And Now For Something Completely Different: An Ethics Challenge on Slavery Reparations

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Except for one brief moment of frustration and madness, Ethics Alarms has been consistent in its derision of the concept of reparations for slavery. Illogical, legally unhinged, divisive, anti-democratic and most of all, impossible, this really bad idea, a favorite of get-rich-quick racial grievance hucksters and reality-resistant progressives, still hangs around like old unwashed socks, and no amount of argument or reasoning seems to be able to send them to the rag pile. Recently both California, where terrible leftist ideas go to thrive and ruin things, and New York, which really should be moved to the West Coast, have both at least pretended to endorse reparations for slavery. California’s ridiculous reparations task force has proposed giving $223,200 each to all descendants of slaves in California, on the theory that it will be a just remedy for housing discrimination against blacks between 1933 and 1977. The cost to California taxpayers would be about $559 billion, more than California’s entire annual budget (that the state already can’t afford), and that doesn’t include the massive cost of administrating the hand-outs and dealing with all the law suits it is bound to generate.

Brilliant. But that’s reparations for you! Logic, common sense and reality have nothing to do with it.

Now comes two wokey professors from—you guessed it, Harvard, to issue a scholarly paper published in “The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences,” titled “Normalizing Reparations: U.S. Precedent, Norms, and Models for Compensating Harms and Implications for Reparations to Black Americans.” The thesis of this thing is essentially that reparations for slavery should be paid because “Everybody Does It,” offering variations of the #1 rationalization on the list that don’t properly apply to slavery at all. (What? The descendants of slaves are not like fishermen facing depleted fish stocks?) The paper is being called a “study”: it is not a study, but rather an activist advocacy piece. (I would have bet that both scholars are black; nope, just one is, although I would not be surprised to learn that Linda J. Bilmes signed on just to help Cornell William Brooks avoid the obvious accusation of bias and conflict of interest. And, naturally, at Harvard taking on such a mission, certifiably bats though it is, can only enhance her popularity on campus.)

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Let’s Play “Guess the Ethicists’ Answers!”

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

This week’s highlighted question for Kwame Anthony Appiah, the NYU philosophy prof who serves as the New York Times’ Magazine’s first real ethicist to take on the role of “The Ethicist” in its long-running advice column, had me pausing to see if I could guess his response. I was wrong: maybe you can do better. Then try to guess mine.

Here’s the question:

“I worked part time for my granduncle’s business when I was 13 and 14. There were many times when we were alone, and he sexually abused me. I never raised it with my parents in those early years; I doubted I would be believed, and my granduncle was a ‘‘kind old man’’ who was very generous to my financially strained family.

In my late 20s, while in therapy, I began to realize the impact those experiences had on me. I told my husband and my parents what happened all those years ago. I received the essential support I needed from my father and my husband. But my relationship with my mother became fraught. When I shared the events with her, she told me that the same man sexually abused her when she was a teenager and that she never told anyone. At first, we were angry about the impact on both of us, but then I became angry at her for not protecting me. How could she have possibly allowed her teenage daughter to regularly be alone with this man? She said that because he was an old man when I worked for him, she didn’t think he would still do the same things. She also asked that I not share this information with my father, fearing that he would blame her for not protecting me.

Knowing that the truth might destroy their marriage, I have remained silent about my mother’s experience and have kept it a secret at her request. I encouraged my mother to attend counseling to address the issue, but she has never done so. Nor has she told my dad. I’ve lost a lot of respect for her over this; her decision seems a selfish one.

I am now in my 50s, my parents are in their 80s and the secret is still buried. My dad continues to ask why I don’t spend more time with my mother; it clearly bothers him. I wonder if it is time to share the secret with him. Is unburdening myself of this secret worth causing disruption and sadness at this late stage of my dad’s life and my parents’ 60-year marriage?“

OK, thinking music time!

Time’s up! Do you have your answers? What did The Ethicist say, and what was my (instant) response?

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More Post-Debate Ethics [Expanded!]

