U.S. Society

Nicely Timed Ethics Quote Of The Month: John Cleese

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

Screen-Shot-2020-11-22-at-10.39.25-AM

Monty Python legend John Cleese apparently has decided that to hell with it, he’s going to get himself canceled, and he doesn’t give a damn if he is. The tweet above was part of a long string of them tweaking transgender activists, J.K. Rowling haters and more, but his “woke joke” was especially apt.

The Australian singer Sia (never heard of her—you?) wrote and directed an soon-to-be released movie titled “Music” about a young woman with autism. Music is played by actress Maddie Ziegler, who is apparently not on the autistic spectrum.

The Horror.

The cyber-mob, almost all of which have never directed or cast anything, were outraged, with reactions like this from Irish actress Bronagh Waugh:

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Comment Of The Day: “Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 10/30/2020: Zoomed Out”

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Zoom

Once again I am horribly behind in posting deserving Comments of the Day, or even announcing them. I apologize for this; there are many reasons, but no excuses. This COTD , authored by Null Pointer, is three weeks old, and there are some unposted ones that are older still. Fortunately, the topic is ever-green, at least as long as Shut-Down Hell is upon us: the curse of Zoom.

Here is Null Pointer’s Comment Of The Day on the post, “Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 10/30/2020: Zoomed Out”

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They—We—Executed Orlando Hall. Good.

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

lethal drug

One area in which the likely arrival of the Biden administration will surely signal furious back-tracking efforts will be the perpetual moral and ethical controversy over capital punishment. The execution of Orlando Hall was the eighth since the Trump administration revived capital punishment for federal crimes and the first of three scheduled during the presidential transition, if there is one.

The progressive way of the moment is to minimize or eliminate any punishment whatsoever for crimes. President-sort-of-elect Biden, in an exuberant moment, said during the campaign that there shouldn’t be prison time for any non-violent crimes. (Any non-violent crimes, Joe?) In the throes of the George Floyd Ethics Train Wreck, the bonkers concept has been promoted by the Black Lives Matter constituency that the justice system is so racist that punishing any black citizen for any crime is perpetuating “systemic racism.” Here’s Ellie Mystal, The Nation’s “justice correspondent,” writing way back in 2016:

“Black people lucky enough to get on a jury could use that power to acquit any person charged with a crime against white men and white male institutions. It’s not about the race of the defendant, but if the alleged victim is a white guy, or his bank, or his position, or his authority: we could acquit. Assault? Acquit. Burglary? Acquit. Insider trading? Acquit.Murder? … what the hell do you think is happening to black people out here? What the hell do you think we’re complaining about when your cops shoot us or choke us? Acquit. Don’t throw “murder” at me like it’s some kind of moral fault line where the risk of letting one go is too great. Black people ARE BEING MURDERED, and the system isn’t doing a damn thing to hold their killers accountable. Sorry I’m not sorry if this protest idea would put the shoe on the other foot for a change.”

Mystal isn’t alone, and since the death of Floyd with a white police officer’s knee on his neck, his logic, if you can call it that, has become infectious. Race is a factor that may signal bias by jurors: major political leaders, pundits are and academics are arguing directly that all whites are prejudiced against blacks, and Mystal’s ilk are calling on black jurors to acquit even guilty black defendants as cultural “tit for tat.” (Ellie’s a lawyer and still reached this conclusion, and still is employed as an authority. But don’t get me started on Ellie.)

It is time to reconsider and perhaps revise the absolute principle the Supreme Court articulated in Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986), the landmark decision ruling that a prosecutor’s use of a peremptory challenge in a criminal case, dismissing a juror without stating reason for doing so, may not be used to exclude jurors based solely on their race. After all, if all whites are secretly or subconsciously hostile to blacks, they can’t be trusted to judge the guilt of a black defendant, and if blacks are being urged to fight systemic racism and “mass incarceration” by acquitting guilty black criminals, they can’t be trusted either.

Maybe what we need is all Asian-American juries.

But I digress…slightly. Here was the ABA Journal’s headline regarding the execution of black death row inmate Orlando Hall: “Federal inmate tried by all-white jury is executed after Supreme Court lifts execution stay.” Justices Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan, the so-called liberal minority on the Court, dissented from the Supreme Court order allowing the execution to proceed without explaining their dissent. They don’t have to. Biden has said he will work to end the use of capital punishment by the federal government, reversing President Trump’s support for it: the Left considers the death penalty to be an 8th Amendment breach, “cruel and unusual” punishment.

