Ethics Briefs, #1: Homan’s Speech

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

This is a strange day for me, so I’m forced to post piecemeal what would normally be an ethics warm-up with 4-6 items. Sorry.

1. I listed to “Border Czar” Tom Homan’s press conference in Minnesota. Those conservatives who were frantic that I.C.E. was going to stand down in the state, representing a Trump surrender to a mob and the unethical, inciting elected officials egging the mob on, were, of course, wrong.

It would have been nice if he had acknowledged that some of the statements coming from Administration officials following the tragic deaths of two protesters interfering with I.C.E. operations were premature, inappropriate, and gratuitously inflammatory, but such a concession was strategically and diplomatically impossible, since he would have been criticizing his superiors.

Homan’s best moment was when a female reporter, her tone throbbing with anger and hostility, asked if, as she thought was what Trump had promised during the campaign, I.C.E. would focus only on illegal immigrants who had committed serious or violent crimes. That this would be a responsible policy is a persistent progressive delusion stemming from the “Good Illegal Immigrant” narrative, and Homan knocked the question out of the metaphorical park.

He said that if the government’s position became what the reporter was advocating, then it would be an invitation to those living anywhere in the world where conditions and opportunities are worse than in the U.S.—a.k.a. “everywhere”—to try to get into this country by any means necessary. That, he noted, was basically the message the Biden administration was sending for four disastrous years. Yes, the first priority of I.C.E. must be to apprehend the most violent and worst criminals among the illegal immigration population, but no illegal immigrants belong here regardless of when or why they arrived and what they have done since arriving. Sending a clear message that breaching our borders is forever sufficient to warrant deportation is a crucial element of border security.

1. (a) It’s more than annoying that Homan is such a mushmouth. I suppose he can’t help it, but the man is only marginally more understandable than Gabby Johnson (“Rarit!”) in “Blazing Saddles.” Being able to communicate clearly is an element of professional competence. The substance of Homan’s presentation was excellent, but there were whole sentences I couldn’t translate at all.

Today’s Dose of Trump Derangement…

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

I admit it: I have been occasionally engaging with these lunatics off my own Facebook page, when I don’t know the miscreant and there is little chance of insulting or upsetting someone I care about even a little bit. Pointless and futile, of course, except that it gets some pent up disgust and frustration out of my system.

I didn’t bother responding to the jerk who posted that thing above. Clearly, she is beyond hope. Ethics Alarms is still seeking evidence that anyone west of the great ideological divide has posted something similar. I haven’t seen any, not one example. In contrast, many of my show-biz and academic friends have posted virtually the same message: “If you voted for President Trump or supporthim, get out of my life. I hate you.”

In my continuing quest for symptoms of Trump Derangement to shake in the faces of those, including some commenters, who say the diagnosis is just an ad hominem attack and not based on substance, I find these social media posts especially persuasive that some kind of mental break is responsible. To use one of the Trump Deranged’s favorite refrains in a correct context for once, this “isn’t normal.”

There was much discussion during the respective administrations about “Clinton Derangement,” “Bush Derangement” and “Obama Derangement,” yet I never heard or read anyone suffering from those alleged emotional handicaps announce, “If you support this President or voted for him, you are evil and I want no contact with you, forever.” Literally and historically, no President in our history justified that attitude. Someone who would write, say, or even think that is, to use the kind of metaphor that once got me sued here for defamation, a few sandwiches short of a picnic. Proportion? Respect? Empathy? Fairness? Restraint? The Golden Rule?

Bueller? Hello? McFly?

My next job will be to identify what causes this unique brain dysfunction. CNN and MSNBC? Falling IQs? Social media itself? Advocacy journalism? Educational indoctrination? Wet markets? “Gain of function” research? The C.I.A.? Fluoride?

Whatever it is, I believe it is important to identify the cause and fix the problem, as I hope that the cure won’t require deprogramming. Meanwhile, I find myself less and less inclined to regard “Nah, there’s no such thing as Trump Derangement!” as a legitimate or supportable position.

