U.S. Society

Monday Ethics Madness, 5/24/2021: Ramalamadingdong

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

1. Headline from The Great Stupid: In today’s New York Times, front page, before the fold: “Crime Surging, Cities Reassess Policing Limits.” Wow! Who could have seen that coming? There’s plenty of stupid in the main body of the article too. For example, it quoted LA citizen Helen Jones, an African-American woman, thusly: “I don’t care how bad it gets — no one wants more cops. We don’t need tougher police, we need more alternatives to help people thrive.”

This is yet another example of what Homer Simpson called “Ramalamadingdong”: meaningless blather (like “Give peace a chance”) that people just say as if it communicates anything coherent, when it doesn’t. Laws have to be enforced. Law enforcement requires police, and sometimes force. There is no alternative to law enforcement if people are going to “thrive.”

It’s unethical to advocate for policies that are in defiance of reality, Helen. Shut up. You’re not helping.

2. Ah, yes, the old “I’m only human” defense. If Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan’s dictatorial governor who has distinguished herself with multiple arbitrary restrictions on personal liberty using the pretense that she was fighting the pandemic, wasn’t such a proven hypocrite and phony maybe her apology for being caught red-handed violating her own protocols might be a little more credible. But Whitmer is a weasel, so when photos surfaced showing her openly violating her mandated social distancing guidelines at a restaurant, happily socializing with a large group of unmasked friends—you know, the Special People— at the Landshark Bar & Grill, her mea culpa can’t be taken seriously. “Throughout the pandemic, I’ve been committed to following public health protocols,” Whitmer said in a statement reported by the Detroit News.  “Yesterday, I went with friends to a local restaurant. As more people arrived, the tables were pushed together. Because we were all vaccinated, we didn’t stop to think about it. In retrospect, I should have thought about it. I am human. I made a mistake, and I apologize.” Continue reading →

Ethics Miscreants In Yet Another Police-Involved Death Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Ronald Greene

Another death of a black man in an encounter with the police has re-emerged from 2019, this time from Louisiana. It has even more of the unethical elements of past tragedies/botches/fiascos than usual, and the cast of characters are all playing their now familiar parts to maximize the likelihood of protests, riots, political grandstanding and confusion, not to mention more deaths and further damage to race relation and law enforcement. Good job, everyone!

This is a true ethics train wreck, because nobody, literally nobody, who has been involved with the episode so far has behaved ethically. At this point, I see no hope that the mess can be cleaned up, but maybe we can learn something from how thoroughly another Police Meet Black Lawbreaker disaster has been mishandled by everyone to ensure the worst conceivable outcome. In no particular order, here is a list of those responsible for the Ronald Greene Ethics Train Wreck.

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Saturday Ethics Cool-Off, 5/22/2021: Another “Bad Ethics Date”

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

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Yikes. May 22 is another of those cursed dates where ethics rot was in the air. For example, in 1958, rock superstar Jerry Lee Lewis admitted that his new bride was a child. He even lied while doing that, “admitting” she was 15 when Myra Gail Lewis was actually only 13 years old,and also Jerry Lee’s first cousin. Another detail Lewis didn’t mention was that the loving pair had married five months before his divorce from his second wife. Jerry Lee insisted the second marriage wasn’t legally valid because that one had taken place before his divorce from his first wife.

Other ethics low points on this day:

  • In 1939, Italy and Germany agreed to a military and political alliance, giving birth to the Axis powers, which would eventually include Japan.
  • In 1856, Southern Congressman Preston Brooks savagely beats Northern Senator Charles Sumner in the Senate Chamber. On May 19, Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner began a two-day speech on the Senate floor in which he attacked three pro-slavery colleagues by name, one of whom, South Carolina Senator Andrew P. Butler, was sick and absent from the proceedings. Butler’s cousin, Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina, decided to defend the honor of his kin. Wielding a cane, Brooks entered the Senate chamber and began beating Sumner at his desk, which was bolted to the floor. Sumner’s legs were pinned by the desk so he could not escape, and the beating continued until Senators subdued Brooks. Brooks supporters cheered the vicious act and sent him many replacement canes. Sumner could not return to the Senate for three years while he recuperated from his injuries.
  • In 2017, right after pop star after Ariana Grande finished the final song of her May 22 concert at Manchester Arena in Great Britain, a suicide bomber detonated an explosion killing 22 concertgoers and injuring 116 more. ISIS claimed responsibility.
  • In 1868 the “Great Train Robbery” was pulled off, with seven members of the Reno Gang getting away with $98,000 in cash from a train’s safe in Indiana.

