The United States, as currently constituted, is a utilitarian nation. We embrace the inherent virtue of certain “natural” rights, and tolerate the frequent harm that some citizens commit while exercising the rights that all of us cherish. I think that is the correct philosophy, but it requires us to grit our teeth and re-read the Bill of Rights when the formula produces a nauseating result that is nonetheless right in our democratic culture. It was right to let the Nazis march in Skokie. It was right to let the Klan hold their non-violent, white supremacy demonstrations. And it was right for the court to make Albert Snyder pay the court costs when he lost his lawsuit against a hate group that disrupted his son’s funeral. No, it wasn’t fair, or kind, or empathetic. It was only right. Continue reading
fairness
Art Ethics: We Are Not Bowls of Fruit
During his legendary questioning by Clarence Darrow in the Scopes trial, Williams Jennings Bryan famously answered one of Darrow’s queries by saying, “I don’t think about things I don’t think about.” (Darrow’s rejoinder: “Do you think about the things you do think about?”) One of the ethical issues I hadn’t thought about was whether an artist drawing a subject in public without his or her consent is being unethical. Thanks to a post by an inquiring artist on an art blog who heard the faint ringing of an ethics alarm in his head, I’m thinking about it now, and it is trickier than you might think.
Once the artist starts rolling, he has a lot of ethics questions: Continue reading
Ethics Test for Republicans and Conservatives
President Obama’s unexpected announcement that he will reverse the long-time ban on off-shore drilling for oil and natural gas resources should help us answer an important question: Has the GOP’s intractable opposition to President Obama’s policies been based on principle, or the purely political motive of obstructing his presidency in order to win votes and power from a disillusioned and impatient electorate? Obama’s conservative critics on talk radio will be presented with the same test. Rush Limbaugh famously said that he wants Obama to fail: will that extend to a new Obama policy that Limbaugh has advocated in the recent past?
Opening up off-shore drilling to exploit unused U.S. energy resources was a key plank in Republican John McCain’s campaign when he opposed Mr. Obama, and is anathema to many Obama supporters. If the Republican Party and its conservative media allies have a requisite amount of fairness and integrity, they will both praise the President and support him.
We shall see.
Climate Science Ethics: The Lovelock Interview
James Lovelock, 90, is a legendary scientist, environmentalist and futurist. He has just given a lengthy interview in which he opines about the recent scandals in climate science, the value of skeptics, the limitations of political solutions to big problems, and the inherent uncertainty of science. The interview is remarkable for what it reveals about this independent scientist’s honesty, integrity, respect for adverse opinions and understanding of human nature. It is also that true rarity, an assessment of climate change that is measured, reasonable, persuasive, and logical.
You can read the whole interview here, and the key statements here.
Unethical Website of the Month: Bloomberg News
Seldom does any news media organization make its absence of fairness and objectivity on a topic so obvious that there isn’t some room for argument, but Bloomberg managed to scale the heights with its headline to a story by reporter Heidi Przybyla. Her report covered the results of a Bloomberg poll designed to create a profile of the members of the Tea Party movement, which has been holding multiple demonstrations across the country to protest passage of President Obama’s health care reform bill.
The poll results themselves were unremarkable, given what we already have learned about the Tea Partiers’ objectives and objections. Over 90% of those polled by Bloomberg said that they feared that the nation was turning to socialism, with the federal government trying to control too many aspects of Americans’ lives. In answer to another question, 70% felt that Obama’s Administration needed to put more resources into job creation. So Przybyla, her editors and Bloomberg’s management chose to headline the report with this:
“Tea Party Advocates Who Scorn Socialism Want a Government Job” Continue reading
Death Video Ethics
As with the video of the fatal luge run at the Olympics, as with 9-11 videos of the Twin Towers crashing down, pundits, lawyers and family members of a victim are arguing in courts of law and public opinion that the visual record of their loved one’s death should be off-limits for public. The family of Dawn Brancheau, the SeaWorld trainer who was drowned last month by a six-ton Killer Whale that held her underwater by her ponytail, has announced that they will seek an injunction to stop the release of the death videos, captured by SeaWorld’s surveillance cameras on Feb. 24. Once the official investigation is complete, the video could be made widely available on YouTube and elsewhere. The family understandably does not want their daughter’s last moments to become a source of web entertainment. Continue reading
Charles Leerhsen’s Unethical Pit Bull Vendetta Continues
You have to hand it to Charles Leerhsen. He is determined to get revenge for the mauling of his beloved Wheaten Terrier, Frankie, if he has to wipe out an entire dog breed and thousands of other people’s beloved pets to do it. To this end, the Daily Beast has, for some reason, decided to give him a second column to make the illogical, historically flawed, intellectually bigoted argument that pit bulls should be wiped off the face of the earth.
This time, he has abandoned any pretense of fair argument, and simply ridicules and insults his critics. Using the logic of his articles, this would be sufficient evidence to argue for sending writers to extinction. Astoundingly, he accuses critics of relying on “anecdotal evidence,” when his entire crusade was inspired by a single incident. His rebuttal of non-anecdotal evidence, such as studies showing that the supposed excessive viciousness of pit bulls over all other breeds is a myth? “Fabricated by pit bull lobbying groups, according to at least one commenter.” Well, I guess that settles it then! Continue reading
Dubious Ethics Studies, Part I.
Thanks to Malcolm Gladwell (Blink) and the one-word titled books he has inspired, we are being exposed to more social science research than ever before, much of it with relevance to ethics. I’ll admit to using some of these when they support my point of view, and that is the problem: what such studies supposedly signify often tell us more about the biases of the analysts than the behavior of the subjects. Two recent studies illustrate the point. Continue reading
Philly’s “Webcamgate”: No Ethics Controversy, Just Unethical
Ethics Alarms has not discussed the Lower Merion School District’s “Webcamgate” scandal, in part because its facts are still somewhat in doubt, and because I found it difficult to believe that what had been reported was true. High school student Blake Robbins sued the District after officials reprimanded for him for conduct inside his Pennsylvania Valley home. Apparently he was caught on the webcam of the Apple MacBook that the district supplies to its 2,300 high school students. Following an investigation by the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office and the FBI, it was confirmed that the cameras were programmed to be turned on remotely by school officials, but, say those officials, only to track down stolen computers, not to spy on students, their friends and their parents. Continue reading
“Lawmiss” and the Plain Dealer’s Dilemma
The Cleveland Plain Dealer made one of those fateful first steps that ends in a journey to ethics no-man’s land when it decided to check the e-mail address of a repeat anonymous commenter on the paper’s website. “lawmiss” had been especially abusive in comments about one of the newspaper’s reporters, so instead of just deleting the comment for violating the site’s rules against personal attacks, an enterprising editor tracked down its source. Continue reading
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