U.S. Society

Richard Cohen, National Interests, and the Ethical Duties of the US to the World

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

There used to be no columnist who infuriated me more consistently than Richard Cohen. Those were the hazy, golden days before I discovered E.J. Dionne, Paul Krugman and Harold Mayerson, however, whose rigid ideology virtually precludes objective analysis. Cohen isn’t biased, he’s just wrong more often than not. But he is also capable of bursts of moral and ethical clarity. Today was an example, as he took on the isolationist voices on the left and the right that make up a large component, if not the majority, of our elected leadership today.

Cohen begins by recounting a section from  Erik Larson ‘s book,“In the Garden of the Beasts,” about how the American foreign policy establishment in the Thirties resisted efforts by William Dodd, then ambassador to Germany, to protest the Hitler government’s increasing persecution of Jews. Humanity, and the U.S., paid a steep price for its inward-turning perspective after World War I, as we abdicated our traditional role as defender of liberty, freedom, democracy and human rights on the world stage. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: Rep. Michele Bachmann

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

I think Hurricane Irene was sent by God to help the Red Sox. Hear me out! It makes mores sense than Michele's theory!

“I don’t know how much God has to do to get the attention of politicians. We’ve had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. He said, ‘Are you going to start listening to me here?’ Listen to the American people because the American people are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we’ve got to rein in the spending.”

—-Rep. Michele Bachmann, GOP presidential hopeful and shameless demagogue, joining the discredited ranks of Pat Robertson, Glenn Beck and others to assert that weather conditions constitute proof that God agrees with her.

You can read my views on this arrogant, manipulative species of idiocy here, here and here.  I’ve written about it too much, and as an American living in the 21st Century, I’m embarrassed that I should have to write about it at all. Continue reading →

5 Things PETA Doesn’t Understand About Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Stay classy, PETA.

PETA—People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals— has announced that it is starting a porn website to attract attention to the plight of animals. Over on his Business Ethics Blog, Chris McDonald asks whether this means that PETA has “jumped the shark.” More so than offering Octomom money to put a billboard on her lawn advocating spaying pets so they won’t have litters like hers? More so than complaining that Punxsutawney Phil, the groundhog of Groundhog Day fame, should be replaced by a robot? I don’t think so. Besides, jumping a shark would be cruel to the shark.

The tunnel-visioned organization, well on its way to becoming a joke to the detriment of its abused animal constituency, has registered the domain name peta.xxx and plans to launch a pornography website in December that “draws attention to the plight of animals.” How will it do that, you ask? By using images of naked women performing  sex acts on men to attract viewers, and then making the audience observe graphic videos of animal abuse for the privilege of watching the graphic sex. “We try to use absolutely every outlet to stick up for animals,” says PETA spokesperson Lindsay Rajt, who adds that the organization wouldn’t use its “flashier tactics if we didn’t know they worked.”

Let’s put that right at the top of this list, entitled “5 Things PETA Doesn’t Understand About Ethics.” Continue reading →

George Washington’s Vision of Religious Freedom

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

George Washington continues to be a source of wonder, wisdom, and ethical clarity.

Every year in August, Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island hosts a reading of President George Washington’s 1790 letter to “the Hebrew congregation in Newport, Rhode Island.” Before this month, I was unaware of either the celebration or the letter, I am ashamed to say. In it, the first President laid out clearly the ideals of religious freedom to be embraced by our fledgling nation, to a group that had reason to do doubt whether they would be welcome to worship as they pleased.

For generations, the Hebrew community that ultimately  settled in Newport had been fleeing religious persecution. The same year Christopher Columbus arrived in the New World, in 1492, Spain enacted a policy forcing Jews to convert to Christianity or leave the country. Thousands sought refuge in the Netherlands, the Caribbean Islands and South America, only to be pursued by the Spanish Inquisition. Continue reading →

God, Beck, and the Confirmation Bias Trap

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Hurricane Irene proves that God agrees with Glenn Beck. Glenn Beck says so, and he must be right, because God agrees with him. Hurricane Irene proves it.

