Do something!

Ethics Quote of the Month: Ironically, It’s Justice Alito!

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

“An event that highlights the need to amend a law does not itself change the law’s meaning.”

—-Justice Joseph Alito, concurring in the case of Garland v. Cargill and re-affirming the ethical, legal, democratic and conservative principle that laws shouldn’t be ignored or changed by courts just because they no longer work the way they were designed to.

I guess this will be just one more reason for the Angry Left to try to “get” Alito. Maybe he likes to eat candy bars that a lot of the Capitol rioters ate, or something. May be they’ll hire a lip-reader to try to catch him saying something like “it was a riot!” while smiling. Conflict of interest! Recuse!

Re-affirming why the 6-3 conservative SCOTUS majority is good for democracy, the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday ruled that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (aka the ATF) exceeded its statutory authority when it tried to ban bump stocks by classifying them as machineguns. Machineguns are defined in an old statute, the National Firearms Act of 1934. It banned “machine guns,” encompassing today’s automatic weapons. The law “defines a machinegun as any weapon capable of firing “automatically more than one shot…by a single function of the trigger,” as Justice Clarence Thomas explained in the majority opinion. Although the definition also covers parts of a gun that are “designed and intended…for use in converting a weapon” into a machinegun, it does not cover “bump stocks.”

Bump stocks assist “bump firing,” which involves pushing a rifle forward to activate the trigger by bumping it against a steady finger, then allowing recoil energy to push the gun backwards, resetting the trigger. If the shooter maintains forward pressure and keeps the trigger finger in place, a semi-automatic rifle will fire like an automatic weapon (anti-gun fanatics don’t know the difference, and don’t care). The ATF’s “interpretive rule” published in December of 2018 banned stock replacements that facilitated this operation.

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Irony: The Washington Post Telling CVS How To Handle Rampant Shoplifting

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

…when it is the extreme anti-police, anti-law enforcement ideologues the Washington Post supports and slants the news to assist that are the reason shoplifting is out of control in D.C. and other cities.

The photo above that accompanies the laughable Post editorial shows the infamous CVS Pharmacy at 14th and Irving streets NW. There, in recent months, roving mobs of thieves have staged “smash and grab” mass raids resulting in the store having empty shelves and the local neighborhood having little access to needed supplies. “Shoplifters ransacked this CVS over two days early last month, and it hasn’t been restocked since,” the concerned editorial board wrote. “Weeks later, there’s still hardly anything to buy — or steal. The CVS at 14th and Irving symbolizes extreme retail theft and the harms it can engender. Distressing and inconvenient to ordinary people, threatening to businesses and livelihoods, and repellent to tourists, unchecked shoplifting can corrode a community’s spirit.”

The Post, which has never uttered a metaphorical “boo” regarding its woke, black Democratic mayor directing a huge, block letter “Black Lives Matter” message to be painted on a downtown street two years ago, is engaging in outrageous hypocrisy. “Black Lives Matter,” of course, means “Police Beware” and “Enforce the Law At Your Own Risk.” In related news, the Supreme Court today turned down Derek Chauvin’s last ditch appeal to get his unfair trial declared what it was; I’m assuming they don’t need the grief. They have to work in D.C. after all.

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Gavin Newsom’s Unethical, Ridiculous “28th Amendment”

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, issued this on Twitter:

And thus once again we are faced with the question of just how stupid, civically ignorant and gullible an American politician thinks the public is. I can understand why Newsom might believe that the answer is “incredibly stupid, civically ignorant and gullible,” because someone like him was elected governor by Californians. However, there is hope that he is mistaken.

To begin with the most important point, his proposal is pure grandstanding. The chances of any Constitutional amendment being passed are vanishingly small, but the chances of that mess being passed are zero. It is unethical to make proposals that are impossible: call it the “Imagine” fraud. The cynical and manipulative individual putting forth the plan is seeking approval and support for a sentiment that is entirely useless and cruelly misleading, at least for the fools silly enough to take it seriously.

This “amendment” is a sop to the “Do something!” crowd. See? Gavin is doing something! He’s proposing a solution that is absolutely impossible, and that wouldn’t be a solution even if it somehow came to pass!

