U.S. Society

Addendum: James Taranto And The Consequences Of Unethical Presidential Leadership

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

red line

Today, at his press conference in Stockholm, President Obama raised many a hackle by saying,

“First of all, I didn’t set a red line,” Barack Obama said today at a press conference in Stockholm. “The world set a red line. The world set a red line when governments representing 98% of the world’s population said the use of chemical weapons are [sic] abhorrent and passed a treaty forbidding their use, even when countries are engaged in war.”

The President’s critics take this as yet another of his habitual accountability dodges, even though, for once, he didn’t blame George W. Bush. I will give the President the benefit of the doubt here, as he was speaking extemporaneously and is infamously imprecise when he is not delivering a prepared speech. He is saying that the bright line prohibition on chemical and germ warfare was not devised by him, that it is a matter of international law of long-standing, and that his red-line statement only re-affirmed the United States’ pre-existing obligation, in his view, to take action when such a line is crossed. I have no problem with that; the problem is, as this episode has shown, that President Obama did not and does not mean what he said, and the consequences he has devised for the crossing of that red line by the Assad government manage to be weak, insignificant, inadequate, cynical, cruel, dangerous, misdirected, ill-timed and illegal (under international law) all at the same time. That’s quite an accomplishment, but not one I’d want my mother to hand on the fridge.

The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto, who, at his best, delivers a clarity of ethical analysis and a precision of language that are unsurpassed in U.S. punditry, moved on from mocking the latest red line clarification to an excellent discussion of why the credibility of the American President, and leaders generally, is so important. Credibility is the practical result of integrity: that is the ethical virtue President Obama’s handling of this matter betrayed.

You should read his whole commentary here. This is the key passage: Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The Deadly Rock Festival

/ Jack Marshall / 49 Comments
Looks like fun! Little do these unsuspecting rock music-lovers realize that a deadly culture lurks at the festival, eager to kill them...

Looks like fun! Little do these unsuspecting rock music-lovers realize that a deadly culture lurks at the festival, eager to kill them…

The final day of New York City’s Electric Zoo Festival, held over Labor Day weekend since 2009, was canceled due to “serious health risks,” according to a release from NYC government.

The reason?  Two fans died and at least four became “critically ill” during the first two days of the festival on  Randall’s Island. The statement from Fortress Bloomberg  explained that the reason for the cancellation was “serious health risks.”  Jeffrey Russ, 24 and Olivia Rotondo, 20,  both died after ingesting the drug ecstasy.

The organizers posted, “The founders of Electric Zoo send our deepest condolences to the families of the two people who passed away this weekend. Because there is nothing more important to us than our patrons, we have decided in consultation with the New York City Parks Department that there will be no show today.” Thousands of non-illegal drug-users who planned their holiday around the festival have been sent home.

Your Ethics Alarms Labor Day Ethics Quiz is this…

Is cancelling the music festival an ethical response to two drug-related deaths? Continue reading →

Sugardaddies, Pregnancy Tests and Nigeria, or “If U.S. Culture Is More Ethical Than The Rest Of The World, The Rest Of The World Is In Big Trouble”

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments
Our surprisingly ethical U.S. culture on display...

Our surprisingly ethical U.S. culture on display…

Aniruddh Khachaturi an is from Mumbai, India, and has been in the U.S. for the past two years, studying  computer science at Carnegie Mellon. For some reason his observations about what surprises him about American culture are newsworthy, according to Investors Daily, as opposed to, say, anyone else. They are thought-provoking, however, especially this : he is impressed with the nation’s “strong ethics”:

“…everyone has a lot of integrity. If someone cannot submit their completed assignment in time, they will turn in the assignment incomplete rather than asking for answers at the last minute. People take pride in their hard work and usually do not cheat. This is different from students from India and China as well as back home in India, where everyone collaborates to the extent that it can be categorized as cheating.”

I happen to think he is right, and that this is probably the reaction of most foreigners who spend much time here. Compared to almost everywhere else on the planet, the population of the U.S. is more ethical, and the U.S. culture is more concerned with ethical values, as one should expect in the only nation expressly founded as the expression of ethical ideals.

Nonetheless, our culture has shown alarming signs of growing more tolerant and even accepting of unethical conduct, and that is worthy of more than merely academic concern. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “No, It’s Actually Allison Benedikt Who’s A Bad Person”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Liberal-Conservative

Here is David Shuster’s superb Comment of the Day, which is wise and greatly appreciated, on the post No, It’s Actually Allison Benedikt Who’s A Bad Person.

“Can we please drop/reform the “liberal” and “conservative” labels already? You state that Benedikt is a bad liberal; not quite true, she is utterly illiberal. She argues for state-compelled coercion circumventing individuals’ choice of how to raise their children. Her argument rests on illogical Marxist claptrap that prioritizes “the good of society” ie: the collective, over individual free will. I take back my previous statement, she is not illiberal, she is positively anti-liberal.