Policy makers, decision-makers, journalists, and indeed all of us have an ethical obligation to be on the alert for confirmation bias, that insidious human tendency to interpret all external phenomena as confirmation of our established opinions and beliefs. Why do we have the obligation? We have it because confirmation bias makes us dogmatic, inflexible, close-minded, incompetent, and, in a word, stupid. Life can make us wiser, but not if we misinterpret everything so as not to disturb our most cherished certainties. Continue reading →

A Damning Role Model For Wisconsin’s Public Union Protests

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Fair game for Wisconsin's public unions

The ethical line between Fred Phelps’ anti-gay protesters who disrupt the funerals of  soldiers killed in action, and the self-righteous union protesters opposing Wisconsin’s governor Scott Walker’s budget balancing efforts has thinned to the vanishing point.

On Friday, Walker visited the Messmer Catholic Preparatory School in Milwaukee’s Riverwest neighborhood, to read to third-graders. The third-graders have no political agenda, but 100 protesters felt it was appropriate to disrupt a special day for school children to show their hatred for the governor.
Just as the Westboro Baptist Church feels that its homophobic crusade justifies interfering with military families’ private grief, Wisconsin’s ethically tone-deaf unions feel that innocent student are appropriate collateral damage in their quest to hold on to their privileged status among Wisconsin workers, and elections, laws, deficits and common sense be damned. How especially cynical of the teachers unions, to disrupt the experience of Catholic school students, who, apparently, don’t count. Tell us again, you dedicated teachers, how it’s “all for the children.” Continue reading →

Ethics Reading Assignment…

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

If you are waiting for Irene to hit or simply looking for some ethical enlightenment, here are some scintillating posts from around the web on ethics, social norms and morality. It is also an opportunity to check out some of the excellent blogs and websites in the Ethics Alarms links, which I heartily recommend.

Here are...

“Look Out! There’s a Speed Trap Ahead!”

/ Jack Marshall / 41 Comments

Who is your ally, the speeding motorist, or the traffic cop?

A lawsuit filed this week claims that 2,900 motorists were illegally ticketed in Florida between 2005 to 2010 for flashing their lights at oncoming, and speeding, cars to warn of speed traps ahead.  Apparently the police have been giving tickets to drivers sending a friendly “Cheese it! The cops!” message to scofflaws, in solidarity against the hated men and women in blue without benefit of an applicable statute.  The matter came to light when a college student on her way to school  spotted two  police officers on the side of the road and flashed her headlights to warn other drivers about the speed trap ahead. A police car pulled her over and the officer wrote her a ticket, saying she’d just broken the law by flashing her lights. She challenged the ticket and won, giving an enterprising lawyer an idea for class action lawsuit.

There is no Florida law that prohibits light-flashing, says Oviedo, Florida attorney J. Marcus Jones. He claims officers are simply misapplying a law that was designed to prohibit drivers from adding after-market emergency lights to their vehicles. He also claims that  officers writing those tickets are violating a driver’s constitutional right to free speech. If motorists want to flash their lights to warn about a speed trap ahead, they are free to do so, according to his suit.

Hmmmm. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day on “Ethics Bob Opens An Ethics Can of Worms…”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Chase Martinez enters the debate on the ethics of Nike’s labor practices abroad, raised by a post by Bob Stone on his blog, and explicated here with some business ethics questions that have long perplexed both critics and advocates of American capitalism.Here is his Comment of the Day:

“The company has a duty to make money.”

“I think what is unethical is consumers abdicating their ethical duty to make informed choices. In big business, “everybody does it” is self-propagating because there is no consumer pressure to be better than your competition. The “free market” assumes an informed consumer-base that punishes companies who disagree with their values by taking their business to those that do. This doesn’t happen, and while some fault lies with companies for using the EBDI rationalization, most, I think, lies with consumers for being apathetic. As long as American consumers don’t care about Chinese peasants working for a dollar a day because they don’t know any better, corporations like Nike have no reason to care.”

The Michigan Saloon Legislator Lock-Out: Not Quite “Here Comes The Bride” Unethical, But Wrong All The Same

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Michigan saloon, bar and restaurant owners are upset that the legislature passed a workplace smoking ban, so the advocacy group Protect Private Property Rights is fighting back  by organizing 500 bars statewide to ban state lawmakers from their premises, beginning September. 1.

This isn’t bigotry or gratuitous cruelty, like the New Jersey bridal shop refusing to sell a gown to a gay customer. It’s not illegal, either: state legislators aren’t a protected class, and discriminating against them isn’t invidious, since, well, they probably are hated with some justification.

No, excluding the lawmakers is unethical for other reasons. To being with, it’s un-American. Continue reading →