/ Jack Marshall / 61 Comments

To a substantial extent, the aftermath of the oogy Presidential debate this week has been more revealing than the debate itself. Nobody who has been paying attention should have been surprised by President Biden disturbing performance. Just the fact that he was willing, or was allowed, to participate in the debate at all had me thinking that day, “Well, I guess they must have figured out some way for Joe to keep his dementia at bay for 90 minutes.” They hadn’t. Biden could have pulled out of the debate with relatively minimal damage, citing his health (he did have a cold) or something else. The blow-back and speculation would have not significantly more critical than what he received for skipping the traditional Presidential live appearance on the Super Bowl broadcast.

There is speculation that Joe was deliberately set up to fail. In the previous EA post about this debacle—and anyone who was pleased or amused by Biden’s distress needs an ethics transplant—I attributed the President being subjected to the national and international humiliation to his party’s, campaign’s and staff’s incompetence. Hanlon’s Razor still compels that verdict, but I must say some of the recent conspiracy theories sound increasingly plausible.

In this post from May 21, I harshly criticized George Mason professor Jeremy Mayer’s USA Today column headlined, “How Biden Can Save America From Trump’s Return To The White House: Drop Out of the Race.” Professor Mayer was gracious, good-natured and gutsy enough to come here to defend his position and also join the comment wars. He’s an admirable person and a thoughtful one, obviously. I just realized that I never apologized for calling him an “idiot” in my post. I still disagree strongly with his article, but he’s not an idiot, and I hereby apologize for that slur. It was unfair and wrong. I’m sorry, I regret it, and I will try to restrict my use of “idiot” in the future to genuine idiots.

But I digress. I would be fascinated to know how the events of this week have altered his position, if at all. To quote the USA Today piece: “Biden could announce, anytime this summer, that he’s out. He could use the same logic that got him the nomination in 2020. He sincerely and accurately believed that he was the Democrat with the best chance to beat Trump. Now, he is one of the few national Democrats who could get Trump reelected.”

Based on Biden’s defiant rally yesterday, I don’t see how he could reverse himself and withdraw without looking bullied and being further humiliated. One thing we know about Biden’s personality is that he is insecure, and as a lifetime over-achiever he bristles at criticism and being, in his view, underestimated. Many are evoking the model of President Lyndon Johnson, who withdrew from his re-election campaign in 1968. Johnson was more popular than Biden at the time, and he withdrew much earlier, in March. He also had a divisive and much hated Republican looming as his likely opponent, Richard Nixon. But Johnson really was, as George W. Bush claimed to be, “a uniter not a divider.” He saw his presence in the race as further dividing what was already an ominously divided country, as well as his party. Biden has actively encouraged division as President. Biden’s no Johnson.

Other points…

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Ethics Dunces: 1) Anyone Who Says Biden Didn’t Lose the Debate 2) Anyone Who Will Still Vote For Biden After Watching the Debate.

/ Jack Marshall / 66 Comments


I know that headline will get some heads-a-blowing. So be it. It’s true.

A CNN quickie poll of debate watchers conducted by SSRS found that the majority of registered voters who watched the debate believed that Biden lost in in a 67% to 33% split. 69% of Democratic debate watchers actually said that Biden won the debate.

There is no accounting for opinions or taste, but saying that Biden won last night’s debate cannot be defended except as dishonesty, denial, or insanity. If that performance won, how could Biden have lost? By simply lying supine on the stage, farting and drooling? With these people —69% of Democrats!—maybe they would have even called that winning. Fine, they could say that they won’t change their minds about the candidates just because Biden lost the debate, since they have been brainwashed into thinking Trump is Satan. They could say that Biden lost the debate but still has their trust that he can handle the job for four years, as absurd a position as that is. However, they cannot say that Biden won the debate unless they completely redefine “won” as “made a complete fool of himself and embarrassed his party, his supporters and his country.”

That 69% figure as well as 33% of the total group polled need to be immediately installed in the Bias Makes You Stupid Hall of Fame.