Bite Me, “Doomsday Clock”!

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

If anyone or anything ever deserved an Ethics Alarms “Bite Me!,” it’s the ridiculous Doomsday Clock and the pompous, biased, fear-mongering scientists who set it.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has set the clock each year since 1947, and to say it does not have a sterling record, whatever standards one uses, would be an understatement. Well, I’ll take that back: they have a sterling record for being wrong. Still, once again the thing is in the news. “The ‘”‘Doomsday Clock'”‘ — a symbolic clock that supposedly represents how close humanity is to global catastrophe according to “experts” — “has moved closer to midnight,” ABC News tells us. “The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced Tuesday that the clock is now 85 seconds to midnight, with midnight representing the apocalypse.”

That’s the closest its ever been! AAAAIIIIIIIIII!!!

[Watch out now, you have to click on “2” below to keep reading…]

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ALERT! WordPress Changed Its Page-Break System!

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Pay attention, now. WordPress, for some reason, “improved” its page-break method. Now, instead of a link that says “continue,” there are links to page 1 and page 2 after the page 1 text. If you finish page 1, click on page 2.

Above is a screen shot from the current post before this one, Comment of the Day: “From Uvalde, The Message Is “Don’t Criminalize Incompetence and Cowardice.” I added the circle and the arrow.

The system was fluctuating back and forth for a while, driving me nuts, so a few posts initially went up with no breaks at all. I finally “spoke” with WordPress, which informed me how to use the new “improved” system.

I’m sorry for the confusion and inconvenience, but I an powerless in situations like this.

The Unabomber says, “I told you so!”

Comment of the Day: “From Uvalde, The Message Is “Don’t Criminalize Incompetence and Cowardice”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

I loved this: not only did long-time commenter Red Pill Ethics return to the fold after almost three years, he did it with brio, registering a Comment of the Day! This gives me hope: I periodically take inventories of which regular commenters have fled the nest, leaving me with only five. All I have to do is take the Ethics Alarms wayback machine, also known as “the archives” and peruse the names under “Comments.” I am always thrilled when I discover that an AWOL commenter has been following the blog all along when something rouses them from their torpor. We have had several instances of this lately.

Here is Red Pill’s Comment of the Day on the post, “From Uvalde, The Message Is “Don’t Criminalize Incompetence and Cowardice”…

***

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Jeez, Conservatives! Ever Heard of the Ethical Virtues Prudence, Proportion, Self-Restraint, Respect and Fairness?

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

How about “priorities”?

Who would have guessed that Otter would become a conservative? The Rule of Law is under organized, well-funded attack in this country, states are defying federal law and law enforcement, elected Democratic officials are telling citizens that the national government is the Gestapo and should be violently opposed, the news media is paving the way for two years of Congressional obstruction, and conservatives are organizing…against gay marriage?

A coalition of 47 conservative organizations is launching a campaign to challenge the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, declaring same sex marriage to be a civil right. Wow, what great timing. The Democrats are intent on packing the Supreme Court already, the news media is fear-mongering daily about what the Evil Republicans have in store, and just in time for the mid-term elections, which already are looking like an open door to an impeachment orgy and a return to open borders and weenie foreign policies, conservatives decide to metaphorically die on a hill for a cause that is both futile, unpopular and unethical.

Among these deluded obsessives are Them Before Us , the American Family Association, the Colson Center for Biblical Worldview, the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family,the Christian Medical and Dental Association, Live Action, the Ruth Institute, the Council on Biblical Manhood & Womanhood, and family policy nonprofits across the country, representing Alaska, Iowa, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, and others.

This group of bitter-enders should be joining principled conservatives in critical, winnable battles instead of focusing their time, trumpets and resources on an issue that has not only been settled but settled ethically. The right to same-sex marriage cannot be reversed without cruel and massive upheavals of lives and families, never mind giving the Left something else to riot about. Such a movement also guarantees the alienation of libertarians, who already line up with the Left regarding open borders.

