U.S. Society

Ethics Quote of the Week: Prof. Glenn Reynolds

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

“Most of the economic benefit of colleges and universities, and especially of elite ones, is distributional in nature — that is, wealth flows toward people who have the credentials they offer, but the credentials don’t actually promote wealth, they just get you past the gatekeepers.”

—-Conservative law professor and pundit Glenn Reynolds on his substack essay, “What is College Good For?”

Essentially Reynolds, who is the Beauchamp Brogan Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee College of Law can be fairly called a representative of our system of higher education himself, so his searing critique deserves some attention an thought. I appreciate the essay because I have long held the conviction that college itself is a fraud on the American people, distorts our power and economic structure away from merit and talent and toward wealth, elitism and purchased credentials that don’t mean what they pretend to mean, and a lifetime of experience as a student, graduate, employer and organization creator and leader supports and continues to confirm that conclusion.

Reynold is right. His analysis would have been right 40 years ago, when I stood up at a D.C. conference of “educators” and asked why all the discussion had focused on secondary school and college diplomas being essential to get “well-paying jobs”and none of it—literally none—about making our rising generations curious, competent, diligent, literate, analytical, creative, erudite, better thinkers and better citizens. The whole conference room booed me! It’s one of my most cherished memories. It also was signature significance regarding the fraudulent nature of the American education system.

Prof. Reynold gets it, and, not to diminish his essay, but it shouldn’t be so hard to get. The scam continues to thrive because the people who haven’t been to college don’t realize what a waste of time, resources and money it is in so many ways, and those who use the degrees as golden ticket credentials don’t have the integrity to admit the truth.

Reynold begins,

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New York City’s Democrats Remind Us Why It’s an Ethical Duty To Vote (and They Didn’t)

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Apparently less than 5% of all New York City residents voted for Zohran Mamdani, the charismatic, anti-Israel, slick crypto-communist who is now poised to become mayor of the City That Doesn’t Think—oops! I mean “sleep.” Never mind though: winning the crowded primary last week made him an instant celebrity, gave him a platform to spew his toxic ideology far and wide, confounding the dim, the gullible, the uneducated and the America-haters, and makes him a genuine threat to take over the drowning Democratic Party by apathy.

People who are stupid, ignorant and don’t care shouldn’t vote, but when a majority of potential voters who aren’t stupid and ignorant and do care also don’t vote, democracy not only doesn’t work, it is dangerous.

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Ethics Dunce: Justice Elena Kagan

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

This is so disillusioning. I supported Elena Kagan’s appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. She was obviously qualified, had the right experience for the job, and seemed capable of objective, non-partisan analysis unlike Barack Obama’s disastrous “historic” first nominee to the Court, the dim bulb Sonia Sotamayor, and Biden’s arguably worse choice, DEI Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. I have tried to cut Kagan a break for so often sticking to her less able woke female colleagues like the Three Little Maid from School in “The Mikado” in 6-3 decisions. I understand why loyalty to the team might have its long-range advantages. Often I can imagine Kagan rolling her eyes at one of the fatuous Sotomayor dissents based on feelz instead of the law. I get it.

But this time Kagan’s collegiality with her intellectual inferiors led to a breach of integrity. The Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in Trump v. CASA, Inc., last week was much needed, greatly deserved, and necessary to stop an egregious abuse of judicial power for partisan agendas. The decision struck down the sudden fad of nationwide injunctions by lower courts, the Trump II weapon of choice employed by Democrats seeking not to allow the elected President they hate do the job he was elected to do. The “wise Latina” issued another one of her amateurish dissents. It was Kagan, however, joining with Jackson in endorsing that dissent, who really disgraced herself.

In 2022, when conservatives were the ones seeking injunctive relief from his President Biden’s Executive Orders (if in fact they were his EOs), Kagan expressed disapproval of nationwide injunctions.  “This can’t be right that one district judge can stop a nationwide policy in its tracks and leave it stuck for the years that it takes to go through a normal process,” she said. 

So she’s a partisan hack then, cutting the cloth of her supposedly objective legal analysis to match the dictates of the Democratic Party. Good to know.

(The ethics password is integrity.)

Justice Kagan doesn’t have it.

Snap Open Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I have an early morning legal professionalism seminar I am holding on Zoom (yuck!), so I don’t have time to put up a competent post. I’m opening up the floor for topics, debates, whatever: just be civil and brilliant.

