Civility is a core ethical virtue but a tricky one, both to define and to maintain. Peter Wehner has written a superb (and short!) essay on the topic at the Commentary Magazine site, applying it especially to political discourse.
” We can possess civility while at the same time holding (and championing) deep moral and philosophical commitments, ” Wehner writes. Continue reading
Sen. John McCain thinks that there needs to be more study regarding whether gay Americans, including those who have already shown themselves to be exemplary soldiers, should be banned from service in the military once their sexual orientation is known. He, and others, don’t want to “rush the decision.” This is callous, inhumane, and wrong.
The public controversy over this atrocious and inhuman policy from the Clinton years has stained America’s principles based on nothing but bigotry and ignorance for over a decade, and now the endless slog to a cure is proving almost as bad as the disease. Continue reading
Complete cultural and intellectual rot in America gets ever closer, thanks to people who think and act like the honchos at New York’s 92nd Street Y.
It sponsored an evening of conversation between art critic and New York Times Magazine writer Deborah Solomon and Steve Martin, who is many things: a comedy writer, a wit, a banjo player, a slapstick comic, a serious actor, a novelist and a playwright. (Also a second-rate Inspector Clouseau.) In this case, it was the novelist Martin who had come to chat; Martin’s new novel, An Object of Beauty, has just hit the book stores to rave reviews. But the sold-out audience of 900 and pay-per-view television audience apparently didn’t want or expect to hear THAT Steve Martin…they wanted the one with the arrow through his head and “happy feet.” So many of them complained, some in e-mails send during the event, and after the subdued and erudite session was over, that the Y sent them refunds, with this note: Continue reading
Amazon is taking public domain texts from a free site, and selling the books for profit to Kindle users.
Question: Is this ethical or unethical? Continue reading
Surprise! The TARP bailout of October 2008 seems to have turned out remarkably well. The Troubled Assets Relief Program, which was and still is attacked by conservatives and Tea Party critics as a $700 billion bailout for Wall Street giants who should have been allowed to fail, is now anticipated to eventually only cost the federal government about $25 billion, according to the Government Accounting Office.
When a policy that is widely criticized as wrong-headed in principle actually works, it presents ethical problems for both advocates and critics alike.
A few helpful tips: Continue reading
The arguments for continuing the irresponsible and frequently corrupt earmark process are misguided at best, and dishonest at worst. Mostly they are dishonest, Senators and House members graft appropriations in the millions for local projects that are never weighed, prioritized or evaluated in the voting process, killing budget restraint by a thousand cuts. They are also used as legislative currency, as two elected officials trade one irresponsible expenditure for a dubious state project for another.
Earmarks are an invitation to corruption, as they often are the result of thinly veiled quid pro quo arrangements. The device makes the American taxpayer the underwriter of expenditures that often have no greater purpose than to grease the skid for re-election for one more fiscally irresponsible politician. For decades, U.S. Presidents have complained about them; most since Ronald Reagan argued for the Constitutionally problematic line-item veto to combat them. Now, spurred by the recent voter revolt over out-of-control spending, the Republican Caucus in the Senate has voted to ban earmarks. The full Senate, however, with eight Republicans joining with the earmark-happy Democrats, voted down a proposed moratorium. Continue reading
Last week, Republicans blocked yet another extension of unemployment benefits, and we can only hope they have the integrity and courage to do it again, in the face of predictable cries that they are cruel and heartless. The correct term is “fair and responsible.”
Well over a decade ago, President Clinton and a Republican Congress instituted welfare reform over similar accusations that it would spark tragedy and starvation. What it did was help end cycles of poverty and dependency. Hardly anyone except die-hard socialists argues that limiting welfare was a mistake today.
The serial extensions of unemployment benefits we have seen for two years, however, have become indistinguishable from welfare, and are now blatant political pandering to a large unemployed voter bloc in distress. The government is broke and in debt, and in no position to add an open-ended entitlement that pays Americans not to get jobs. Continue reading
Asra Q. Nomani is a Muslim. She is also is an American, an author, a women’s rights activist, and co-director of the Pearl Project. Today, in a column for the Daily Beast, she broke ranks with her religion and the absolutist foes of profiling as an anti-terrorist tool with a profoundly ethical act: she argued for new policies that may be against her own interests, but also may be in the best interest of her country and the public— because she believes it is the right thing to do.
The title of her essay: “Let’s Profile Muslims.”
Some excerpts… Continue reading
Today the New York Times extensively documents the unethical business strategy used by the owner of a web-based eyewear business.
After making the discovery that Google does not distinguish between positive and negative mentions of a business on the Internet, he resolved to treat complaining customers as badly as possible to encourage complaints about his company on consumer sites. I do mean “as badly as possible”: the Times relates the accounts of customers who received insulting phone calls, threatening mail, and other harassing and bullying communications from the entrepreneur, who uses multiple aliases. The method works well: since on-line diatribes, complaints and bad reviews have piled up over his poor service, outrageous conduct and often shoddy merchandise, the man’s business is booming. Its name consistently nears the top of Google’s search results when a potential customer types the name of his or her favorite eyewear designer and “eyeglasses,” sometimes placing higher than the designer itself. Continue reading
Ethics Alarms 