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Fearmongering Is Apparently All They’ve Got Now, And It Better Not Be Enough

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments

Fearmongering

Unable to provide actual guidance that restricts the spread of the Wuhan virus, unable to be consistent in their various “scientific” pronouncements, unable to avoid utter hypocrisy by violating their own measures, and insulting our intelligence by implying that the pandemic doesn’t bother Black Lives Matter and the Democratic Party, the various state governments are now reduced to pure fearmongering, apparently in the vain hope that if everyone is terrified to do anything or interact with anyone, that will keep the Wuhan virus at bay, and, perhaps even more importantly, condition Americans to Love Big Brother.

Well, to hell with THAT.

When I saw today’s new, revised, extra scary risk wheel from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE), I thought it was a Babylon Bee joke. Sadly, it’s not. Sufficient numbers of idiots and would-be human-sheepherders in the Colorado state government decided that the usual DefCon 5 Red Zone wasn’t enough to frighten Coloradans sufficiently to meekly allow the government to wreck their businesses, stunt their children’s social and educational development, make them poor, and confine them to house arrest. These bureaucrats are so dim that they don’t realize that the sillier and more desperate they act, the less likely anyone with self-respect and a brain is going to care what they say.

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Failed Late Thursday Ethics Review, 11/19/2020 Turned Early Friday Ethics Warm-Up, 11/20/2020: Let’s Play “Stupid or Not Stupid”!

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Unrelated to any kind of stupid: Yesterday was the anniversary of the demise of my old friend, Glenn White, in 2013. I never got to attend a funeral or service for Glenn; his family didn’t see fit to let me know he had died, despite our association of thirty years. This is what I always will remember about Glenn: He knew what it meant to be a friend. We knew each other through theater, though he was a Fairfax City, Virginia politician. Glenn used to say, “If you need me, Jack, you just have to ask. I’ll be there.” And he always was. When he was in his late 70s, I needed someone to play an old man in one of my theater company’s shows. Glenn used to call himself The American Century Theater’s resident geezer, but he had moved to the Virginia countryside, and it was more than a three hour commute, round trip, to rehearsals and performances. My plight was barely out of my mouth when he said, “Sure, you can count on me.”

How many people do you get to meet in your life who are like that?

1. I really hate this...I spent precious time, as I was trying to get a post in before the clock struck 12 last night, writing about this story, published yesterday and passed along credulously by a U.S.news aggregator, only to find that the events described happened in 2019. I have encountered this before: some website is light on material, so it uses an old story for click-bait without stating the time frame until the very end.

2. Today’s inexcusable, biased, partisan and unethical headline from the New York Times front page: “Trump Targeting Michigan In Ploy To Subvert Election.” Clearly, the Times isn’t even trying any more. The use of “ploy” and “subvert” is not only editorializing, it’s irresponsible editorializing. There were certainly a lot of strange things going on in the Michigan voting and vote-counting;the state should be targeted. (There are strange things going on in Michigan generally.) If the Michigan vote was corrupted, discovering how and how much doesn’t “subvert” anything. If it turns out that Michigan actually was won by Trump—admittedly a remote possibility—then that discovery prevents the election from being subverted.

The Times’ job is to explain what the Trump campaign’s challenges to the election are in factual terms, not to speculate on diabolical motives, to trigger violence and subvert democracy.

3. What does this display remind you of?

Belgian phallus

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Ethics Quote Of The Day (And For All Time): Abraham Lincoln [Missing Post Section Recovered!]

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

On this date in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln added a vital coda to the United States mission statement articulated in the Declaration of Independence nearly a hundred years earlier. Gary Wills, among other historians and commentators, has argued that with this single speech Lincoln reframed the purpose of the American experiment as well as clarifying its core values. Those values, it is fair to say, are today under the greatest threat since the Civil War today. Lincoln’s address lasted just two or three minutes (it was not even announced beforehand as a speech, but rather “remarks”), but also reframed the purpose of the war itself, as not only to preserve the union, but a struggle for freedom and equality for all.

There has been so much written about the Gettysburg Address that it would be irresponsible for me to attempt to analyze it here. It probably isn’t necessary to analyze the speech. Few statements speak more clearly for themselves: if ever a speech embodied the principle of res ipsa loquitur, this is it:

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Afternoon Ethics Wind-down, 11/17/2020: Greenwald, Kelly, Typical Irresponsible College Professor, And “Name Withheld”

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

windingUp

1 Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias… Glenn Greenwald, the gadfly journalist who was cut off at the metaphorical knees for not supporting the media black-out of the Biden family influence peddling story in the waning days of the campaign (Hey! It worked, so it must be ethical!), is apparently just warming up in his campaign to expose the mainstream media’s hypocrisy and bias. Here’s a recent thread on Twitter.

