Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 3/8/2022: Rights, Loot, Fraud, “Boom,” Lynching and Wuhan-Madness

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

1. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to review the decision overturning Bill Cosby’s rape conviction in Pennsylvania. Good. The appeal was on the verge of being frivolous. Cosby was and is guilty as sin and a monster, but even monsters have constitutional rights, and prosecutors violated his. The public has been badly informed regarding this case and the due process rights involved, and the prosecutors who appealed the results of their own botch don’t help with statements like this one from Montgomery County district attorney, Kevin R. Steele, who said in a statement regarding the case, “All crime victims deserve to be heard, treated with respect and be supported through their day in court.”

That’s deliberate obfuscation and #MeToo pandering. Cosby’s argument for being released had nothing to do with his victims at all.

2. There is hope! One ethical trend that has reversed centuries of Western apathy and arrogance over looted treasures from less affluent countries is the grudging acknowledgement that these artifacts were stolen, and that there is an ethical imperative to return them. The latest example of late justice is the 55 antiquities returned to Greece by the Manhattan district attorney’s office last month. The Elgin Marbles still are trapped in the British Museum, but there is real progress. Greece may get them back yet. Continue reading →

Michael West’s Alamo Diary Concludes…

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

On this date in 1836, the Battle of the Alamo and the courageous 12 day stand that preceded it began its journey into memory. The day before, March 6, near dawn, saw the fortress fall in a bloody but hopeless battle in which the Texans were overwhelmed in less than an hour.

Here is Texan and Ethics Alarms stalwart Michael West’s account of the final days, March 5 and March 6:

March 5, 1836

After the previous day’s war council (on March 4), Santa Anna was content that his glorious assault would occur. But evidently, according to several reliable Mexican sources, a civilian woman from the town, who had retreated to the Alamo with the Texans, made it out of the Alamo during the night and gave dire information to the Mexicans. Evidently the Texan garrison was increasingly despondent. According to the lady who escaped, Travis and the garrison had discussed their options and one of the more forceful arguments made was that they should consider surrender.

Santa Anna wanted none of this, and accelerated his assault time-table (which he hadn’t necessarily meant for the 6th of March but for the 7th or even the 8th).

The Mexican soldiers would have received their orders in the morning and spent the rest of the day making preparations. There was little physically they had to do other than check the locks of their muskets, ensure they had the requisite number of extra flints (which would occasionally break in battle – testing the coolness of even the most experienced soldier), or assist in the production of several ladders Santa Anna had commanded each battalion to have prepared.

No, most of the preparation would have been mental. A deeply Catholic people, the Mexican soldiers would have spent their energies on prayer and confession. New soldiers would have been nervous about how they would perform under fire, simultaneously trying to hide their nerves from the experienced soldiers, who would have recognized the unique challenge before them. Almost none had been asked to climb tall walls after traversing several hundred yards under fire against an enemy who had, in the previous 12 days, proven that their rifled muskets out-ranged the standard Mexican issue musket by nearly 300% Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Week: Actor Tim Considine (1940-2022)

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“Thank God there’s no justice in this world.”

Disney and “My Three Sons” actor Tim Considine, who died last week at age 82, in an interview quoted in his New York Times obituary.

Considine was referring to his success and rich experiences in life, which he felt were relatively undeserved. He did not regard himself as especially talented or ambitious.

The more I ponder his statement, the more profound I think it is. Understanding that there is no justice in the world is a necessary predicate for committing to an ethical life for the right reasons. Society needs as many people as possible striving to be good, having their lives exert a net benefit on others, and being exemplars of ethical values as often as they can. These habits and objectives must be committed to while fully understanding that they only collectively and on balance result in desirable results, and sometimes not even that. Continue reading →

Looking Back: The Ethics Alarms Monday Retrospective

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

I’ve been considering this feature for a long time, and it seems like as good a time as any to try it out..

There are nearly 30 Ethics Alarms posts in an average week, and when one throws in the four or five issues covered in the warm-ups and their equivalents, that adds another 30 or so topics to the mix. I even get complaints from readers that there is too much content here, particularly if a reader, having a life, skips a day or two. In this feature, I will make my selections of what I consider to be the five most valuable posts of the previous seven days, with the comment threads taken into consideration.

