End Of Week Wit’s End Ethics, 5/20/2022

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Whenever I see one of the several “Love is Love” lawn signs in my Alexandria, VA. neighborhood, I think of the poster girl for untrustworthy teachers, Mary Kay Letourneau. This is her anniversary, the day she married her former student, her rape victim ten years earlier, and the father of two of her children, Vili Fualaau, 22.  Letourneau had been released from prison after serving a seven-and-a-half year sentence for raping him while teaching at Shorewood Elementary School, in the Seattle suburb of Burien.  Letourneau, was 34 when she began  a sexual relationship with the 12-year-old. At the time, she was married and had four children. 

But it was all OK, you see, because they were in love. I wrote about Letourneau several times. I ended this post, a few years before the happy couple’s marriage, this way:

It is absolutely a perversion of law, ethics and common sense that she should be permitted to pick up where she left off seven years ago, building on the young man’s attachments he had formed toward a trusted teacher to exploit him sexually and emotionally. Allowing her this creates an incentive for other disturbed teachers and adult supervisors to distort their young charges’ affections, ignoring the long term harm that is certain to result.

What Villi needed years ago was counseling and treatment, so that he could escape this illicit and illegal emotional attachment created by his teacher. Unfortunately, Villi’s family is of the same strange mindset as the Springer crowd, and never perceived the wrongfulness of LeTourneau’s conduct, or the damage it caused. Her betrayal of trust screamed out for a civil suit, as surely as any Catholic priest’s molestation. Then, perhaps her victim could have received help, and would now be moving into healthy relationships and a life far away from his seductress-teacher.

That is not to be, it appears. But a relationship that was ethically wrong in its inception does not suddenly become right simply because it is no longer illegal.

Yecchh. But today’s Disney employees would probably approve…

1. She truly is an incompetent and ignorant woman, you know. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to Instagram to join the fatuous “Roe v. Wade is being reversed because of religious fanatics!” chorus with this argument:

For people who say ‘oh, but you’re harming a life, I believe this is life’, well some religions don’t. So how about that?

Our Jewish brothers and sisters, they are able to have an abortion according to their faith.

There are so many faiths that do not have this same definition of life as fundamentalist Christians. And so what about their rights? What about their rights to exercise their faith?

It’s ridiculous and it is theocratic. It’s authoritarian. It is wrong.

I shouldn’t have to specify what’s moronic about that, but just in case: Continue reading →

Ethics Hero Vaclev Smil Offers The Truth About Climate Change That The Hysterics Don’t Comprehend And The Biden Administration Ignores

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Finally: a respected, objective scientist who is trying to explain how useless the arguments of climate change hysterics are, and how incompetent and dishonest (or ignorant) the Left’s approach to the problem continues to be.

The scientist is Vaclev Smil. He’s the Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, with interdisciplinary research interests including energy, environmental, food, population, economic, historical and public policy studies. His latest book is “How the World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We’re Going.” The New York Times Magazine made the mistake (from its political agenda’s point of view, anyway) of interviewing him about climate change, and the interviewer, David Marchese, was clearly dismayed at what he heard.

Read the whole thing, but here are some representative snippets:

Continue reading →

From Greenwald, A “Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!” Spectacular!

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Glenn Greenwald has become, unexpectedly, one of the prime journalist whistle-blowers who are finally accusing the mainstream media of becoming partisan propaganda agents and public deceivers. Yesterday he delivered one of his most direct and broadest indictments yet, beginning with a rogues’ gallery of some of the worst offenders:

Tawdry propagandists who helped drive post-9/11 America into a bottomless pit of lies and self-destruction have become the most highly-paid and beloved stars of liberal media. They include:

  • Former Bush White House speechwriter David Frum of The Atlantic and CNN;

  • Bush/Cheney CIA and NSA Director Gen. Michael Hayden of CNN;

  • Ubiquitous amoral neocon warmonger Bill Kristol of MSNBC and various #NeverTrump groups;

  • Al-Qaeda/Saddam conspiracy theorist Jeffrey Goldberg, now editor-in-chief of The Atlantic;

  • The various scumbags, con artists, predator-protectors and fraudsters of the Lincoln Project, drowning in #Resistance cash and frequent MSNBC appearances;

  • Pro-war Florida GOP Congressman Joe Scarborough, now a multi-million host of MSNBC’s flagship morning show and anchor of its corporate brand; and,

  • Rep. Liz Cheney, long-time vocal supporter of her father and now a literal “hero” to American media liberals.