Of course, it’s just a matter of time before Twitter suspends his account…

2. I LOVE this guy! He’s the perfect example of so much that’s wrong with academia, Black Lives Matters, and the entire race-baiting phenomenon! (But why is he allowed to teach anyone?) Bucknell University will be featuring a scholarly debate over the new film “What Killed Michael Brown?,” with participants considering “whether the idea of systemic racism today is a truth about what needs to be addressed in shaping a just America, or a ‘poetic truth’ that as a strategy exacerbates social division in America.” (Strange…it is beyond question that what killed Michael Brown was his fatal and perhaps drug-aided decision to resist arrest, try to grab an officer’s weapon, ignore a lawful order to stop, and to direct his entire bulk in a charge at a police officer. It will be a short webinar.) Roosevelt University journalism Professor John Fountain, one of the participants, asserts that “questioning the existence and impact of systemic racism in the United States is itself offensive and racist.”

3. Whew! I almost lost this one. From an October 6 column by “The Ethicist.” “Name Withheld” writes: Continue reading →

Open Forum, Election Aftermath Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

Carnage mess

Not that anyone has to discuss the ethical issues surrounding the election, about which I am thoroughly sick.

Do stick to ethics, however…

Sunday Ethics Infusion, 17/15/2020: “Run Away!”

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

1. To channel Scarlet O’Hara…If one more Trump-Deranged individual accuses me of  adopting right-wing media conspiracy theories, I will get angry, and they won’t like me when I’m angry. I accept analysis from no one, especially from the likes of (the former version of) Fox News, Breitbart, Mark Levin and others of note. If I like a legitimate authority’s analysis (like, say, Andrew McCarthy, Ann Althouse or Jonathan Turley), I will credit them for it. “It sure is suspicious that your points agree with theirs” I was told today. It’s no more suspicious than the fact that their stated analysis agrees with mine. I’m not tolerating this insult. I’m at least as informed, educated and intelligent as those I am accused of “parroting,” and I’m considerably more informed, educated and intelligent than the typical knee-jerk progressive water-carrier who tries to win arguments they have neither the wit nor the facts to support by calling me incapable of forming my own opinions.

2. An update! The original collection of movie clips that Ethics Alarms uses repeatedly to illustrate certain points has been expanded considerably.

3. “Run away!” I see that conservatives are “fleeing” Facebook and Twitter for the allegedly more accommodating and less censorious environs of Parler and MeWe. EVERYONE should bolt from Facebook and Twitter if they have any concern about the social media platforms manipulating public opinion and possible tilting the election by partisan censorship, not to mention the mendacity of both platforms’ CEOs and their basic lack of trustworthiness.

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Remember, At The Bottom Of Pandora’s Box Was Hope! Comments Of The Day: “Comment Of The Day: Wednesday Ethics Windstorm,11/11/20: Liars, Knaves, Fools And Birds”

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

pandoras box

Boy, things are getting gloomy around here. Fortunately, I have in my metaphorical ethics holster not one but TWO sterling and inspirational Comments of the Day posted in response to Steve Witherspoon’s expression of ( I’m sure temporary) despair by a pair of the form: Glenn Logan and occasional Ethics Alarms columnist Mrs. Q. And here they are, back to back Comments of the Day on the post, “Comment Of The Day: Wednesday Ethics Windstorm,11/11/20: Liars, Knaves, Fools And Birds,”

First, Glenn Logan:

Steve, this is a grim comment to be sure. I doubt if I can elevate your mood, but I will make a couple of observations:

“There are so many openly anti-Constitutional, anti-American, anti-freedom, anti-civility and anti-rule of law things being done and said by political leaders and common citizens across the USA and it’s been going on for so long now that I really am to the point that I truly and actually believe that all the societal signs are showing us that the United States of America is on its way towards some form of totalitarian styled socialism/communism and it will likely happen in my lifetime.“

I don’t totally agree, but I do agree that this is a danger. I am heartened by the resurgence of the Republicans in the house and the conflagration of so much Democratic money attempting to unseat Republican incumbents. The Democrats burned almost 70 million dollars in the senate race in Kentucky alone (against 30 MUSD for McConnell) only for the pleasure of being curb-stomped. McGrath posters and ads blanketed the media and the streets, outnumbering “Team Mitch” 100-1 even in the most conservative areas of Kentucky, and that money might as well have been dropped in a bottomless hole for all the good it did.

That tells me the signal of freedom is still getting out there, and being heard.

The flood of new subscribers to Parler, MeWe and other alternate social media is heartening. The defenestration of Fox News after its sudden left turn is heartening. The bare margin of the presidential election even after rampant fraud and a non-stop 4-year fully-paid-for media campaign commercial for the Democrats is heartening. There are silver linings to be found, dark as the clouds may be.

There is more than just a little hope, but your point is not unworthy — there is also grave danger.

“Biden’s statement’s about unity, Republicans are not our enemies and working together in peace are a rhetorical smoke screen from an empty suit puppet of the extreme political left.“

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