to savaging and undermining the nation’s duly elected President by any means necessary, it-they will guarantee a cycle in which political warfare, which once was de-escalated every four years, will be a constant, making cooperation, unity, and competent government impossible.

Is Joe Biden “my” President? Sure he is. I’m an American, and our system made him President. Do I want him to succeed? Sure I do. Failed Presidencies are bad for all Americans, the nation and the world. If Joe Biden asked me to take on a project, a job or an assignment, would I say yes? Unless I found the substance of what I was asked to do objectively unconscionable, yes I would.

However, it is clear as day now that there is no way Democrats and progressives can avoid the consequences of their shattering the norm that once gave Presidents a “honeymoon” and that guaranteed every President-Elect overwhelming public support simply by his stepping into the metaphorical shoes of Washington and Lincoln. Could there have been a way? The manner in which Biden and his supporters have handled the transition so far would have killed any wisp of a chance if there were one, and I doubt there ever was. The “now that we’ve regained power by breaking the rules, we hope everyone will go back to following them again for the good of the country” routine is too insulting and cynical to generate anything but resentment.

Still, what f Joe had come out in November and said,

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Tree Day Ethics Warm-Up, December 22, 2020

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Tree needles

I’ll be writing this between bouts with the lights. The Marshall Tree was supposed to go up a week ago, then it rained, so the thing had to dry out. Then last week was consumed with an expert witness report, and now this weird tree with long needles and soft branches is standing in my living room, and none of my usual decoration techniques, and probably only 30% of our ornaments, will work with the damn thing. Yesterday I was supposed to hang the lights, and I was so stressed out I couldn’t do it. But today is the day…

1. Anyone surprised at this? A December survey by the international organization More in Common seemed to show that citizens on the far left are the most likely to report negative feelings about the United States.. Only 34% of the group More in Common calls “progressive activists” agreed with the statement “I feel proud to be American.” It was the only ideological group in the survey that agreed with that statement at a rate below 60%

All other respondent groups, including minorities and Americans identifying as politically conservative, strongly agreed with the statement, including 70% of black Americans and 76% of Hispanic Americans. Whites registered a 75% proportion asserting patriotic pride.

100% of the group categorized as “devoted conservatives” said that they take pride in being Americans. 80% of all respondents surveyed said they were thankful to be American, with more than two-thirds reporting a connection to their local communities and fellow Americans. The weakest sense of belonging to the culture and community came from progressive activists and younger respondents.

2. On priority for vaccines...I have read a lot of unethical nonsense being framed as ethics about the question of who should get the vaccine first. I expect to read a lot more. A Times article on the topic says, “Ultimately, the choice comes down to whether preventing death or curbing the spread of the virus and returning to some semblance of normalcy is the highest priority.” Is that really a difficult choice? Obviously the top priority for society in both the long and the short run is to get back to normal as quickly as possible, not to prioritize trying to delay the mortality of citizens who don’t have that long to live anyway. I haven’t heard the “if it saves just one life” rationalization yet, but I’m sure it is coming.

Then there is this: “To me the issue of ethics is very significant, very important for this country,” Dr. Peter Szilagyi, a committee member and a pediatrics professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said at the time, “and clearly favors the essential worker group because of the high proportion of minority, low-income and low-education workers among essential workers.”

There it is: let’s prioritize by race, because not prioritizing by race is racist.

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Integrity Test At Harris -Teeter’s

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I was doing a quick shopping run this afternoon at the local Harris Teeter’s, and ran into one of those little ethics challenges that eventually define us all.

As I was placing all my items on the conveyor belt, the nice old guy loading my cart—he’s helped me before—pulled the cart ahead so he could start putting in the bags. I had to catch up to to it to rescue the soft-drinks in the lower section of the cart. Eventually all was well and I was checked out— I saved 50 bucks!—and I rolled my bounty into the parking lot where I began loading it all into the trunk. Just as I thought I had finished, I noticed a large pack of paper towels (speaking of Bounty), maybe 15 dollars worth, sitting in the bottom of the cart in the front where I had originally put it. I got a horrible thought: had I left teh store without paying for it? I didn’t recall putting it on the belt. I decided that it must have escaped the old bagger’s attention when he pulled my mostly empty cart past the register.