Continue reading →

Thursday Ethics Theorizing, 5/19/2022: Book Banning, Another George Floyd Victim, And A Lucky 911 Botch

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

I don’t put many Ethics Alarms posts on my Facebook page. The bubble there is so overwhelmingly lazy-leftist and Trump-Deranged that the responses just make me sad and depressed about the state of public discourse and my social circle. I posted about Kamala Harris’s “working together” attack, and predictably two (lawyer!) friends immediately defaulted to “but Trump!” The response that really annoyed me, however, was to my link to the tattooed baby story. Two relatives (one is 94, so she gets a pass…kind of) complained that “with all the problems and threats” (you know, like the threat that a spectacularly incompetent performance by the entire Democratic Party might cause voters to look elsewhere for leadership, which, of course, will doom democracy…but I’m just guessing) the nation is facing, why care about a woman using her baby as a self-promoting human canvas? My answer is simple: unethical conduct matters whether it is big or small, and it’s my job to do what I can to explore both. The site is called Ethics Alarms, and alarms are dulled and muffled when so-called “trivial” ethics abuses are shrugged off. (See: the Rationalization List) In addition, almost none of the over 300 friends (I’m slowly paring it down: more than a hundred gone since January) on my list ever bother to read the blog, which would help save their imperiled brain and values if they did. I cover seven to ten issues every day, more than 50 topics a week. There have been over 14,000 posts on Ethics Alarms in about eleven years; I assume that readers would be bored or worn out if we only explored the big stuff, and even if they wouldn’t be, I would.

1. Remember, the political right is untrustworthy too... After Virginia Beach schools voted two books  from their libraries’ shelves following a school board member’s complaints, Virginia Beach attorney and State Delegate Tim Anderson is representing a client suing Barnes & Noble for making the book accessible to minors, because it is “obscene.” This is just one more sign that if Republicans get the power they crave their most extreme party members will work day and night to make them just as seem just repulsive and fanatic as the Democrats are behaving now. Book banning is as much as an assault on free speech as the current progressive mania, censorship. Book stores are already endangered species: making them responsible for what minors buy there like a 7-11 selling beer will finish them off. Parents should be thrilled that their kids are reading at all. The law suit is a goner, but it will waste a lot of time and money while making the public dumber just by its presence. [Pointer: valkygrrl]

2. Thanks, HBO, but I got my fill of George Carlin while he was alive…“George Carlin’s American Dream” will premiere on HBO this weekend, and my sock-drawer is calling. Carlin is a resurgent hero again among the Woke, which is appropriate. His leftist political comedy was often just as shallow and pandering as what we (when I say “we” I mean “not me”) hear from virtually all comics today who have full membership in the Progressive Propaganda Club. He called golf “racist.” I just heard a spectacularly unfunny environmentalist rant in which he claimed that he rooted for natural disasters because humans deserved them. Continue reading →

Pop Quiz: Funny, Tragic, Or Condign Justice?

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I have to give W. credit for a good recovery, though, or at least as good a recovery as anyone could manage.

Still, the ethics issues is competence and responsibility. Seventy-five or not, if you are in the public spotlight and a former or current President, there are some gaffes you either must be sure you don’t make, or you stay away from the podium.

Tag-Team Comment Of The Day: “And This Is What The Great Stupid Looks Like…”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

JutGory and Steve-O-In NJ gave us a spontaneous call and response Comment of the Day on the topic of “white supremacy,” which has seemingly taken over for “racist” as the progressive/Democrat/mainstream reflex term to demonize conservatives, Republicans, patriots, anyone who believes in the Constitution, or anyone who opposes in good faith the Black Lives Matter agenda.

Here is their joint Comment of the Day on the post, “And This Is What The Great Stupid Looks Like…”:

***

JutGory:

White Supremacy has been pretty meaningless for quite a while now.

What really annoys me about this is that the “problem” pointed out here has exactly no solution that will satisfy the complainers.

Whites should be barred from watching the NBA?
Whites should stop supporting the NBA?

That is the point: no matter what happens, they will not be satisfied.

Before you know it, we are back to the Negro Leagues again. And, you know what they will complain about then?

White Supremacy.

Steve-O-in NJ responds:

Continue reading →

Illinois State’s Sinister Test To Weed Out Free Thinkers [Bad Link Fixed!]

