Ethics Dunce: The United Nations

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

In a March report, three United Nations entities, the International Committee of Jurists (ICJ), UNAIDS and the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, stated,

“Sexual conduct involving persons below the domestically prescribed minimum age of consent to sex may be consensual in fact, if not in law. The enforcement of criminal law should reflect the rights and capacity of persons under 18 years of age to make decisions about engaging in consensual sexual conduct and their right to be heard in matters concerning them. Pursuant to their evolving capacities and progressive autonomy, persons under 18 years of age should participate in decisions affecting them, with due regard to their age, maturity, and best interests, and with specific attention to non-discrimination guarantees.”

The United Nations is deliberately endorsing the rationalizations used by every teacher that seduces a student, every sexual predator who rapes a boy, every religious cultist who takes a child bride, and every father who has incestuous relations with his teenage daughter. As with workplace sexual harassment,the only ethical system that works to prevent child sexual abuse is absolutism. That means no exceptions. An adult’s superior power and presumed authority must be presumed to render consent from a child under the age of 18 invalid. The “Love is Love” platitudes are simply slippery slopes to rampant molestation. This isn’t an issue that can be decided on a case by case basis.

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Comment Of The Day: “If Cleopatra Was Black, Maybe I Am Too!”

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Once again I am confronted with the phenomenon of a Comment of the Day that is better written than the Ethics Alarms post at issue. This happens a lot (Curmie, today’s author, is a repeat offender). I am torn about it, actually: the comments here contribute greatly to the value of the blog, and my original concept was to create a colloquy of articulate readers interested in ethics who also bring different backgrounds and perspectives to the issues. The high quality of commentary obviously validates that mission; it’s only my fragile ego that suffers. Curmie, like several others who participate regularly here, is an experienced blogger himself. He’s also a better proof-reader than I am (though I found one typo this time, making my day).

But I digress. The topic of Curmie’s Comment of the Day is the controversy over Netflix suggesting that Cleopatra was black in a new series, a matter Ethics Alarms raised in the post, “If Cleopatra Was Black, Maybe I Am Too!”

From here on, it’s all Curmie; I’m just going to sit by quietly feeling inadequate…

***

There are several differences, I think, between this story and the brouhaha over the black Anne Boleyn a couple of years ago.

First is a fundamental difference in the way the casting of a major role was presented. The BBC would have us believe that race doesn’t matter in the casting of the title character in the “Anne Boleyn” mini-series so long as it’s “surprising.” (As you noted, Jack, a block of cheese would also have been surprising in the role.) The forthcoming Netflix series is at least honest that being black (or mixed race and appearing black, in this case) was a prerequisite for an actress being considered for the role of Cleopatra, who almost certainly was, shall we say, significantly lighter-complected.

This is apparent in the nonsensical utterances in the promotional video, in which anonymous voices are treated as authorities. If they had a legitimate historian who supported the cause, that person would be identified as such. That omission is more than a little telling.

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Open Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

It sure seems like lots of ethics stuff is swirling around today, and I have no idea where I’ll be going with it at this point.

I’m counting on you to help sort it all out…

On Waco, “Waco,” And Cults

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Another horrible occurrence that I did not mention yesterday while review the ethics-related events of April 19 through the centuries was the tragic conclusion of the FBI’s seige against Mount Carmel in Waco, Texas, in 1993. After a 51-day stand-off between the federal government and an armed religious cult, the compound burned to the ground, with about 80 members of Branch Davidians, including 22 children, dying in the blaze.

This was an ethics train wreck to be sure, and an unusually deadly one. There are so many documentaries and online accounts of the incident (of various quality and accuracy) that I’m not going to add to them here. I do recommend the 2018 Showtime docudrama series “Waco,” which is now streaming with a fascinating new sequel, “Waco: Aftermath,” currently being presented on Showtime.

There is a natural bias in “Waco”: its main sources were a book by one of the survivors and cult members whose wife perished in the fire, and another by an FBI negotiator who was extremely critical of how the agency handled the situation. Both authors come off as heroes of the disaster to the extent that such a botch can have heroes. When the docudrama premiered in 2018, many reviewers complained that the writers treated the FBI as the villains of the story, with cult leader David Koresh portrayed too sympathetically.