Here’s party favor: I discovered a free GAI detector, here. I haven’t tried it, but then a bot may have written this…

I’ll Say This About Social Media: It Is a Useful Window on Trump Derangement and Progressive Fantasies…

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Here you go…

How do you like that one?

1.3 thousand “likes” and all those re-posts, including by three of my soon-to-be-lobotomized Facebook Friends. Outside of “We’ve bombed Iran,” nothing in the post is true or even logically supportable. About 2,000 FBI agents are assisting ICE out of more than 13,000, and 37,000 FBI employees over all. Calling Hegseth a “drunk guy” is certainly fair, don’t you think? And the grand finale is the head-exploding “it isn’t what it is” fiction, part of current DNC cant, that the only reason Kamala Harris lost is because of her sex rather than her myriad other problems, like being an inarticulate idiot, picking an even bigger idiot as her ticket mate, running a spectacularly inept campaign, and representing a Soviet-style puppet government that loused up virtually everything it touched.

Now here’s one of the approving responses it attracted:

Wow.

Wow. The only way anyone could write that Hillary Clinton was “one of the most qualified’ Presidential candidates is to have literally no knowledge of the American Presidency at all, which raises the question of why one would make an assertion like that in a public forum knowing you had no basis for it whatsoever. Saying the same about Harris is, against all odds, even more absurd.

Comment of the Day: “Jaws Ethics”

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

The “Jaws” post, predictably, set off a lively debate about cultural icons, though, significantly, nobody yet has tried to maintain that “Jaws” isn’t one. Along comes halethomp with this Comment of the Day exploring the matter of whether Disney’s Marvel movies, now in decline, qualify as “iconic.” Personally, I don’t think so. There are iconic super heroes to be sure, but perhaps because they were late to the party, no Marvel character qualifies to stand next to Superman and Batman. No single film qualifies either in that genre by my standards: I think TCM host Ben Mankiewicz nailed it when he compared the Marvel film franchise to MGM musicals. Both genres have intense, loyal devotees, but neither has produced a societal- and culture-wide icon. Maybe “Singing in the Rain,” qualifies, but its a close call. Icons create lasting images, quotes, values and lessons that cross generations, ideally gaining vigor over time and becoming powerful cultural influences. Personally, having been familiar with the principle that great power confers great responsibility from other sources, I have been surprised that Spiderman’s Uncle Ben has been getting credit for it. No, I don’t think resuscitating a classic maxim that younger generations missed because of galloping illiteracy should qualify one for icon status, but that’s just me.

Here is halethomp’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Jaws Ethics.”

***

Two quotes within the original post and the comments stood out to me as examples of the cultural arrogance that Jack often laments, both applying to the Marvel franchise (I include the various streaming series in this). “A competent, curious, responsible member of society wants to see “Jaws” because 1) it is famous 2) it is a cultural touch-point 3) one should understand why people remember and care about it and 4) when the public embraces anything so completely,” and “Marvel movies like their predecessor print comics are just good versus evil with different characters.”

First, regarding cultural impact, there are few as great as the line “With great power comes great responsibility” which Uncle Ben tells Peter Parker just before dying. I believe a great cultural reference is one that most people know regardless of whether they know its origin. It is not necessary to have ever read a comic book or seen a superhero movie or cartoon to know that quote: in fact, it has been applied and misapplied by many people for generations. In Jack’s own words, Marvel must be recognized as a cultural touch-point.

With regard to this blog, Marvel movies and television shows should be required viewing for their ethics implications. I have not watched all of the Marvel programs. I have no interest in Ant Man, Doctor Strange, Ms. Marvel, etc. However, the best ones represent not just conflicts between heroes and villains but within individuals and society at large, and provide a visual, cultural reference to real conflicts that have existed in our society in parallel with those of the comics and screens.

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The U.S. Bombing of Iran Is Not an Ethics Issue

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

It’s a leadership issue.

I generally don’t want to wander into policy debates unless there is a clear ethical component. Competence. Honesty. Responsibility. Results, as we discuss here so often, are usually the result of moral luck. All we can do, in situations involving high-level leadership decision-making, is evaluate what the basis of the decision was, and the process under which it was made. What happens after that is moral luck, chaos, essentially. As an ethicist, I try not to base my analysis on whether I agree with the decision or not from a policy or pragmatic perspective.