In addition to the cynical nature of proposing an impossible solution, what Newsom is proposing is an abuse of the amendment process, essentially using the Constitution to pass legislation so the legislation can probably never be repealed. It also isn’t what he says it is: a collection of “four gun safety freedoms.” How are any of those provisions “freedoms”? Newsom is casting a fake amendment in terms evoking the First and Second Amendments though it doesn’t involve “freedoms” at all. That’s OK: most of the amendments are about rights, not freedoms, but his using the term in this context should set off everyone’s snake-oil salesman alarms.

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Hallelujah! Sen.Kennedy Puts On The Record The Irrefutable Evidence That Democratic Climate Change Policies Are Incompetent, Dishonest, And Irresponsible…

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La) questioned Department of Energy Deputy Secretary David Turk today before the Senate committee on appropriations to discuss the 2024 budget request for the Department of Energy.

The following remarkable exchange ensued during the testimony, and it should be used to confront every climate change activist, believer, hysteric and expert, constantly and repeatedly, until they are forced to admit the truth:

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A “Do Something!” Question For “Do Something!” Anti-Gun Hysterics…[Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

“How does banning something nobody can define when banning it once before didn’t accomplish anything constitute ‘doing something’?”

We are discussing, of course, “assault rifles.”

The mantra from Democrats, social media hysterics, tearful community members and President Biden is that a ban on “assault weapons” (you know: “weapons of war”) is an obvious, “common sense” measure that would save lives. One would think, would one not, that if that is really a serious proposal, one backed by statistics and facts, that its advocates would be able to clearly define what an “assault weapon” is.

Uh, no. On the Hill yesterday, Steve Dettelbach, President Biden’s hand-picked head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, was asked by Rep. Jake Ellzey (R-TX) to give a brief definition of the term “assault weapon” during his testimony in the House Appropriations Committee’s hearing focused on the ATF’s FY2024 budget. This wasn’t a “gotcha!” question: the guy heads the agency that oversees gun law enforcement, and he’s a members of the party that blathers on about deadly “assault weapons” at every opportunity. Nevertheless, Dettelbach couldn’t answer the question, instead huminahumina-ing,

“I’ll go shorter than that because I, honestly, if Congress wishes to take that up, I think Congress would have to do the work, but we would be there to provide technical assistance. I, unlike you, am not a firearms expert, to the same extent as you maybe, but we have people at ATF who can talk about velocity of firearms, what damage different kinds of firearms cause, so that whatever determination you chose to make would be an informed one.” 

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The Trouble With “Do Something!” Part II: Applying The Scale

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

As is often the case, baseball led me to an epiphany regarding the recent “Do something!” mania. Bill James, in the 2023 Bill James Baseball Handbook, was discussing the how the tactic of the intentional walk—when a manager orders that an opposing batter be avoided and placed on first base on the theory that the lesser risk is facing the batter after him, even though placing another potential run on base tempts fate—has become increasingly rare, when once it was very common. James writes that this was a bad gamble all along (except in rare situations, like when a team’s best hitter has its worst hitter batting behind him) but was popular because managers and coaches in all sports overuse strategies that “give them control over the flow of action.”

“It’s human nature,” observes James. “It happens in all offices, all businesses. Managers over-manage because letting events take their course feels risky.”

Of course! Upon reflection that seems self-evident, but because I am slow, apparently, I never quite framed it that way in my mind before. Leaders think like managers, and the populations they lead identify assertive action with strong leadership and letting matters take their course with weakness. In truth, deciding that the best course is to do nothing is just as much a proactive decision as “doing something,” and often a more courageous one. But there it is again: human nature. The applicable Ethics Alarms motto is “Human nature is the ultimate pre-unethical condition.”

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The Trouble With “Do Something!” Part I: Presenting The Ethics Alarms “Do Something” Scale

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Later today (I hope), I will post am analysis of the “Do Something!” phenomenon, its roots, political history, and ethical failings. As a precedent, however, I am introducing this new tool that I will rely on in my analysis today and going forward: The Ethics Alarms “Do Something!” Scale. It has ten levels that describe proposed policy solutions to perceived societal threats, crises and problems. #1 is the most responsible and thus the best, and #10 is the most emotion-based and irrational, and therefore the “bottom of the barrel.”