The stubborn foes of the right to marry have laid out a three-prong strategy: “returning marriage policy to focus on the parent-child relationship; changing public opinion by emphasizing how same-sex marriage and other forms of family breakdown harm children; and mobilizing Christian churches to take a stand for protecting children.”

Hmmm, let’s see:

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Ethics Quiz: The Deranged Librarian

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

I know I still haven’t written the promised post defining standards for diagnosing Trump Derangement. In posts like these, however, I am amassing evidence.

Morgan L. Morrow, a 39 year-old librarian at Jackson County Public Library in Ravenswood, West Virginia, used her TikTok account to call for the murder of President Trump, writing, “Surely a sniper with a terminal illness can’t be a big ask out of 343 million.”

Then she really went on a roll with this mad screed:

“If you voted for him, if you didn’t vote, if you voted independent, genuinely, I hope you get shot in the face three times at point-blank range or I hope you get shot in the back while on your knees being pistol-whipped. If any part of you thinks that I wouldn’t say that if I knew who you are? I have a pretty good idea of who you are, you haven’t hidden your ignorant villainy nearly as well as you think you have. And I said what I said.

This isn’t intolerance or woke hatred, it’s reactionary. You had a hand in what is happening today and I can only hope that one day you suffer as much as the immigrants, the people of color, the LGBTQ+ people have suffered for generations and how much mothers and nurses are suffering right now because you actually condemned them to this injustice with your vote. We ‘told’ you what would happen and you ignored us. In 2016, I was ‘fear mongering’ and even when they described it to you point by point in Project 2025, you actively made the choice to be willfully idiotic. No, and I mean NO amount of apologies or excuses will ever earn my forgiveness. You are as stupid and evil as your red cap leader and I hope you rot in hell with him.”

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The DEI Slippery Slope Goes Here:

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Suraj Bhaskar, 20, from Uttar Pradesh, one of the Indian states, failed the NEET medical school admission exam twice. Determined to become a doctor, however, the plucky young man wouldn’t give up. Indian law mandates a 5% set aside in admissions for people with disabilities (PwDs) in government-aided higher education institutions, including medical colleges.

So he cut off his foot.

A police investigation indicated the violent assault on Suraj that his older brother reported was in fact a carefully planned ruse. The aspiring doctor was indeed found unconscious with a severed foot, but the plot fell apart rapidly.

“The accused tried to mislead the investigation with a fabricated story, but his claims did not stand scrutiny during sustained questioning and examination of evidence,” a police spokesperson told local reporters. A diary belonging to Suraj conatined an entry that read, “I will become an MBBS doctor in 2026,” and his girlfriend testified to Suraj’s obsession with getting into medical school. He had unsuccessfully tried to obtain disability-related documents a few months prior, but was foiled. The medical report determined that Suraj’s foot had been cleanly cut off, most likely with a machine, and the incision was too clean to have been inflicted with a violent knife attack as the two brothers claimed. The syringes found in a field near where Suraj lay strongly suggested that used a drug to numb his legs before performing the self-amputation.

His foot is still missing.

There appears to be some doubt as to whether any charges or punishment will follow with this scheme, which is widely seen as self-punishing. If nothing else, Suraj’s medical career has definitely gotten off on the wrong foot.

I’m sorry, but I regard it as unethical to pass up an obvious punch line like that.

Now THIS Is An Unethical Minister…

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

My father early in his life rejected organized religion, and my Greek Orthodox mother was only slightly behind him. This sort of thing was one reason (though not the only reason) why….

Dr Todd Hall, known affectionately as “The Praiseologist,” is the founder of Shabach Ministries of Praise, Inc., The Shabach Fellowship, and the The Shabach Church of Apopka, Florida. During an African Derived Religions conference (that’s ADR to the Enlightened), the minister asked the congregation to donate $10,000 within 90 seconds, promising that if they did, God would turn the donors into multi-millionaires.

“Well, duh, GEE, Reverend, who could turn down a deal like that! I’m IN!”