And a special Happy Birthday to Ted Kaczynski, the “Unabomber,” born this day in Evergreen Park, Illinois in 1942. Yes, we’re still keeping him alive; after all, he only murdered three innocent people (he maimed or injured 23 others.).

1. The Great Stupid, International Strain: The Globe Theatre, Great Britain’s famous reconstruction of the Elizabethan playhouse where William Shakespeare had his works first performed, has launched a project to “decolonise’ Shakespeare’s plays, the centerpiece of Western literature. The Globe has been listening to experts who conclude that his work is ‘problematic’ for linking whiteness to beauty. Another academic maintains all of Shakespeare’s plays are “race plays’ as they all contain ‘whiteness’. For example, the first line of the 1595 comedy “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” famously opens with Thesus saying: “Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour Draws on apace.”

The Horror. Why any “expert” who makes an argument like this isn’t regarded exactly as if she had appeared in public naked, painted blue and wearing a squid on her head is beyond me. As Great Stupid break-outs go, this one is pretty trivial. Shakespeare plays have been routinely debased by absurd adaptations and meat-axe editing for centuries. The only reason this example is noteworthy is its source. You’d think the keepers of the Bard’s flame in England would have more sense, not to mention respect. [Pointer: Other Bill]

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Addendum To “Stop Making Me Defend Chris Cuomo!”…

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Cuomos

Apparently I wasn’t clear enough in the previous post, so allow me to address that.

Just as it is hypocritical in the extreme for any journalist, and certainly CNN, to tut-tut at Chris Cuomo for behaving exactly as biased, partisan, unethical and dead ethics-alarmed journalists do, it is absurd and self-defeating for alleged critics of our ethics-free journalism to stomp on Cuomo as if he did anything anyone paying attention should have known he would do without a second thought. (I assumed that the clip from “Casablanca” would make that sufficiently obvious. Guess not.)

The point is not to claim that Cuomo advising his high elected official brother in an official, if private, meeting of his aides is what an ethical journalist can or should do. Of course an ethical journalist shouldn’t do it. The point is that there are no ethical journalists; the journalism “profession”—the quotes are because professionals must be trustworthy, and anyone who trusts today’s fake journalists is a sucker—no longer has any ethical standards. Therefore a member of the “profession” who violates what are already dead letters cannot be said to have breached any “norm;” and we should not allow phony criticism of Cuomo to delude us into thinking otherwise.

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Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 5/20/21: Happy Birthday, John Stuart Mill!

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Mill

John Stuart Mill (1806–73), was born on May 20, not merely the most important figure in ethics to have a connection to this day, but also the most important human being born on this day in the history of civilization—yes, even more than Cher, who turns 75 today. Mill’s refined the concept of liberty that required the freedom of the individual in opposition to state control. He was the most influential proponent of utilitarianism, the crucial ethical theory developed by Jeremy Bentham. He helped reform scientific inquiry and research, recognizing the pervasive risks of confirmation bias, by clearly explaining the premises of falsifiability as the key component in the scientific method.

Mill was also a Member of Parliament and a towering figure in liberal political philosophy. You have certainly heard or read his most famous quote: “A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither.”

A thorough biography and analysis of his work is here.

1. Justice Breyer doesn’t care about making sure the Supreme Court doesn’t get more conservative. Good. That’s not his job. Democrats realize that their control of the Senate is hanging by a thread, “thread” defined as a few superannuated Senators who could drop dead any second, giving the GOP a majority. Thus they are increasingly pushing Justice Stephen G. Breyer, 82, to retire now so Joe Biden can name an appropriately liberal replacement (who will also have to be female and black, vastly limiting the pool of possible choices without concern for actual legal competence.) “Breyer’s best chance at protecting his legacy and impact on the law is to resign now, clearing the way for a younger justice who shares his judicial outlook,” wrote Erwin Chemerinsky, the hyper-partisan dean of the law school at the University of California, Berkeley in The Washington Post this month. Got that? The 80+year-old Democratic Senators have to hold on to their jobs like grim death, but Breyer is being lobbied to retire. Hypocrisy, they name is Democrat! But it isn’t Breyer:

The Justice has been particularly vocal about the importance of not allowing politics to influence judges’ work, including their decisions about when to retire. “My experience of more than 30 years as a judge has shown me that, once men and women take the judicial oath, they take the oath to heart,” he said last month in a lecture at Harvard Law School. “They are loyal to the rule of law, not to the political party that helped to secure their appointment….If the public sees judges as politicians in robes, its confidence in the courts, and in the rule of law itself, can only diminish, diminishing the court’s power.”