As always, I welcome suggestions and refinements. The scale will be used to measure the status of current and future “Do something!” demands. This week, we are mostly hearing them in the context of the shootings in Nashville and Louisville. Here is the new scale, as currently constituted:

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On The Uvalde School Shooting

/ Jack Marshall / 72 Comments

Yesterday’s murder of children and teachers at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde doesn’t require an ethics verdict. The shooter was a monster, by any rational definition. The reactions and public statements provoked by the tragedy do require ethics verdicts, and they are largely the same. There was an immediate rush to embrace appeals to emotion, excusable with regular citizens, irresponsible for public officials, celebrities, and anyone who has enhanced influence in society.

Particularly revolting was how much was assumed or declared before the facts were known…and there still isn’t enough known, which shouldn’t be surprising since less than 24 hours passed. There are some things we can assume, however. We can assume that there will be another media-fueled freakout more or less exactly like the reaction to the Parkland shooting, but even more extreme because Democrats are desperate to find a distraction from the markers of their incompetence and failures before a reckoning can occur in November. We can assume—indeed we have already seen—that the exact same cliches, vague nostrums and deceitful statistics will reappear and be repeated, and from the same agents. I assume Don Lemon will be weeping soon on CNN, if he hasn’t already.

Primarily, I assume that the Barn Door Fallacy will take over, like it did after the Oklahoma City bombing, 9-11-01, and the George Floyd fiasco. The public, law makers, demagogues, pundits and news media will clamor for and maybe cause to come to pass draconian measures that will make life and society in the USA less free, less healthy, less conducive to human interaction, more expensive, more inconvenient, and more generally rotten, on the theory that a random catastrophe authored by a small number of human aberrations can be retroactively prevented. Barack Obama’s fatuous “if it saves one human life” nonsense will again make sense. The hope is that this tragedy creates an opportunity to eliminate obstacles to other Democratic policies. Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) said the quiet part out loud: “Abolish the filibuster and pass gun safety legislation now.”

If I permitted myself to respond to this near-certainty in kind, I would write something like the audacious conservative assassin Ace of Spades posted this morning…

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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:

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Pandemic Ethics Observations, Part 2: Reality

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

(Part I is here.)

I’m going to try to keep this chapter as free of politics as possible for as long as possible.

It won’t be easy.

In general, the unprecedented society-wide obsession with the Wuhan virus pandemic in the U.S. is a product of mass media and social media as much as the virus itself. One could almost call it a parallel epidemic here, one of distorted behavior and social norms rather than illness. The question is whether that behavior and those norms are ethical in nature or if they are propelled by non-ethical considerations—fear, for example; not just fear for one’s own welfare being threatened, but fear of being made a pariah. It also matters if they work. Ethical requirements that are certain to be futile in practice because of well-known aspects of human nature are not ethical. They are delusional and harmful.

For the short term, one could give everyone the benefit of the doubt and call this mass Golden Rule behavior: each of us would like to have everyone else behave so as to minimize the likelihood that we would be infected, right? However, like so often is the case with the Golden Rule, this calculation only works in an imaginary vacuum that ignores the complex systems that are society, culture and civilization.

Do we really want “everyone” to behave in this extreme risk-averse manner if it crashes the economy? If it puts friends, neighbors and loved ones out of work? If it makes day to day life impossible? This is why Absolutism and Reciprocity fail so often as ethical systems, and why Utilitarianism is required in some measure to temper their effects and distortions.

However, in the outrageous scaremongering we are witnessing, some of it simple hysteria, some ignorance, and much of it motivated by that which I am going to try not to talk about until Part III, the real trade-offs are being obscured or missed. This is, to name  a single ethical breach, incompetence. I actually read several pieces yesterday that argued that to understand how the pandemic spreads, one should consider “World War Z,” the graphic novel-turned Brad Pitt horror movie. I understand the narrow point being made, but it’s still an irresponsible and stupid thing to say or write. “World War Z,” is dystopian future film in which a rampaging virus turns most of the world’s population into mad, speedy, flesh-craving zombies. It is the likely end of the world, with everyone doomed to a horrible death.  That is not what faces the United States, or anyone, with this virus. Shut up! Continue reading →