September Ethics Inventory Check

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

On this date, September 1, in 1971, the Pittsburgh Pirates manager Danny Murtaugh wrote down the first all-black lineup in Major League Baseball history. It wasn’t noticed at the time, even by most of the players. The landmark was only quickly mentioned during the team’s radio broadcast of the game, which the Bucs won before a tiny crowd of 11,278 in Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Stadium. The line-up was a completely natural occurrance, according to Murtaugh, who was not one to decide on personnel based on “diversity, equity and inclusion,” which had not yet begun its path of destruction across the culture and society. “When it comes to making out the lineup, I’m colorblind, and the athletes know it,” he said. “The best men in our organization are the ones who are here. And the ones who are here all play, depending on when the circumstances present themselves.”

Deciding on employment, opportunities and benefits based on merit! What a concept! Meanwhile, this month’s Harvard Alumni magazine featuring the university’s new President, who just coincidentally has spent her entire career career from college onward promoting “diversity” and writing about systemic racism in America, discusses the Supreme Court’s affirmative action knock-down by quoting her response to it, promising that the institution will continue to “believe—deeply—that a thriving, diverse intellectual community is essential to academic excellence and critical to shaping the next generation of leaders.” That is clearly code for “policies that make race and ethnicity a primary factor in admission when tangible and substantive measures of ability and achievement will not reach the desired result” are essential to academic excellence and critical to shaping the next generation of leaders. The obvious response to that is “Prove it!” There is no persuasive data demonstrating the benefits of “diversity” in a student body or in an education, certainly not to the extent that it justifies, as Justice Roberts wrote in the SCOTUS opinion, making race a negative factor in determining who gets admitted to an elite college. At Harvard, “diversity” is usually an illusion: there as everywhere else, student form their own peer groups and associations based on mutual interests and affinities. Justifying racial discrimination by extolling a factor’s benefits that literally no research confirms is the ultimate progressive conceit. Would that all-black Pirates team have been better with a couple of white players on the field—or better still, a proportion of white players matching the national demographics? Somehow I don’t think so.

Incidentally, the Pirates won the World Series in 1971.

1. And now for something completely different...was this unethical?

2. Huh. Tough question…Yesterday Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell froze for an extended period for the second time in less than two months. Possibly McConnell is experiencing one of the common effects of a concussion, which he suffered after a fall in March; that’s the current line of the Republican PR machine Meanwhile, Senator Diane Feinstein seems to be little more than a puppet being propped up by aides, and Pennsylvania default Senator John Fetterman is stumbling along with a brain damaged by a stroke. “What can be done to address the issue of a Senator who is unable to do the job?” asks legal commentator Michael Dorf.

Me! Call on me! What can be done is for parties to have the integrity to stop running candidates who are too old (if you will hit 80 during the term you are running for, you’re too old) and for politicians to have the respect for the public and their office not to offer themselves as candidates when the know, or should know (somebody tell them!) that their faculties and health are failing. Why is that so hard to establish as a “democratic norm”?

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Officials And Leaders Who Conservatives Consider Essential Bulwarks Of Constitutional Government Really Have To Stop Relying On “The King’s Pass”

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Take Clarence Thomas for example.

As with Donald Trump, who was the object of much rationalization here yesterday, Justice Thomas apparently is certain that conservative and Republican integrity don’t have the rigor to make him accountable for a truly staggering series of judicial ethics breaches. He is also apparently correct in this assumption.

Justice Thomas finally acknowledged publicly that he should have reported selling real estate at a suspicious profit to billionaire political donor Harlan Crow in 2014, a transaction disclosed by ProPublica earlier this year. The Crow company bought a string of properties for $133,363 from co-owners Thomas, his mother and the family of Thomas’ late brother, according to a state tax document and a deed. Conservative power-player Crow then owned the house where a Supreme Court Justice’s elderly mother was living—hey, no big deal!—and soon contractors began tens of thousands of dollars of improvements on the two-bedroom, one-bathroom home. Although a federal disclosure law requires SCOTUS Justices and other officials to disclose the details of most real estate sales over $1,000, Thomas never deigned to mention this convenient and inherently suspicious transaction. You know, that “appearance of impropriety” thingy?

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Labor Day Weekend Open Forum

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

As is usual on holiday weekends around here, the tumbleweeds will be blowing through the cyber-streets no matter what fascinating ethical conundrums I can find. Nevertheless, perhaps the few, those happy few, can make up in quality here what EA will almost certainly lack in quantity.

We shall see, will we not?

You’re up!

“Curmie’s Conjectures”: Donald Trump Has No Convictions, But He Has No Convictions

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

by Curmie

[Notes from your host: 1) Curmie and I did not coordinate our posts, and 2) as usual, his erudition puts me to shame.]

