The panic is all mine: this really had to be a productive and efficient day, and it wasn’t: life, clients and chaos all got in the way. Now I’m facing down a serious deadline and running out of time.

Nonetheless, Ethics Alarms will not be denied.

This is an unusually relevant  landmark ethics date: On September 8, 1974, President Gerald Ford infuriated Richard Nixon’s many enemies and pardoned him for any crimes he may have committed or participated in while President. It was a uniquely courageous act that defined (and probably doomed) Ford’s Presidency. In my view, it was also the right and and wise thing to do. Ford, like Joe Biden, was an undistinguished career politician and hardly a towering intellect, but unlike Biden, he understood what was in the best long-term interests  of the nation.  Democrats made him defend this controversial action before the House Judiciary Committee, and Ford said he wanted to end the national divisions created by the Watergate scandal. To this day, there are still those who believe that he cut a corrupt deal with Nixon when he was appointed. Ford was well aware that the pardon would place his leadership under a permanent shadow. “Mister we could use a man like Gerald Ford again!”

1. Since you mention it...I was going to ignore D-list celeb Kathy Griffin’s comment yesterday that “If you don’t want a Civil War, vote for Democrats in November. If you do want Civil War, vote Republican,” mainly because, like Alyssa Milano, Bette Midler, Rob Reiner and so many others, nobody should care what Kathy Griffin says, tweets or thinks. But commenter Willem Reese wrote,  “Were she a sentient creature, she might have realized that her statement was an admission that it is democrats who are prone to violence when they don’t get what they want.” I can’t let that pass. I think Griffin said what she meant, and that it was a threat. She was also correct: Democrats have proven that their current breed believes in violence as the appropriate reaction to events, elections and decisions they disagree with. I fully expect riots if the GOP takes Congress. Griffin is vile and revolting, but she’s not stupid.

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Close calls: I recently stumbled upon some polling from the period preceding World War II regarding the American public’s position on whether the U.S. should fight Germany. Here’s the most depressing of the surveys:

Another set of figures, from Gallup, are a bit better. These old survey results lead to the following notes:

• What would the world be like today if Japan had not attacked Pearl Harbor, and Hitler had not preemptively declared war on the U.S.? The attack might be one of the best examples I know of how a terrible event can lead to an objectively beneficial outcome: moral luck exemplified.
• Karine Jean-Pierre, who speaks for the White House, said last week that “when you are not with where a majority of Americans are, then, you know, that is extreme.”
• You know: polls.

1. I did not know this, and I’m now sorry I do. But not especially surprised: a Pew survey from 2019 revealed that the “U.S. has world’s highest rate of children living in single-parent households.” I see no reason for the data to have improved in three years, do you? And, of course, the reason this terrible condition exists is for the reason discussed frequently here: an elimination of crucial ethical norms because the society decided that it was more important not to shame or stigmatize irresponsible and damaging conduct than to minimize it. The consequences flowing from this failure in maintaining ethical standards is wide-ranging, disastrous, and too extensive to analyze here. Continue reading →