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

As President George H.W. Bush said in what was for him a ringing moment of oratory, “This will not stand!” If it does, we’re all in even more trouble than we thought.

Illinois State University will require students to pass a “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) course to be eligible to graduate. This brazen qualification will be applicable to the entering class beginning next year. The new “Have you been successfully indoctrinated?” mandate is called ” Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access in U.S. Society”  or “IDEAS.” Clever! It’s a really unethical and anti-democratic idea, though.

“The fact is that majority of our students are going to spend their careers and lives in the U.S. and that it was important for them to understand the history, the structures that influence equity, diversity and inclusion issues here at home,” said Rocio Rivadeneyra, ISU associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences. She chaired the task force which sculpted the IDEAS recommendation. That means that she is openly hostile to the idea of a liberal education, in which students are encouraged to develop critical thinking skills with which they can evaluate information from a wide range of disciplines and viewpoints to come to their own conclusions. None of that at ISU! Complete your studies thoroughly indoctrinated in GoodThink, or you don’t get a diploma, Proles! Continue reading →

Confused Sports Illustrated Raises The Fascinating Question: Can One Be Ethically Unethical?

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

Those are two of Sports Illustrated’s 2022 annual Swimsuit issue covers.

What’s going on here? It’s weird, whatever it is, and, of course, it has kicked off a culture war fight.

Conservative philosopher and pop guru Jordan Peterson tweeted regarding the flabby model on the left, “Sorry. Not beautiful. And no amount of authoritarian tolerance is going to change that.” This got him attacked online as a toxic warrior for white privilege and white supremacy.  Then Peterson lashed back, stating his objection as this:  “It’s a conscious progressive attempt to manipulate & retool the notion of beauty, reliant on the idiot philosophy that such preferences are learned & properly changed by those who know better.”

Conservative sports essayist Jason Whitlock begs to disagree. His take: Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Heat-Up, 5/18/2022: More Judicial Review And Lies

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Because I was otherwise obsessed, I missed noting yesterday a true landmark in law and ethics. It was that date in 1954 when a unanimous the  Supreme Court handed down the unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, ruling that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. Linda Brown, a young African American girl had been denied admission to her local elementary school in Topeka, Kansas, because of the color of her skin.

Written in 1896 as the KKK roamed the South, the SCOTUS ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson held that “separate but equal” accommodations in railroad cars conformed to the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection. Plessy was interpreted as justifying segregation in everything from buses to water fountains to elementary schools. The white school Brown attempted to attend was far superior to her the segregation-mandated alternative and miles closer to her home, so The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People  took up Linda’s cause. Thurgood Marshall led Brown’s legal team, and on May 17, 1954, Plessy was overturned after 58 years as “the law of the land” despite the siren call of stare decisus. The opinion written by Chief Justice Earl Warren declared that “separate but equal” was an unconstitutional doctrine in ringing terms: “We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”  A year later, the Supreme Court published guidelines requiring public school systems to integrate “with all deliberate speed.”

1. Prudent and responsible, if not courageous. Speaking of SCOTUS, newly confirmed Justice-in-Waiting Ketanji Brown Jackson sat for an interview by the Washington Post and was asked about the leak of Justice Alito’s draft opinion in the Dobbs abortion case. Conservative media was triggered by this section:

Q: What was your response when you when you saw the draft leak [of a Supreme Court opinion that would strike down Roe v. Wade]?

A: Everybody who is familiar with the court and the way in which it works was shocked by that. Such a departure from normal order.

Q: Do you think it was a good thing or a bad thing?

A: I can’t answer that.

Q: What do you think about peaceful protests outside of Supreme Court justices’ homes?

A: I don’t have any comment.

Charles Cooke at the National Review writes, “This ranges from somewhere between cowardly and sinister, much like the failure of the justices to issue a joint statement that echoes the chief justice’s condemnation of the leak and statement of determination to identify the leaker, and that condemns the protests, which violate federal law.”

Wrong. SCOTUS justices should not issue opinions on such matters. Her statement that the leak was a breach of the normal order was factual, and breaches of normal order in any institution are unethical. She was right to go no further. As for the demonstrators, some of them may be arrested at some point, and a statement by a Supreme Court Justice regarding their conduct could interfere with a fair trial.

Her responses give me more reason to trust Jackson’s judgment, not less.

Continue reading →