***

I’m currently in the process of moving into a new office which is far too small to accommodate my collection of books, even after I gave away over 1000 of them.  One of the volumes I still haven’t figured out what to do with is my Penguin paperback copy of Thucydides’ “History of the Peloponnesian War,” purchased over 40 years ago for a course I took in grad school.

Coming across that volume triggered a memory of struggling with one of that book’s most famous sections, the Stasis in Corcyra.  It wasn’t that the passages in question were too confusing.  Rather, it was that word “stasis”; no one would describe the civil war on the island of Corcyra in 427 BCE as static. 

A little digging (well, actually more than a little, as these were the days before the internet) revealed that virtually all English translations of those passages of Thucydides had simply adopted a cognate of the Greek word στάσις (stásis), meaning roughly “that which is stood up.”  So something firmly placed and unchanging would be static, or in a state of stasis.  But the word also carried the meaning of “standing up against,” in the sense of resisting authority.  So the insurrection on Corcyra was, in fact, an act of stasis.

These linguistic constructions, known as contranyms, auto-antonyms, or “Janus words” (among other locutions) are not uncommon.  We all understand that a peer might be a member of the English nobility or an equal, or that “it’s all downhill from there” might mean that the system is in decline or that the hard part is over and we can coast to the finish line.

I’m not sure if there’s a word for the variation on the theme that forms the title of this essay: the two meanings of the term are not in direct contradiction, but they lead to pretty close to opposite conclusions.  What I find interesting is that both definitions can apply simultaneously. 

That is, “having no convictions” can mean lacking a system of guiding principles, especially one involving a moral compass or an ethical center. It can also mean that the subject has never been convicted of a crime.  I’d argue that Donald Trump fits both descriptions rather well. 

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Snap Out Of It! Trump’s Latest Disqualifying Statement Is Signature Significance—Stop Pretending He Is A Rational Option To Elect President

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

Asked by Glenn Beck in an interview “[I]f you’re president again, will you lock people up?”, Donald Trump, the supposed champion of democracy and heroic foe of the Democratic totalitarians, answered, “The answer is you have no choice because they’re doing it to us.” 

Dingdingdingdingding! This is signature significance, just like his earlier musings about suspending the Constitution. As I wrote earlier this year, “As divided as Americans are, it doesn’t appear that enough of them care about preserving democracy to do anything to preserve it. They only differ on the means by which they are willing to let it collapse.” Electing Donald Trump as President, with his sick “tit for tat,” “Do unto others as they do to you,” “vengeance is mine” approach to ethics magnified by his “the ends justify the means” orientation can’t possible “save” democracy. The most it can do is maximize the chances that the totalitarians we end up with aren’t socialists, anti-white bigots and addicted to toxic woke fantasies. That shouldn’t be good enough. It isn’t good enough, not for this nation. That so many still think it is depresses and frightens me greatly.

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No, “Over 1,600 Scientists” Have NOT Signed A “No Climate Change Emergency” Declaration

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Climate change hysteria, hype, propaganda and disinformation have become overwhelming lately, and with hurricane season upon us, it can be expected to get even worse. So is evidence that the spectacularly woke and incompetent Biden administration is so dedicated to the enviro-fascism this cult engenders that its priorities have become unhinged. For example, when the Pentagon needed to be devoting it full attention to minimizing the carnage from Biden’s disastrous snap withdrawal from Afghanistan in the two weeks between the fall of Kabul to the Taliban on August 15, 2021, and the final U.S. military flight out of Afghanistan on August 30, newly revealed emails show that top Pentagon officials were working to finalize the Department of Defense Climate Adaptation Plan, which declares climate change a major national security risk. After all, what’s a few dead servicemen and abandoned foreign allies along with the collapse of U.S. foreign policy credibility when the END OF THE WORLD looms?

Central to this international brainwashing and bullying effort—the U.N. recently ruled that children can sue nations that haven’t adequately wasted resources on anti-climate change measures that are likely to have no effect whatsoever on the climate—is the misleading claim that there is “scientific consensus” on the topic, when in fact there is not, and when even if this were true, “consensus” on scientific matters has been wrong, sometimes disastrously wrong, throughout history. The conclusions of this so-called consensus are being parroted by activists, politicians and journalists who couldn’t pass a 7th grade science quiz.

Meanwhile, President Biden is being urged to declare a constitutionally dubious “climate emergency” because of all this “certainty” regarding climate change doom, despite the fact that none of the models have panned out and predictions of deadlines to “save the planet” have been as accurate as the those of latter day prophets who have announced the exacts dates when Armageddon was arriving.

Despite all of this (and more), today’s lie being plastered as a headline on multiple conservative and anti-climate change news and a commentary sources is still a lie, still unethical, and still unforgivable. “1,600 Scientists Humiliate the Climate Ghouls Once and for All,” claims PJ Media, the conservative punditry giant. “Coalition of Scientists: ‘There is No Climate Emergency,” shouts CatholicVote. “Over 1,600 Scientists Sign ‘No Climate Emergency’ Declaration” is the most common phrasing, as used by the Epoch Times.