Here are my top five picks from last week:

Continue reading →

Has “The Great Stupid” Reached Its Zenith With Anti-Putin French Fries With Cheese Curds And Gravy Sanctions?

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

I really thought punishing Russian cats to show solidarity with Ukraine was as ridiculous as anti-Putin virtue-signaling mania could get. I was wrong. I stupidly forgot Heinlein’s Law: “Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.”

It is time to officially declare “The Great Stupid” a world-wide pandemic. Woodrow Wilson set the Spanish Flu against the world by sending infected doughboys out to fight in a pointless European war, and now social media combined with Americans’ narcissism and addiction to serial pandering “in these difficult times” has done it again.

Poutine, a strange gloppy dish popular among some in France and Canada, is being pulled from some restaurants in those countries to protest Russia’s invasion. In French, the word for the french fries, cheese curd and gravy recipe, from the French-Canadian pronunciation of the English word “pudding,” is pronounced like the Russian dictator’s name. That’s close enough to justify, in the “minds” of some protesters, punishing the food and its fans.

Removing poutine from menus, it is safe to say, will have as much effect on Putin’s conduct as President Biden slashing U.S. oil production will have on the course of climate change. It’s that stupid.

The move did at least spawn a good formulaic joke on Twitter, as one wag wrote, “Please stop confusing Putin and poutine. One is a dangerous and unwholesome mix of greasy, lumpy and congealed ingredients, the other is a delicious food.”*

_________________________

Pointer: Curmie

  • [I’ve eaten poutine. There’s a reason it hasn’t caught on in the United States.]


Integrity Test: Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson Will Be Conflicted Out Of The Harvard Affirmative Action Case If She’s Confirmed. Which Progressives Will Have The Ethics To Say So? [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

And will she?

Stipulated: Judge Jackson is a fully qualified choice to succeed Justice Breyer on the U.S. Supreme Court. Also stipulated: she should be and will be confirmed and by a large majority, unless Republicans are as petty and foolish as I think they are.

However, the soon to be Justice Jackson has an unwaivable conflict of interest in the contentious Harvard admissions case, which I would term a “scandal.” Harvard unambiguously discriminates against Asian-American applicants to inflate the numbers of lesser qualified black and Hispanic students admitted to the college. In the era of The Great Stupid, when racial discrimination is treated as “antiracism,” this SCOTUS case is a high profile and significant one, and Future Justice Jackson has a dog in the hunt, as they say. Jackson serves on Harvard’s board of overseers, one of the University’s two governing boards. The board plays “an integral role in the governance of the university.” End of controversy. She’s integrally involved with a party in the case. It is a classic conflict, and cause for recusal. Continue reading →

A New York Times “Best Version Of The Truth” Classic!

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

I was struck this morning by the presence of yet another Donald Trump-related headline and story on the front page of the New York Times. The phenomenon really is remarkable. The man currently holds no elected position; there is no campaign he is currently involved in; he has been banned from social media (no mean tweets or typos to mock!) and the last public incident he was even tangentially involved in was more than three years ago. In the Times’ features, op-eds and news stories, the paper does everything it can to minimize his importance; for example, the Times review of Bill Barr’s book describes Trump as “an ostentatious, thrice-married reality television star who bragged about grabbing women’s genitals.” (No bias there!) Why is such trivial figure still daily front page news?

I wish I had been counting the number of Trump-bashing stories and reports the Times has published over the period since he left office. Like the current House of Representatives witch hunt to try to find a way to prosecute Trump for a riot he neither directed nor called for (and that couldn’t have possibly benefited his interests), the Times’ choice to keep negative news reporting about him front and center can only be called obsessive partisanship and unethical journalism.

But that isn’t what’s most interesting about the story, headlined “How the Manhattan D.A.’s Investigation Into Donald Trump Unraveled.”