“The Lord said, I want to make a multi, multi-millionaire out of someone, but they have to sow ten thousand dollars! He said and they have to do that within 90 seconds,” a recording memorializes Hall saying.“Write the check! If you do this, God says, ‘I’m going to make you a multi-multi-millionaire!” I wish it was me!”

When not preaching or making parishioners into multi-millionaires as an agent of God, Hall is a businessman and the CEO of Risky Productions and TMH Enterprises.

The Praiseologist made his speech in front of a massive projection of a QR code labeled “Sow Your Seed” (Eww!) along with a performer suspended by wires (like Mary Martin in “Peter Pan,” but not singing “I’m Flying!” to dramatize Jehovah’s message, or something. I really liked it when Mary was doing it…and Sandy Duncan and Kathy Rigby too, but Marry was my favorite…

“The scene has fueled accusations of manipulation and exploitation,” one media report says. Ya think?

These kinds of ministers—don’t kid yourself, there are a lot of them out there—are followers of P.T. Barnum, Charles Ponzi, Bernie Madoff and Victor Lustig (who once “sold” the Eiffel Tower) more than Jesus Christ.

Of course, if The Praiseologist’s $10,000 donor does suddenly become a multi-millionaire, will I ever have egg on my face!

FIRE Fights To Maintain Neutrality, Objectivity, Fairness and Integrity

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

I’m not sure that’s possible in this situation.

FIRE is in Ethics Zugzwang.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression bravely and admirably expanded its mission when it became clear that the ACLU no longer cared about protecting the rights of all Americans, just those whose political views it supported. Now the expanded FIRE is trying its mightiest to maintain a politically neutral stance while involving itself in the current rebellion against the rule of law and immigration enforcement in the “sanctuary” states and cities.

Stipulated: This is unquestionably the right position for a civil rights watchdog to take. I also believe it is a position that cannot be effective or even coherent.

The latest statement by FIRE is an essay on its website called “The Alex Pretti shooting and the growing strain on the First Amendment.” Everything in the essay is fair and accurate. Unfortunately, FIRE’s position is likely to get people killed, as fair as it seems. Or in the immortal words of my father’s favorite epitaph,

He was right, dead right

As he sped along

But he’s just as dead

As if he were wrong.

The points FIRE makes about Pretti are arguably legitimate:

Whatever comes of the investigation, this moment demands a reaffirmation of basic First Amendment principles that the administration increasingly undermines by collapsing protected expression into criminal conduct.

First, Americans have a right to protest peacefully. That right doesn’t depend on the cause or politics involved. Whether you are protesting immigration enforcement, the president, abortion, or COVID-19 restrictions, you have a right to go outside and make your voice heard. But the administration has shown a pattern of hostility toward this nation’s long tradition of peaceful protest and dissent, including threatening demonstrators with “very heavy force” and targeting universities and foreign students over protest activity. In September, the administration released National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, which links disfavored viewpoints to domestic terrorism, notably “extremism on migration,” a term left undefined. 

Second, Americans have a right to observe and record law enforcement officers performing their duties in public. Government officials sometimes abuse their power or make mistakes, and public observation and recording are essential tools for documenting misconduct and holding officials accountable. Nobody has a right to physically interfere with law enforcement. But officials have claimed — incorrectly — that it’s illegal to follow and videorecord federal agents or to share photos and videos of them online. Just last Friday in Maine, video revealed a masked ICE agent telling a woman recording him that he was taking pictures of her car because “we have a nice little database and now you’re considered a domestic terrorist.” 

The administration’s invented or distorted definitions of “impeding,” “obstructing,” or “doxxing” have no basis in the law and are inconsistent with the First Amendment. 

Third, Americans don’t forfeit First Amendment rights when exercising their Second Amendment rights. That was true when demonstrators opposing pandemic restrictions openly carried guns at the Michigan statehouse. And it’s true for those protesting immigration enforcement today. In some contexts, displaying the firearm itself is part of the expressive message. Threatening others with a firearm is plainly illegal, but legal carry cannot justify suppressing protected expression or using deadly force.

All true, and also, “Yes, BUT…”

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