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Ethics Hero (And Most Ethical Use Of “Asshole” of 2023): Gold Star Father Mark Schmitz

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Mark Schmitz, a Gold Star father, testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee yesterday regarding the deadly suicide bombing in August 2021 that left 13 U.S. servicemembers dead, including Mr. Schmitz’s son, Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Jared Schmitz. The cruel, irresponsible and incompetent American withdrawal from Afghanistan and its aftermath ordered by President Biden has been largely forgotten by most American voters, since they have the attention span of ADD kittens. Perhaps Schmitz’s no-hold-barred attack on Biden’s conduct in this episode will remind them.

What am I talking about? The mainstream news media will make sure as few of the kittens see his testimony as possible, and there’s still more than a year for them to forget again.

His full statement:

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“Gotcha!” Of “Gotcha’s!” The Washington Post Admits That It “Stands By” False Reporting!

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Good to know. Thanks, WaPo!

In one of the Jonathan Turley essays discussed here, the increasingly red pilled GW law prof appropriately scored the Washington Post’s partisan hack of hacks, Philip Bump, whose consistently unethical reporting jaunts would be a blight on responsible journalism if responsible journalism was around any more to be blighted. A burst of exorbitant loyalty that the Post will rue moved the paper to rise to Bump’s defense with the ill-advised message to Turley you see above.

I bet Turley was laughing out loud as he loosened his fingers to type a follow-up article for his blog. The Post had handed him one of the great “gotcha‘s!” in “Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!” history. By saying that it “stood behind” the reporting of their partisan stooge, the Post had endorsed now indisputable examples of biased, partisan, incompetent, irresponsible and dishonest reporting. Turley could now use the full range of his legal talents to prepare a crushing brief to show, not only the depth of Bump’s corruption, but that of the Post’s as well!

And use it them he did.

Washington Post Stands by Philip Bump’s Claims on Lafayette Park, the Hunter Biden Laptop, and Other Controversial Claims is Turley’s gleeful headline. It deserved an exclamation point. The professor reviews Bump’s despicable work on the Lafayette Park kerfuffle, The Hunter Biden Laptop cover-up, the FBI’s Spying on the Trump Campaign, and the Russian Collusion hoax.

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Ethics Quiz: A Hanlon’s Razor Challenge! [Missing Information Restored!]

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

In response to the above point, an obvious one, made by GOP Presiential hopeful Nikki Haley, Jemele Hill actually wrote this…

“So part of the reason racism is such a terrible sickness in this country is because politicians like this know they can rally a certain base with the fear of OH MY GOD A BLACK WOMAN MIGHT BE PRESIDENT IF YOU DON’T VOTE FOR ME. Then we want to act all surprised when the most hateful part of the base decides they need to act out on their feelings of hatred.”

Jemele Hill is a professional and shameless race-baiter, but one might think that even she might see just a hint of another reason, other than race, why a rational voter would not want to see Kamala Harris in the White House. Harris is an unqualified, babbling, incompetent fool. (Her Ethics Alarms dossier is here.) Unlike other fools in Washington D.C., she isn’t even good at hiding it. This is why she polls as the most unpopular Vice-President in U.S. history. Haley’s point has bite because the “certain base” she is trying to rally is the portion of the population that thinks Presidents should actually be able to do the job, and that mere x chromosomes and skin shade alone—the reasons Harris was selected to be Joe’s shaddow—aren’t enough. Her message is not how Hill characterized it, but rather, “OH MY GOD A BABBLING MORONIC PHONY MIGHT BE PRESIDENT IF YOU DON’T VOTE FOR ME.”

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A 12-year-old Boy And His Mother Refuse To Be Bullied By Woke School Administrators And Win

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Notice the racist symbolism in that symbol above? No? That’s because there isn’t any, but never mind: Jayden Rodriguez, a 12-year-old middle-schooler in Colorado Springs, was kicked out of class at The Vanguard School, a local charter school, because he had a Gadsden flag patch on his backpack. Jayden was told he had to remove the patch before he would be admitted to the class again.

In an email, a school administrator claimed that the patch was “disruptive to the school environment.” Boy, do I ever remember getting upset over the patches fellow classmates had on their backpacks! This was, of course, an example of woke fascism by a teacher and a school, nothing more or less. Further emails from the school told the student’s mother that “some may now see the Gadsden flag as a symbol of intolerance and hate—or even racism.” Oh, well if “some” erroneously associate a historical symbol that had nothing whatsoever to do with slavery or racism as offensive, by all means punish the kid who knows what it really symbolizes. “Some” see the American flag as a symbol of white supremacy, imperialism, and systemic racism. They are welcome to their foolish opinion, but that doesn’t mean they should have the power to stop any sane American from displaying Old Glory.

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