My impression, seeing “Waco” now, is that the series’ creators were on to something that has come into sharper focus in recent years. The FBI abuses its power, is badly managed, has too much autonomy, and can’t be trusted. That should have sunk in in 1993, but the news media was determined to let the hallowed law enforcement agency, Attorney General Janet Reno, and especially President Bill Clinton off the hook. I remember the coverage well: Koresh’s cult was lumped into the paramilitary and survivalist anti-government movement of the period. The Waco siege followed on the heels of the Ruby Ridge fiasco the year before, involving the same federal agencies, the FBI and the ATF. Even though that fatal showdown was ultimately shown to be exacerbated by the Feds (and a lawsuit found the agencies liable for damages), the public and media still were conditioned to regard the FBI as the “good guys.” Sure, it was tragic that people died, but the consensus was that they brought it on themselves, sad as the outcome was. At the time, I found it astounding that Reno wasn’t forced to resign, and that President Clinton escaped any accountability at all.

Much of that result was because of the subsequent Oklahoma City Bombing by Timothy McVeigh in 1995. Public opinion was turning against the trend of over-aggressive government following Waco: Rush Limbaugh in particular was leading a daily attack on what he saw as as Big Government restrictions on personal liberties (like the right to live out in the desert with fellow followers of a deranged but charismatic religious fanatic who claimed to be chosen by God). Once McVeigh’s truck brought down the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, destroyed or damaged 324 other buildings within a 16-block radius, killed 168 people and injured 680, however, public opinion turned decisively the government’s way. McVeigh cited Waco as a major reason for his terrorism, and the Cognitive Dissonance Scale worked its predictable magic: now the Branch Davidians were linked to pure evil. The FBI, and thus the U.S. government, propelled to the other side of the scale, the “good guys” at Waco, at Ruby Ridge, and always.

They aren’t, and weren’t. “Waco,” for all its flaws, makes that contrary conclusion unavoidable.

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A “Great Stupid” Classic! Addressing Crash Dummy Employment Discrimination

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

Res ipsa loquitur.

The scary thing: nobody laughed.

Assessing Blame For The Fetterman Fiasco

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

It is nearly a year since Senator John Fetterman’s May 2022 stroke. Despite the stroke’s seriousness, the fact that his recovery was not merely incomplete but in question, and the risks to his health, Fetterman continued his campaign to fill the vacant U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania. Elected over GOP challenger Mehmet Oz, Ftterman too office in January and quickly ended up in the hospital again, this time for clinical depression, a common aftereffect of a stroke as life-threatening as his was. Yesterday he returned to the Upper Chamber to chair the Senate Subcommittee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.

It did not go particularly well. Fetterman still has trouble speaking and reading; indications are that complete cognitive recovery from his health crisis may be unattainable. Naturally, the right-wing media is, as politely as it can, hurling “I told you sos.” Columnist Stephen Kruiser snarked this morning,

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Twitter Is Being Attacked For Loosening Its Hateful Conduct Policy. Twitter Shouldn’t Have A Hateful Conduct Policy [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

It is increasingly obvious that the progressive critics of Elon Musk’s efforts to make Twitter a neutral platform that encourages and facilitates communication and dialogue never wanted free speech. They wanted speech that they approved of and that advanced their agendas. The pre-Musk iteration of Twitter pleased them: conservatives breached the slanted rules and enforcement of them; those using ad hominem attacks against the “right” targets and “for the greater good” knew they had a free pass.

In the Bizarro World of “DEI,” fairness isn’t equitable, equal treatment isn’t fair, and free speech isn’t “safe.”

The latest example of this attitude came as Twitter modified its “Hateful Conduct Policy” this month. The prohibitions on “Slurs and Tropes” no longer includes “targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.” Deadnaming is when one intentionally (or unintentionally) uses a transgender individual’s pre-transitioning name, as in calling Caitlin Jenner “Bruce.”

This reasonable and ethical removal of a restriction ripe for abuse by speech censors and WrongThink police has now been labelled proof of Twitter’s approval of transphobia. In fact, it should mark the beginning of the elimination of the “Hateful Conduct Policy” entirely.

At the threshold, the very title of the section wounds free speech goals: it supports the Totalitarian Left’s position that mere speech is conduct that makes certain groups and individuals “unsafe,” and that the “hate speech” label, which cannot be defined sufficiently precisely not to be abused as a standard, describes expression that is not protected by the First Amendment.

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If Cleopatra Was Black, Maybe I Am Too!

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Netflix is telling its subscribers that Cleopatra was black, but both Cleopatra and I come from Greek stock, so if she was black, I must be too. This is just the break I have been waiting for after seeing my legal ethics training business torn to pieces by the stupid Wuhan virus lockdown, and income reduced to trickle that cannot be restored to its previous whoosh! Now that I can market my services as one of the very few blacks in the field, whole new vistas are open to me. Thanks, Netflix!