I wonder if he’s read (or seen) “The Pelican Brief”…Meanwhile, research suggest that retirement tends to kill Supreme Court Justices. A paper in The Journal of Demography studied the effects of retirement by Supreme Court justices on their future longevity, and found that the effect of retirement was about the same as smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. The Democrats don’t care if Breyer dies sooner than later, though, as long as he does it when they can pick his successor, or after he’s quit.

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Predictable But Depressing: SCOTUS Agreeing To Consider What Is A Viable Unborn Child Triggers Emotional And Irrelevant Obfuscation From Pro-Abortion Propagandists

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

handmaidens

Gee, that was fast! All the Supreme Court did was agree to look at a part of 1973’s Roe v.Wade that has been rendered anachronistic by subsequent developments in science and medicine, and the pro-abortion lobby freaked out. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization involves the 2018 Mississippi law that bans abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The case raises the obviously relevant ethical, moral and legal question of when human life can be and should be subject to law’s protection. Roe, nearly a half century-old now, based its limits regarding when an abortion was a woman’s constitutional right on when an unborn child was “viable,” a word that requires a conclusion about when human life begins as well. It is not only reasonable but necessary for the court to clarify this. Question 1 in the petition for the writ of certiorari is “Whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional.” Good question.

So why the freakout? Simple: neither side in the abortion debate has ever been willing to debate the issue fairly, as both ignore the obviously relevant rights and issues of one of the two human beings involved in the abortion equation. As Ethics Alarms has pointed out before and will continue to do until the stars turn cold, this is an ethics conflict, and a difficult one. Two strong ethical principles are opposing each other, both with major societal implications. In ethics conflicts, the ethical process of balancing is required, but neither side is willing to risk balancing regarding abortion. Thus both have conducted their side of the debate by dishonestly denying the existence of the ethical realities opposing the result they want. The anti-abortion advocates refuse to give fair weight to the effect an unwanted pregnancy can have on a woman’s life and future, and women’s legitimate interests in their own autonomy (which still may not be absolute.) Pro-abortion advocates deliberately ignore the fact, and it is a fact, that abortion involves the taking of human life.

This mutual dishonesty is reflected in the euphemisms the sides of the controversy use to obscure the real problem. “Pro Choice” makes it sound like the only issue is a woman’s autonomy ( Life? What life?). “Pro Life” wrongly cuts the interests of the women involved out of the balancing act. This is the reason the abortion debate has made no progress in a hundred years. The two sides are talking about two different things, and have neither the integrity nor the honesty to deal with the balancing problem.

Roe was a badly reasoned and irresponsibly issued ruling, authored by a serial SCOTUS mediocrity, Justice Harry Blackmun. Somehow, the opinion bootstrapped abortion into being a right under the “unenumerated” Constitutional right of privacy by analogizing it to birth control. But the case in which the Court rightly found that the State had no business telling couples that they could not engage in birth control didn’t involve killing anyone. I’d call that a material distinction.

Roe was one of the most breath-taking leaps of law and logic in the history of the Court, and a throbbing example of judicial activism run amuck. Nonetheless, it has been the law of the land long enough to be regarded as stare decisus; for good and practical reasons, over-ruling the entire case would be bad judicial policy. Addressing aspects of the opinion that were based on scientific assumptions no longer valid, however, is common sense, as well as sound legal policy.

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Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 5/18/2021: Terrible Ideas, Past, Present, And Future

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

1. Gee, I’m surprised CNN didn’t give him Don Lemon’s old show…Over the weekend, Adeel Raja, a CNN contributor in Pakistan, tweeted, “The world today needs a Hitler.” Raja has repeatedly praised Hitler for trying to exterminate the Jews. During the Wold Cup in soccer, he said that he was rooting for Germany in the final against Argentina because “Hitler was a German and he did good with those jews!” (Actually, there may be more old Nazis in Argentina than Germany, but that’s quibbling.)

Last week’s tweet was deleted (Twitter did not suspend his account; after all, he’s not a Republican or President of the United States). Raja had 54 articles published under his byline at CNNbetween September 1, 2014, and September 15, 2020, all focusing on Pakistani news. CNN apparently didn’t mind relying on an open anti-Semite for news analysis until the latest tweet caused the issue to be raised.