So I was a paper towel thief. Now what? There was a huge line at all the registers. I could take the package to the customer service counter, but my receipt had the name of the cashier on it, and I worried that I would get her in trouble. I’ve been in these mess-ups before, and usually everyone would rather just avoid the hassle of getting it straight. I even considered driving back to the store tomorrow and just paying the money after explaining what happened. I checked the receipt, and didn’t see the item, but then I didn’t see several things I knew I had purchased. After avoiding several bouts of “Oh, hell, it just paper, why not go home and forget about it?,” I decided to be late coming home and to just get at the end of the line with the paper towels.

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Sunday Ethics Decorations, 12/20/20: I’m Sorry, This Stuff Is All Depressing

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

1. So it’s come to this...the #1 post on Ethics Alarms over the last 365 days is this one, which has been up for less than a month. The bulk of it isn’t even my work. I guess I should be writing a poetry review blog.

2. From the “What were they thinking?” files: David Werking, a Michigan man who was temporarily living in his parents’ home after a divorce, sued them for destroying his pornography collection of videos and magazines worth an estimated $29,000. US district judge Paul Maloney ruled that his parents had no right to throw out his collection. “There is no question that the destroyed property was David’s property,” Maloney said. “Defendants repeatedly admitted that they destroyed the property.”

Werking’s parents said they had a right, as his landlords, to toss out his collection. Where they got taht crackpot idea, I do not know. I would consider the lawyer who took their case unethical, and sanctionably so. Not many cases breach legal ethics Rule 3.1 prohibiting frivolous litigation, but this seems like one to me.

“Defendants do not cite to any statute or caselaw to support their assertion that landlords can destroy property that they dislike,” the judge said. I’m not surprised, since there are none.

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It’s Friday Open Forum Time!

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

Open forum6

I know, I know, we just had one four days ago. But that was because I forgot to have on last Friday, and if I wait until next Friday, it will be Christmas, when typically Ethics Alarms has about 14 visitors. Besides, Instapundit and Althouse feature the equivalent of Open Forums ever day, and get thousands of posts. Of course, those aren’t limited to ethics.

So we’re back on schedule.

“We’re all depending on you. Good luck.”

Monday’s Friday Open Forum

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

Confused2

Confused? So am I, obviously. After announcing that I would conclude each work week with a Friday Open Forum, I promptly forgot. Luckily–or ominously?—no one seemed to notice or care.

Well, I care, and here’s last Friday’s Open Forum, three days late.

Have at it.

Weird Tales Of “The Great Stupid”: Another Kid Is Suspended Because A Teacher Saw A BB Gun In His Home

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

fear

What are normal, reasonable people who are concerned about the shrinking liberties around them to do?

(I don’t have an answer right now, but that is the urgent question episodes like the ones described in this post raise.)

In 2020, I’ve written about two head-exploding stories involving innocent children forced by their school’s hysteria over the Wuhan virus to allow Big Brother’s eyes into their homes, and who found themselves being demonized and punished because of the completely legal and harmless items a teacher saw there.

First there was the asinine June incident in Baltimore County Maryland, where a 5th grade teacher at the Seneca School saw a BB gun hanging on the wall in an 11-year-old student’s bedroom. She took a screenshot of the child’s room, then notified the principal, who alerted the school safety officer, who called the police. They, in turn, made an unannounced visit to the student’s home.

At least they didn’t kneel on his neck. “I feel like parents need to be made aware of what the implications are, what the expectations are,” the child’s mother, a military veteran, told reporters. “No,” Ethics Alarms concluded, “Parents need to tell schools, administrators and teachers, what parents will tolerate, and the public education system needs a thorough upgrade and overhaul.”

Then, in September, we discussed an even more ridiculous episode. Colorado seventh grader Isaiah Elliott was attending on online art class when a teacher spied Isaiah’s  toy gun, a neon green and black plastic “weapon” with an orange tip and the words “Zombie Hunter” printed on the side. The teacher notified the school principal, and the school called the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office, which conducted a welfare check on the boy without calling his parents first. Isaiah, meanwhile, was suspended for five days. The conclusion here on that fiasco:

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