Rationalization #22, in my view the worst of the over 100 rationalizations on the list, is called “The Comparative Virtue Excuse,” or “It’s not the worst thing.” I immediately thought of it when I read the head-exploding account of how a father escaped jail time in Canada for incest that resulted in the birth of a disabled child who has been placed in foster care. The father admitted that he had regularly had sexual relations with his daughter since she was 19 or 20. Incest is typically punishable with a jail sentence of at least two years and as high as 14 years, but a majority of the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal decided last month that the father shouldn’t have to spend any time in jail at all, just two years of house arrest, with a monitor. That’s nice. He can even continue his loving relationship with his daughter under those rules.
Canada
Anatomy Of A Canadian Ethics Train Wreck
Ugh.
Alberta premier Danielle Smith was photographed with a man wearing the T-shirt you see above. It was circulated on social media. Immediately, she was criticized intensely, and predictably, Smith immediately groveled. Her spokesperson said, “The premier didn’t read his shirt and obviously doesn’t agree with its message. She has always been clear that she supports the LGBTQ+ community and will continue our work to make sure they feel safe in our province.”
What’s going on here?
1. The guy, whoever he is, is a jerk. That’s not a T-shirt, it’s a protest sign, and intentionally confrontational. I have always agreed with the maxim that a person’s IQ is inversely related to the number of words on his or her T-shirt. This is a prime example.
2. Further proving that the T-shirt wearer is someone to be avoided: the back of it read, “Good people disobey bad laws.” No, in fact good people obey all laws, or if they want to engage in civil disobedience, violate the “bad law,” accept the consequences, and see how many people agree with them. Asserting that it is good to break laws you happen to think are “bad” is a recipe for societal chaos.
3. The premier lied, and obviously so. How could she miss all those words, unless she can’t read? The guy’s a walking billboard; you can’t stand next to someone like that and not appear to be endorsing his message.
4. Whoever drafted that statement should be fired. What is it that Smith doesn’t agree with? Should straight people be ashamed? It’s not the message that is objectionable but the in-your-face gesture. It’s like “It’s OK to be white”—the shirt’s purpose is to annoy and start an argument.
5. What does a T-shirt have to do with “feeling safe”? Safe from words? Should non-LGBTQ individuals feel “unsafe” when they see Pride parades, signs and slogans?
Unethical Website Of The Month: “The Anarchist”
“The Anarchist”is the website of a hate-based Toronto coffee shop of the same name. Ironically, Ethics Alarms just learned of the site’s existence as it announced the demise of the business. (Good!) The shop anointed itself as “an anti-capitalist cafe, shop and radical community space on stolen land”—yes, the owners are delusional. It was a “pay what you choose” establishment designed to spit in the metaphorical eye of evil Capitalism. Of course it went belly-up, though the fact that the carzy project lasted even a year is impressive, sort of, in the same way Brian Stelter getting hired is impressive.
Here are some highlights from the website:
Ethics Hero: Avi Silverberg, Whose Pronouns Are “Whatever Lets Me Win”
Avi Silverberg, a Canadian male powerlifting coach, self-identified as a woman last week to participate in the women’s Heroes Classic Powerlifting Meet in Lethbridge, Alberta. (That’s “her” above.) As the current record holder, a transgender male-now-female, looked on, the large, bearded athlete broke the Alberta women’s bench press record. Appropriately, Avi didn’t even try to look like a girl. Priceless.
Silverberg could do this “fair and square” because the truly stupid Canadian Powerlifting Union (CPU) had established a liberal gender self-identification policy (the “Trans Inclusion Policy”) earlier this year, so any male can now compete as a woman as long as he/she feels like a woman on that particular day. “Based on this background and available evidence, the Expert Working Group felt that trans athletes should be able to participate in the gender with which they identify, regardless of whether or not they have undergone hormone therapy,” the policy document reads, deferring to the “inclusivity” guidance from the CCES (The Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport)
This Is Comforting: “The Great Stupid” Is Greater And Stupider In Canada, As You Can See…
But for how long?