After initially saying that it didn’t recognize Raja’s name, CNN released a statement that “he will not be working with CNN again in any capacity.”

2. The latest strategy in the Left’s plot to keep American masked forever. By “Left” I also mean “the news media,” since they are virtually identical. Digression: Judge Silberman’s brave and accurate confirmation of this provoked fear and horror among the AUC. I wrote about it here, but in case you missed it, here is his entire dissent in a recent libel case. He wrote in part,

“It should be borne in mind that the first step taken by any potential authoritarian or dictatorial regime is to gain control of communications, particularly the delivery of news. It is fair to conclude, therefore, that one-party control of the press and media is a threat to a viable democracy. “[The New York Times and the Washington Post ] are virtually Democratic Party broadsheets. And the news section of The Wall Street Journal leans in the same direction…Nearly all television—network and cable—is a Democratic Party trumpet.”

USA Today, a lesser trumpet to be sure, more like a kazoo, gave us this:

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Today’s “How Trump May Be Right About How The Election Was ‘Stolen'” Notes

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

First, we have the fascinating case in Colorado of Barry Morphew, who was charged this month with murdering his wife. This week, he was also accused of casting his wife’s ballot in a fraudulent vote for President Trump. The Washington Post writes, following the script in the Axis of Unethical Conduct‘s double secret memo,

“Barry echoed Trump’s false claims of election fraud as the motivation for his own alleged wrongdoing, according to an affidavit filed Thursday in court. The 53-year-old told FBI agents last month that he did it because “all these other guys are cheating” and said his wife would have backed Trump anyway.“

Every day, in multiple sources, the news media references former President Trump’s “lies” or “false claims” about the election being stolen from him, or of widespread voter fraud. Nobody should doubt that Trump believes that the election was stolen from him, and he has good reasons to think that, though he cannot know that the many ways his unfair treatment in the years leading up to it combined with the handling of the election itself actually changed the result. Yes, his certitude is wrong. Yes, it is irresponsible, and was irresponsible, for Trump to be questioning the legitimacy of the election, because defeated candidates should not do that (Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, Stacey Abrams). But one of the myriad pieces of circumstantial evidence leading many to be suspicious is the news media’s aggressive denials of the claims of Trump and others when it has shown little interest in investigating the matter. They got the President they wanted, or rather got rid of the President they set out to get rid of from November 2016 to November 2020, so the kind of curiosity they focused on the 2000 election count is a distant memory.

It says a lot about the media’s bias that it would continue its official narrative in a story that demonstrates just how easy mail-in ballots made cheating in 2020. Had Morphew not sent in the ballot of a murdered woman, that fraudulent vote would never have been caught. How many other ballots of non-voters, for what ever reason, were filled out by someone else and counted? How does anyone know how this affected the election? One party and its allies pushed hard for a voting method and absurdly loose procedures that made voter fraud easier than it had been in more than a century, the other party opposed it.

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Sunday Afternoon Ethics On The Island Of La Grande Jatte

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

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On this date in 1868, the Senate acquitted President Andrew Johnson of committing “high crimes and misdemeanors” by a single vote, which made the total less than the requisite two-thirds. Johnson’s failed impeachment was the closest in motivation and ethics to the two Trump impeachments. The eleven counts against him were contrived because he was a political annoyance, and was using his power to foil the Republican Senate’s Reconstruction policies. The one real “high crime” was defying an unconstitutional law, the Tenure of Office Act, which Johnson asserted was illegal (and it was).

On the topic of impeachment, two other notes:

  • In the classic 1952 film “The Manchurian Candidate” (not the superfluous remake with Denzel Washington), a U.S. Senator threatens to “bring articles of impeachment” against a Vice- Presidential nominee “to the floor of the Senate.” The Senate doesn’t initiate impeachment; that’s the job of the House.  This is irresponsible scripting. No wonder the public is civically illiterate.

  • Anti-Trump fanatic Rick Wilson, a former GOP consultant, warned Democrats in a podcast, “If the Republicans take over the House, they will impeach Joe Biden…[they] will run show trial Benghazi hearings every day that will never end.” Why yes, Rich that’s right, and it is exactly what the Democrat-controlled House guaranteed by its abuse of the impeachment process and undemocratic obstruction of President Trump’s Presidency, as they obliterated all previous norms of fairness and comity in the relationship between the Executive and Legislative branches. They pay this guy for “insight” like that?

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