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Observations on the First 2024 Presidential Debate [Expanded]…[Expanded Again!]

/ Jack Marshall / 78 Comments

Is using Nelson Muntz to introduce a post about last night’s debacle for President Biden and the Democrats too mean? Too cruel? Unnecessarily harsh? I don’t think so. The alternative was one of many devastating shots from last night of dead-eyed Biden staring into space, seemingly zoned out. Nelson is fair and appropriate, because no degree of mockery, resentment or schadenfreude is excessive as a response to this corrupted and arrogant party being exposed beyond denial (though many are trying) for their unforgivable infliction of a mentally rotting, place-holding shell on this great and essential nation as its leader. I would be furious, but I was already furious about this before Biden was nominated. His physical and mental deterioration was obvious then. It was also obvious that the party and the news media were hiding it. It has been obvious the Biden is getting worse too: already unfit to be President, he was deteriorating further right in front of us—-and the Party’s response was that the evidence was all “cheap fakes.” Pure 1984 and aspiring totalitarianism, and yet the desperate Trump Deranged applauded it, excused it, and enabled it. Shame on them, shame on everybody. Well, they got what was coming to them last night. Good.

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Wait, Does Trump Read Ethics Alarms?

/ Jack Marshall / 95 Comments

He essentially used almost the exact same “kill line” on Biden that I recommended:

“I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence; I don’t think he knows what he said either.”

Of course, it’s a pretty obvious one, but at least he or someone on his team is alert.

And no, I am not watching this nadir in our democracy’s history. Someone who had read my post called me up to tell me about it.

Looking around the web and social media, it appears that the Axis will have a tough time spinning this. From S.E. Cupp, one of CNN’s token conservatives who hates Trump:

“OOOOOOKE—lahoma Where The Fools Want Bibles In the Schools…”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Morons.

Just as the Far Left plays into the worst conservative stereotypes about them with demands like abortion right up to birth and open borders, the Far Right parodies itself with Constitution-defying laws like Louisiana’s requiring the Ten Commendments to be displayed in public school classrooms. Now Oklahoma says, “Hold my beer!”with the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Ryan Walters announcing in a memo today that every Oklahoma school must teach students the Bible the 2024-2025 school year. “The Bible is an indispensable historical and cultural touchstone,” Walters said in a press release unveiling the mandate. “Without basic knowledge of it, Oklahoma students are unable to properly contextualize the foundation of our nation which is why Oklahoma educational standards provide for its instruction. This is not merely an educational directive but a crucial step in ensuring our students grasp the core values and historical context of our country.”

There is no chance, none, zip, nada, that this obviously religiously motivated law will stand up to judicial scrutiny. This is pure grandstanding.

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Yeah, I Think It’s Fair To Say That Tricking a Guy into Having Sex-Change Surgery So You Can Marry the New Her and Gain Control of Her Family’s Property is Unethical….

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

As weird as things have gotten in the U.S., much weirder stuff goes on abroad, and I ignore most of it. This story, however, requires that attention be paid.

Mujahid, a 20-year-old from Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh–that’s India—claims a hospital staff performed a sex change operation on him without his consent. A man named Omprakash, the alleged victim claims, had been harassing him for years and deceived him into believing that he was suffering from a serious medical condition. He then offered to take him to Mansoorpur hospital, where he was sedated and then operated on. “He brought me here, and the next morning I had an operation. When I regained consciousness, I was told that I had been changed from a boy to a girl!” a sobbing Mujahid told NDTV reporters. “When I woke up, Omprakash told me that I am a woman now and that he would take me to Lucknow to marry me. He threatened to kill my father if I resisted.”

Yeah, definitely unethical, in my expert opinion.

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Observations On Tucker Carlson’s Brilliant Take-Down of an Unethical Journalist

/ Jack Marshall / 89 Comments

I was looking for another version of this video not linked to “End Wokeness,” or “Holy shit!” because what’s good about it has nothing to do with “wokeness.” I couldn’t find one quickly enough, so there it is.

Watch the clip.

Observations:

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