That’s a male, Oakville High School (about 20 miles from Toronto) “transitioning” shop teacher, parading with his, or her—it really doesn’t matter— gigantic prosthetic boobs. The Halton District School Board defends “her” completely voluntary appearance and attire in the name of “gender rights.” Meanwhile some students have skipped class, some are protesting, and parents are objecting.
My heavens, what could they be upset about?
“This teacher is an extremely effective teacher,” the board’s chair told the media. (Other than creating a completely unnecessary distraction by choosing to wear fake breasts twice the size of his head, of course—picky, picky...)The school board is creating a “safety plan” to ensure this serious professional can continue teaching without incident.
Yes, this Canadian variant of The Great Stupid virus could spread over the border. Continue reading
I Don’t Know What To Say About This, Except That Something’s Wrong Somewhere…
No, that tweet from the Toronto police is not a gag.
And now, a song…
Has “The Great Stupid” Reached Its Zenith With Anti-Putin French Fries With Cheese Curds And Gravy Sanctions?
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.]
Ethics Quote Of The Week: Naomi Wolf
“It is alarming that our own President has not spoken out against Justin Trudeau’s militaristic power grab, or against his violence against peaceful protesters using their lawfully protected freedoms of speech and assembly. It is even more alarming that the Biden administration is seeking to extend our own state of emergency.”
Naomi Wolf, on her substack newletter, in a post called “The Fall of Canada, The Danger in the US.”
You should read it all. Wolf is troubled by the continuation of the “state of emergency” in the U.S. regarding the pandemic, which she weaves into her protest about the dangers of martial law and the risks when democratic nations start justifying dictatorial powers.
I ran across her piece as I was preparing to write a post titled, “Stop Making Me Defend Justin Trudeau.” The trucker protest may involve free speech, the right to protest and the right to assemble; I guess it is peaceful, or was until Trudeau called in the cops. However, no protest is lawful if it involves breaking laws, and using huge trucks to block highways and commuter access to where they need to go is not legal anywhere. Geraldo Rivera and Sean Hannity got into an angry tiff last week, which Hannity telling Geraldo that his criticism of the trucker protest was an affront to liberty and human rights, and Rivera responding that innocent people and businesses were being harmed by the protest, and it needed to end. For one of the first times in my life, I’m with Geraldo. Continue reading
Ottawa Trucker Protest Ethics
Is this an Ethics Train Wreck, defined as a situation where everyone involved in in the wrong? If it isn’t, to paraphrase Tommy Lee Jones’s burned-out sheriff in “No Country for Old Men,” it will do until a real one shows up.
We begin with the impetus for the protest. Truckers, alone in their cabs, pose no danger to anyone whether they are vaccinated or not, masked or not. Social distancing is enough when you’re alone inside a moving truck. The pandemic restrictions are increasingly obnoxious and irrational—unethical in short, “following the science” of experts who have been wrong (or lying) so often it would be funny if it hasn’t been so disastrous. Ethics Alarms is on record as holding that most protests are pointless and unethical, but not all. There is ample justification for truckers to protest what is, for them, oppressive government edicts.
BUT…this protest is violating the law, as well as inconveniencing and harming citizens who are not at fault for the policies the truckers are protesting. The truckers have paralyzed traffic, disrupted business and unsettled residential neighborhoods, as truckers parked their vehicles in intersections and across busy thoroughfares. “Someone is going to get killed or seriously injured because of the irresponsible behavior of some of these people,” Jim Watson, Ottawa’s mayor, said as he declared the situation a state of emergency. I don’t see how anyone can dispute that conclusion, and sympathy with the truckers’ position shouldn’t translate into acceptance of their mode of protest, Continue reading
Ethics Quiz: Race-Based Vaccines
It’s hard to believe that officials in Hamilton, Ontario, one of Canada largest cities, didn’t hear the faint clanging of ethics alarms when they came up with this policy.
The CBC reported that public health officials pressured the agency to “prioritize racialized, disabled and low-income residents.” I think “racialized” is a cool euphemism, don’t you? How does one get “racialized”?
75% of Hamilton’s population is white, but non-white communities have accounted for nearly half of all pandemic cases in the city.
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:
Is Hamilton’s policy ethical?
I’m amazed no city has tried this in the U.S.
Ethics Alarms 