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Sorry, I’m just giddy.

A new Netflix new docu-series, “African Queens: Queen Cleopatra,” stars black British actress Adele James as the fabled Egyptian ruler. Producer Jada Pinkett Smith (yes, she’s the one her husband slapped Chis Rock over) has said that “she wanted to tell the story because ‘”we don’t often get to see or hear stories about black queens.” Somebody should tell Jada that one reason for that is that they prefer to tell the stories of white queens and pretend they are black, as when the very white second wife of King Henry the VIII was cast as being black in 2021 British mini-series. As I pointed out in the linked post, this kind of fantasy revisionism is considered benign—DEI, man!—-while casting a white women to play a black one would be “whitewashing” and racist. Similarly, casting a black actress to play the red-haired, fishy-white Little Mermaid in Disney’s life action version of the animated classic is hunky-dory, but using computer magic to make the black version of whitefish Ariel white again is racist. Clear?

I sure hope not.

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Morning Ethics Round-Up, 4/19/2023: Madness, Violence, Harm, Trust And Fairness

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Lots of bad stuff has happened on April 19, but at dawn on this date in 1776, just about 20 minutes from where I grew up in Arlington, Massachusetts, 700 British troops on the way to capture Sam Adams and John Hancock and snuff out the rebellion of the colonists, marched into Lexington. Just 77 minutemen were gathered on the town’s common, Lexington Green, to stop them, having been warned that night by Paul Revere and William Dawes. The Patriots lost the battle, of course, but the Revolution had begun, and the world should be grateful for it. The Green is still there, but it is in the middle of a traffic circle now; it’s hard to imagine that the great American experiment, a nation created to embody ethical values, started in such a place.

1. Madness! Rice is a main food source for about 3.5 billion people, but some of the climate change cultists want it banned. The AFP News Agency posted a video on Twitter that argued, “Rice is to blame for around 10 percent of global emissions of methane, a gas that over two decades, traps about 80 times as much heat as carbon dioxide. Scientists say that if the world wants to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, rice cannot be ignored.” This is, of course, bonkers, though whether it is more or less bonkers than the climate change fanatics insisting that we stop eating meat and start learning to like bugs is a matter of, uh, taste. After Legal Insurrection flagged the video, those who thought it would be persuasive propaganda had second thoughts, and this is all that remains today:

Remember: this is a cult. Causing a famine and widespread death and suffering to “save the planet” is a necessary trade-off to such fanatics.

2. Someone needs to explain to Biden Administration “historic” and “diversity” hires that they still can’t get away with embarrassing the government. Well, they can’t count on it, anyway. Kayla Denker is a transgender activist who U.S. Forest Service and tweeted a video showing her with a gun accompanied by the message, “While advocating for trans people to ‘arm ourselves’ is not any kind of a solution to the genocide we are facing, I do want to say that if any of you transphobes do try to come for me I am taking a few of you with me.” Then a trans ex-student shot up a Nashville Christian grade school, and the tweet went “viral.”

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On The Skunks Calling Fox Black

/ Jack Marshall / 53 Comments

Fox News settled Dominion’s $1.6 billion defamation suit over the network’s false claim that its voting machines at rigged votes in the 2020 election for $787.5 million. It was clear that Fox knowingly misrepresented facts for ratings and to pander to Trump fans, and the lawsuit already had thoroughly embarrassed the company: all it could do in its defense is argue that the deliberate misrepresentations weren’t malicious. That was a tough assignment; the settlement was prudent. In this op-ed, Washington Post’s media watchdog hack Eric Wemple gives vent to his hatred of the network that declines to join the Post and the rest of the mainstream media in its mission to install a permanent Leftist dictatorship, writing in part,

In its statement, Fox News demonstrated that not even a court record bulging with evidence of perfidy is enough to shame the organization into genuine contrition. “We are pleased to have reached a settlement of our dispute with Dominion Voting Systems. We acknowledge the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false. This settlement reflects FOX’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards.”

(Boldface added to highlight the network’s minimization of the fact that the discovery materials exposed not just falsehoods but lies. Boldface italics added to highlight an unthinkable proposition — firm evidence that the network refuses to learn from any experience.)…the resolution requires a great deal of something that Fox News has in wheelbarrows (money) and very little of something it has in teaspoons (editorial integrity).

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