Continue reading →

It Won’t Be, But Bill Barr’s Tell-All Memoir Should Have His Law License Suspended

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Former Attorney General Bill Barr did an admirable and courageous job navigating the metaphorical shoals of holding the position in the Trump Administration. Because his boss was so roundly maligned and hated by the “resistance”/Democratic Party/ mainstream media alliance, he was accused of being everything from a toady to a criminal accomplice, though Barr was one of the least partisan AG’s in recent memory, especially when compared to Barack Obama’s two full-fledged consigliares, Holder and Lynch.

Of course Barr didn’t care for Trump; virtually no one who ever worked with or for Trump got along with him. Nevertheless, I did not expect Bill Barr to join the venal opportunists who rushed to cash in with books betraying a President’s confidences with back-stabbing tales “out of school.” Once such books were understood to be unethical (if not illegal), at least until the President in question was dead. But once David Stockman, Ronald Reagan’s disgraced budget director, broke the taboo, many similarly flawed former White House employees and appointees followed. Trump’s subordinates, however, have been the worst by far.

Continue reading →

Sunday Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 3/6/22: The “Well, Waddya Know!” Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Before we get to today’s ethics, we mustn’t let remembering the Alamo cause us to forget other ethically significant events in U.S. history. Yesterday marked the date in 1770 when a mob of American colonists gathered at the Customs House in Boston and began taunting and throwing objects at were protesting the occupation of their city by British troops, who had arrived in Boston two years before to enforce unpopular taxes passed by a British parliament. Young British private Hugh Montgomery was hit by a rock or an icy snowball, and he discharged his musket at the crowd. Other soldiers began firing, and the result was five “Patriots” were dead or fatally wounded. In a landmark moment for the American legal profession, John Adams and Josiah Quincy defended the hated soldiers and got all of them off except two who were found guilty of manslaughter. Their thumbs were branded with an “M” as their punishment.

Protesters and rioters have always prospered by provoking authorities into excessive force (or what the protesters were able to convince the public was excessive) ; the cause doesn’t matter. Incidentally, none of the Boston mob were prosecuted for “insurrection,” nor was the primary protest instigator, Samuel Adams.

1. Well waddya know! Hollywood celebrities who broadcast their political views are often incompetent and ignorant! Consider this tweet by actress Patricia Arquette:

Lessons: 

  • If Twitter doesn’t make you stupid, it will show everyone how stupid you are.
  • This tweet got 1,156 “likes.” Twitter also makes tweet readers stupid. 
  • Celebrities like Arquette really think their opinions on issues not connected to the reason for their fame should be taken more seriously than anyone else with two-digit IQs and a 7th grade-levl education.
  • These irresponsible celebrities include  the “internet influencers.” They drive the opinions of those who don’t have the attention spans to read more than a dozen words or so at a time. This is a substantial, even decisive portion of the American public.
  • Arquette has had minimal education, so it was the news media’s duty to make sure she and people like her were informed about what this “NATO” thingy was that everyone was always talking about.

It didn’t. Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: The Alamo, March 4, 1836

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

I hope a lot of you are enjoying Michael West‘s generous labor of love during the countdown to the Alamo’s fall. It is, as I’ve said here often, one of the most vivid and fascinating of all ethics chapters in U.S. history, and the fact that it is neglected in popular culture and public education to the degree it is disgraceful, like much of this nation’s negligent and cavalier attitude toward history.

I want to apologize to readers and especially Michael for a mistake I have made. One of my sources, echoing others, printed the Mexican dictator’s name as “Santa Ana,” with one “n.” Convinced that I had been perpetrating an error, i began lnocking off the second “n” in Michael’s posts and my own, though I always had assumed that “Anna” was correct.

Well, it was and is correct. His full name is Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón. Now I have to go back and correct the correction.

Here is Michael’s focus on Day 11 of the siege, March 4, 1836.

***

It was cold that evening that the Mexican Artillerymen of the 1st Brigade under command of General Gaona settled down into their camp somewhere south of modern day Yancey, Texas. They had been on a forced march since late January. The moon was full that evening, perfect for night operations – and despite the Texans being bottled up about 45 miles away, Native American raiders were still a possible threat. Reports had been received that straggling soldiers had been ambushed. Continue reading →