[TV is full of reruns these days, and sometimes I am grateful for them, for it gives me a chance to see episodes of favorite shows I had missed for some reason or another. Back in early March, I posted the following essay about the origins of America’s current crisis of trust in our government, and how it might be cured by our elected leaders. Since then, the crisis has deepened, and as I was doing some routine site maintenance, I reread the post. It is still very timely (unfortunately), and since far fewer people were visiting Ethics Alarms in March, I decided to re-post it today, with just a few minor edits. I promise not to make this a habit. Still, trust is the reason why ethics is so important in America: if there is a single post of the more than 700 I have written here since October 2009 that I would like people to read, this is it.] Continue reading
Afghanistan
Essay: Ending the Bi-Partisan Effort to Destroy Trust in America
Both the Pentagon shooter and the Texas I.R.S. attacker were motivated by a virulent distrust of the U.S. government, the distrust mutating into desperation and violence with the assistance of personal problems and emotional instability. We would be foolish, however, to dismiss the two as mere “wingnuts,” the current term of choice to describe political extremists who have gone around the bend. They are a vivid warning of America’s future, for the media, partisan commentators, the two political parties and our elected officials are doing their worst to convert all of us into wingnuts, and the results could be even more disastrous than the fanciful horrors the Left and the Right tell us that the other has planned for us. Continue reading
Ethics Dunce: Trijicon Inc
Once again, being an Ethics Dunce and being a regular, garden variety dunce goes hand in hand.
Last week it was reported that Trijicon Inc of Wixom, Michigan, the company that makes the scopes on rifles used by U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, has been engraving them with a Biblical reference. The reference is 2COR4:6, short for 2 Corinthians 4:6, which reads: “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
Terrific idea, guys. As Americans fight conflicts in the Middle East while maintaining to the Muslim world that we are in not engaging in a war against Islam, you send our soldiers into battle with Christian quotations on their weapons. Continue reading
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