In military and foreign policy decisions, the absence of clear ethical standards are especially rife. There are some who regard any military action at all except in reaction to an attack on the U.S. as unethical, and sometimes not even in that circumstance. They are absolutists: war is wrong, killing is wrong, “think of the children,” and that’s all there is to it. Such people are useless except as necessary reminders that Sherman was right.

President Trump’s decision to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities is a matter of leadership, not ethics. Leaders lead, and are willing to make tough, often risky, decisions. The U.S. Presidency requires leadership, and strong leadership is not only preferable to weak leadership, it is what the majority of Americans has traditionally preferred. The Constitution clearly shows the Founders’ preference for a strong executive branch, particularly in the area of national defense. Yesterday, the President took advantage of the Constitution’s general approval of executive leadership when national security is involved.

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An Ethical Problem Solving Challenge: The Malfunctioning Parking Station

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

I’m training a new Clarence Darrow for my legal ethics seminar employing many of Darrow’s Greatest Hits, and met him at his apartment in Arlington, VA. There is usually street parking which now is a absurdly 1) expensive and 2) automated, but as we all should know by now, the Unabomber was right, and we are slaves to gratuitous technology.

I had to park in an open space, then, instead of easily depositing a fre coins in a meter, had to walk half-a-block to the nearest parking station (and half a block away from my destination). Then I pushed a start button, plugged in my credit card, and pushed the maximum time allowed, 2 hours. I was informed that my “payment was complete” ($9.85!) and was to take the ticket the station would print and walk back to my car, get back in it, put the ticket on the dashboard visible through the window, and voila! A longer, more complicated, more expensive parking process, made so by the wonders of technology!

But no ticket came out. It churned, and it churned, then a red message flashed saying “Out of Order! Please go to another station.”

Oh no you don’t! The machine said my payment had already been accepted. I was not going to meekly allow this stupid system to make me pay TWO exorbitant fees for parking once. Nor was I going to abandon the space, which is what I saw another driver do when confronted with the same malfunctioning station.

Assuming that getting a sledge hammer and destroying the parking stations is out of the question, what ethical solution to the problem would you employ?

I’ll tell you what I did in the comments eventually. (Hint: It worked!)

I Think We Can Fairly Rule That Oregon Has Become Bizarro World and Normal, Real World Ethics Do Not Apply There…

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Ethic Alarms has frequently used Superman Comics’ Bizarro World analogy to discuss the problem arising when a culture is so warped and so confused that normal ethical principles have no applicability. When one is in a culture where white is black, up is down and crazy is sane, it makes no sense to act according to traditional ethical values. They won’t work there.

The best and most ethical response to a Bizarro World culture is to follow the sage advice of the Amityville House and “Get OUT!” A common example of this problem is in the workplace, when one realizes that the culture is corrupt, incompetent and devoid of ethical considerations. The choices an ethical employee has are to remain in the organization and be corrupted by it, to devote oneself to changing the organization, which is often futile, or to quit.

The latest dispatch from uber-woke Oregon makes it clear that the Amityville House’s solution may be the only one remaining. The new session for the Oregon House of Representatives was opened by a performance by two black drag queens this week because it’s Pride Month, and that means that professionalism, dignity and decorum must be sacrificed because….well, just because. Democratic Rep. Travis Nelson (D, of course), the first openly LGBTQ+ African American Oregon legislator—he’s historic, so he can do no wrong!— invited Isaiah Esquire and Aqua Flora to perform for the session’s opening ceremony. The House speaker, also being a Democrat, didn’t have the integrity to tell him, “You are out of your mind! Absolutely not!” So the result was this:

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Juneteenth Ethics Inclusion [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 42 Comments

Juneteenth is our first, and one hopes, last DEI holiday. The idea of having national holidays contrived to celebrate particular racial, ethnic and gender groups in an outburst of white male guilt is anti-American to the core and profoundly offensive. True, Rationalization #22 (“There are worse things.”) provides some solace; the holiday is hardly the worst thing that the national freakout over a drug-addicted black thug resisting arrest in Minneapolis and running into the wrong cop inflicted on the U.S. But the year Biden’s autopen established it, 2021, speaks volumes.

Meanwhile….

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