“I realize that this is quibbling over semantics, but in this case a rose by any other name really does smell differently. The Left and Democrats in general have self-identified for decades as “liberal”. While this label may have been appropriate 50 years ago, it certainly is not now. The Republicans’ social conservatism is rightly derided as illiberal in that it expects individuals’ sexual preferences to be dictated by the state. However, the Democrats’ claims of being “liberal” are becoming more laughable everyday; so much so that they have essentially become a parody of the classical liberal values they assure the population that they stand for. In fact, it appears as though the only things the Democrats envision people being free to do are the things the social conservatives oppose; in short, the Republicans want the state in your bedroom, the Democrats want the state everywhere else.

“We don’t have a “conservative” party and a “liberal” party, we have two statist parties with no alternative. Take gay marriage. I gave tentative applause for the Obama admin taking an explicit stand in support of it (truth be told, IMO the true “liberal” stand on this issue would be for the state to get out of the marriage business altogether, straight, gay, polygamous, whatever and let freedom of association dictate how people live with one another, but I guess that makes me a radical…). However, look at the illiberal consequences of this stance; wedding vendors with an admitted religious opposition to gay marriage but no prejudice against gays personally being forced by the government to render services against their will to gay weddings (see NM supreme court case). It’s beyond belief and IMO a violation of the 13th amendment; how can that be considered “liberal”? Continue reading →

No, It’s Actually Allison Benedikt Who’s A Bad Person

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments
Hang in there--the schools will be better in a few generations...

Hang in there–the schools will be better in a few generations…

There may be some persuasive arguments to be made for sending your child to a public school system you don’t trust. The obvious one is that you have no choice, which is true for many Americans. There are also some good reasons to write a “manifesto” called “If You Send Your Kid to Private School, You Are a Bad Person,” the best of which is to cause people to focus on the problem of the failing and unacceptable public school system, and what should be done about it. However, Allison Benedikt, who actually wrote an article with this title and presumably this intent, failed so miserably at making a coherent and persuasive argument of any kind that her provocative title amounts to an unethical assertion itself: if you are going to make a blanket indictment of the character of millions of people, you had better be able to produce an ethical argument or two, or at least demonstrate that you comprehend a little bit about ethics. Allison doesn’t. Based on this piece, I not only wouldn’t trust her (oh, by the way, Allison, the core objective of ethical conduct in your profession—any profession, actually—is trust) to provide advice about how to educate my child, I wouldn’t trust her to walk my dog. Continue reading →

Ethics Mega-Dunces: The Republicans

/ Jack Marshall / 46 Comments
"You're right, Abe; they're all rock-heads. I'd like to beat some sense into them with a big stick, but I have no arms."

“You’re right, Abe; they’re all rock-heads. I’d like to beat some sense into them with a big stick, but I have no arms.”

Not a single invited member of the Republican leadership accepted an invitation to attend the official March on Washington anniversary event yesterday.

This is practically all that needs to be said. That fact alone is sufficient to show an appalling lack of leadership, respect, common sense, common purpose, values and priorities within the highest reaches of the party.

Everyone had a “good reason,” of course—Boehner, Canter, McConnell, McCain, Romney, both Bushes,  But the excuses don’t matter. A responsible, intelligent, public minded, fair and  statesmanlike political organization would have made certain that a representative delegation attended, and prominently so. How or why no major Republican figures were present is irrelevant. If the commemoration of the March on Washington, Dr. King’s iconic and transformative speech, and the cultural transformation of America that they helped achieve are as important to the party as they must be--because of the GOP’s origins, because of what it represents, and because, dammit, Republicans are Americans, then attendance was mandatory. They manage to make it to the State of the Union and Presidential inaugurations, because they recognize it as important to do so. They should be able to recognize that showing solidarity with the  Democrats, African-Americans and the public on the core principle of equal rights for all is even more important. Continue reading →

A Reminder: Why “User Pays” Is Unethical

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

The View

[Back in 2007, a ridiculous lawsuit spawned an even more ridiculous pronouncement from “The View’s” Rosie O’Donnell, which prompted the following post (originally titled “The Pants, the Judge, and Rosie’s Mouth”)  on this blog’s predecessor,  The Ethics Scoreboard.The two law-related issues that the public has the most difficult time grasping are why lawyers defend guilty people, and this one: the contingent fee system for civil plaintiffs.  While I was pre-occupied the last couple of days by two challenging ethics programs and 10 hours of driving back and forth into West Virginia to deliver one of them, I missed the outbreak of another “loser pays” discussion in one of the comment threads. It’s clearly time to run this one again (I last put it on Ethics Alarms in 2010), with a few tweaks.]

The tale of Roy Pearson, the infamous Washington, DC administrative law judge who is suing his dry cleaner for damages of $65.5 million for a lost pair of pants, would normally warrant scant comment beyond this obvious one: Pierson is a bully, his lawsuit is unreasonable and unethical, and he deserves whatever sanctions the legal system can devise. A Washington Post editorial suggested that the lawsuit, which Pierson says is justified by his inconvenience, court costs, and the mental anguish caused by the loss of his beloved pants, is proof enough of bad character and terrible judgement that he should not be reappointed to another ten-year term.  [ Update: He wasn’t.] That would normally end the issue, freeing me to move on to more important matters, like global warming and American Idol.

And then Rosie O’Donnell opened her big mouth. Continue reading →

Twerk Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

[The following is blurry, but perhaps that is for the best. It is the only full version of the performance at issue currently available on YouTube, and it may not be there for long. Watch at your own risk.]

To listen to the horrified reaction to Miley Cyrus’s relatively obscene performance at the nationally televised MTV Music Video awards (not so long ago, Miley was that cute tween Hannah Montana on the Disney Channel) , one would think that rock and pop stars intentionally crossing the established lines of symbolic pubic sexual decorum was unprecedented. The furious and shocked condemnations seemed to emanate from some parallel culture, like the alternate universe that implicitly exists on CBS’s updated Sherlock Holmes drama “Elementary” (Sherlock is a precariously recovering alcoholic and drug addict; Dr. Watson is a former Charlie’s Angel) where nobody ever heard of “The Hound of the Baskervilles,” Basil Rathbone or the dancing men cipher, because Arthur Conan Doyle never invented the character. ( The British updated Sherlock, uncreatively titled “Sherlock,” is so far superior to “Elementary” —which isn’t bad–that  it’s unsettling.) Have Isadora Duncan, Josephine Baker, Sally Rand, Elvis, the Stones, Jim Morrison,, Madonna and Christina Aguilera been erased from the past by some music-hating cyborg from a dystrophy future where everyone sings like Matt Munro?

Gross simulated sexual display on television prime time has unethical elements, to be sure. It’s uncivil, to begin with, intentionally placing socially objectionable content before a lot of viewers who don’t want to see it. That’s a breach of respect, but a minor one in this context. Janet Jackson flashed a breast during the Superbowl half-time show, after all: the argument that this was a family event that shouldn’t have been unexpectedly transformed into a peep show was grounded in fact. This week, however, I heard earnest mothers protesting that their delicate pre-teens were watching the MTV awards and had the innocence cruelly seared out of them by the unexpected and horrifying sight of Miley twerking ( simulating sex while dancing—a brand new addition to the Oxford dictionary) on Robin Thicke, dressed as Beetlejuice. Those mothers, not to be excessively cruel myself, are idiots.

What did they expect to see? This is a live show populated by competing shameless self-promoting narcissists who know that the performer who says or does the most outrageous thing will win the publicity game, and be a topic of debate for days or even weeks. Miley won, that’s all. If a child saw something age-inappropriate, the parents can only blame themselves.  This was roughly the equivalent of letting your kid watch “The Walking Dead” and complaining to AMC that the show’s violence is excessive for children. Ethics breach #1 is by any parent who allowed a child to watch this show while wanting to protect the child’s exposure to sexually provocative material. Irresponsible, incompetent, and stupid. Continue reading →

Thanks, Lenddo, For A Brave, New…Crummy…World

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments
I hate you, Jeff, and I hate your friends.

I hate you, Jeff, and I hate your friends.

Some ideas that brilliant young people have in the technology field should have remained unthought, and if thought, promptly rejected on the grounds that however clever and profitable, they will make the world a crummier place. This is one of those ideas:

From CNN Money we learn that Lenddo, a new financial lending companies (apparently none of the brilliant young people work in the marketing department—Lenddo???)  has figured out that one’s Facebook friends, and how friendly you are with them,  are a revealing indicator of your credit worthiness. If one of those FB friends is late paying back a loan to Lenddo, their data indicates that it means you are more of a credit risk than if that friend was right on time. Not only that, if the delinquent friend is someone you frequently interact with on the social network, it means you are even more likely to be a deadbeat.

“It turns out humans are really good at knowing who is trustworthy and reliable in their community,” happily crows Jeff Stewart, a co-founder and CEO of Lenddo. “What’s new is that we’re now able to measure through massive computing power.”  Fascinating, Jeff!

You suck. Continue reading →

Ayo Kimathi And The Freedom To Hate

/ Jack Marshall / 40 Comments

center_image

Ayo Kimathi, an African-American, is an acquisitions officer for Immigration and Customs Enforcement ( a section of the Department of Homeland Security), and has been, apparently without incident, since 2009.  He also operates and authors a web site, War on the Horizon, which predicts an “unavoidable, inevitable clash with the white race,” and explains how to prepare for it.

The latter fact is none of the government’s business, nor yours, nor mine, and certainly not that of Sarah Palin, who in her own inimitable style of making ignorance catchy and cute, exclaimed on her Facebook page, “His side ‘job’ running the ‘War On the Horizon’ website was reportedly approved by supervisors. Really, Fed? Really? Unflippingbelievable!”

No, it’s not. You can scour the government regulations and ethics requirements all you want—I have (Palin hasn’t.) There is nothing in them that prohibits a government employee in the Executive branch from espousing any political position he pleases, or that bans outside activities that do not interfere with the duties of the employee or constitute a conflict of interest. Nor should there be. As I read the rules, Kimathi had no obligation to ask permission to run his website, because his supervisor had no authority to stop him.

It is called freedom of speech, my friends.

Deal with it. Or rather, cherish it. Continue reading →