Kantian ethics

Now THIS Is An [Unethical/Cheap/Clever/Creative] Law Firm ! (Pick One)

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Who would have thought that Bert from “Mary Poppins” might have had a career in law firm marketing?

Trantolo & Trantolo, a small law firm in Hartford, Connecticut that also has offices in New York and Massachusetts, has been cited for more than a dozen “unauthorized sidewalk advertisements.” Put on the pavement using either power-washing or temporary chalk over stencils, the firm legal services marketing innovation violated a city ordinance that banned such messages without written consent. Hartford Mayor Arunan Arulampalam told the media that the city has discovered at least 15 sidewalk messages promoting the firm. Unauthorized law firm promotion from the firm also appeared on 24 Hartford crosswalks before the West Hartford Department of Public Works powerwashed them into oblivion. I bet it looked sort-of -like at the end of the Chalk World sequence where Bert, Mary and the kids ride on merry-go-round horses, participate in a fox hunt and sing “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” and then the rain washes Bert’s pictures away.

One message with the firm’s name attached said, “Look both ways before you cross.” Who could object to that public service message? But the firm has “an angle.” As Bing Crosby told Rosemary Clooney in “White Christmas,” everyone has an angle. Well, lawyers and law firms, anyway. Trantolo & Trantolo explained that one by explaining that Hartford “has a serious road safety problem.”

“Working with an outdoor advertising company that has executed similar temporary sidewalk campaigns in cities across the country, Trantolo & Trantolo recently placed a series of temporary stencils throughout Hartford and West Hartford highlighting important local and statewide safety statistics,” says the firm. Trantolo & Trantolo also promised that it would remove all the messages ” at the end of its campaign.”

You have to give the firm’s marketing department credit for creativity. However, the stunt violates the Kantian ethics test of considering what the world would be like if everybody did it, or even every law firm. Thank goodness this stunt didn’t occur to Morgan and Morgan.

Pages: 1 2

Is This Movie Marquee Clever, Unethical or Just Stupid? It’s Unethical, and Here’s Why…

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I guess this is Ambiguous Bigotry Sunday.

Following a theme that began with this morning’s ethics quiz, we now have the viral controversy over the obnoxious Lake Aswego (Oregon) Theater and Cafe marquee for “The Odyssey.”

On social media (and elsewhere), the theater’s owners are being accused of “disgustingly blatant antisemitism” as Hen Mazzig, an Israeli writer and senior fellow at the Tel Aviv Institute put it on “X.” I’m sorry I haven’t kept up on Lake Oswego movie theater marketing trends: apparently this one makes a habit of cheeky, politically provocative or otherwise controversial marquee messages. In February, for example, the theater’s message promoting “Melania,” the Amazon MGM documentary about First Lady Melania Trump, read, “To defeat your enemy, you must know them. Melania starts Friday.” Amazon pulled the movie from the theater, and the proprietors reacted with a “Who, us?” shrug.

That example is not irrelevant: Lake Oswego is heavily Democratic, reliably voting for Democratic candidates for all federal and state offices. The last time a Republican was favored by voters was in 2016, when it narrowly favored Republican Secretary of State candidate Dennis Richardson while the city and the state went into Hillary Clinton’s column in the Presidential race. Lake Oswego is in Oregon, one of the most fanatically progressive, Democratic and woke states in the union. 80% of Democrats, the Pew Research Center says, hold “an unfavorable view of Israel” as of June 2026, an 11-point increase from 2025.

How likely is it that the marquee in a place like Lake Oswego, was deliberately praising “the Jews” (You know, as in “the Jews made a heroic odyssey”to Canaan”) as opposed to cheekily denigrating them? Not bloody likely at all. Is the message an innocent comparison of the endless warring between Israel and Palestinians to the Trojan War? If so, then why only mention “the Jews”?

The online debate has seen a suspicious effort to deflect the real issue by arguing over whether “the Odyssey” was really before “the Jews.” Does the theater mean the actual voyage (there probably wasn’t one), or Homer’s poetic description of it? That’s not the real issue, and the debate over it is pedantic sophistry. The issue is whether the marquee is anti-Semitic, designed to appeal to anti-Semites (you know, progressives and Democrats), and cleverly composed to do so while giving the theater and fans of the smear plausible deniability.

The answers are yes, yes, and yes.

Pages: 1 2

Two Women Who Never Read Kant

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

German philosopher Immanuel Kant ( 1724 – 1804) was the all-time champ at rules-based ethics, concocting several useful formulations of what he called “the categorical imperative,”or the principle of absolute morality. All of them are, as absolutes, the starting points for hopelessly convoluted debates and “what ifs?,” but philosophy geeks love that stuff. For me, the main value of Kant’s absolutism as that they are useful for pinging ethics alarms.

Kant’s “Formula of Humanity” stated (in German, of course): “So act that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means,” or in the short version, “Never treat another human being as merely as means to an end.”

Abortion, for example, is an ethical controversy that Kant clarifies quickly: abortion rationalizers have long tried to duck the “Formula of Humanity” by denying that a fetus with human DNA created by humans that will grow to be a born and eventually a walking, talking, member of human society isn’t a human being at all, and thus killing it for the benefit of its mother isn’t using whatever it is as a means to an end.

You can get in the high weeds of Kant’s most famous rule here. For instance, Kant holds that it may be wrong for a person to treat himself or herself merely as a means: now there’s a metaphorical rabbit hole. But for the purposes of this post, let’s just look at two recent examples of people who probably can’t spell Kant, never mind recognize when they are defying him.

Continue reading →

The Puppeteering Of Sen. Feinstein

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

“Have you no sense of decency? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?‘

With those deft, live-televised and well-timed (and planned in advance) words, lawyer Joseph Welch set off ethics alarms around the country that stripped the mask from Sen. Joe McCarthy and signaled the end of one of the ugliest episodes of political misconduct in American history. The Democratic Party is in the midst of another such episode of its own construction, but it’s doubtful that a Welch-like question would have any effect today. Nonetheless, the Democratic Party’s cynical and desperate manipulation of the brain-damaged (John Fetterman) and the elderly and senile (President Biden) to maintain its tenuous hold on power is an abandonment of decency arguably as disgusting and anti-Democratic as McCarthy’s smearing of political foes as Communists.

The party’s reduction of Senator Diane Feinstein, 90, once a sharp and professional Senator from California, but now a sick, mentally-diminished shell, to its marionette is particularly ugly. Last week, Feinstein relinquished the power of attorney to her daughter, a tacit admission that she was no longer competent to handle her own affairs. Yet she remains in a position that requires her to participate in decisions regarding the affairs of the United States, and its many millions of citizens. How could she be incapable of acting in her own interest but still qualified to do the job her constituents (foolishly) elected her to do? Obviously, she can’t.

Continue reading →

Naming Ethics: A Boy Named Hades

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

A couple in France really, really wants to name their baby “Hades” because they think the name sounds good. France, however, can legally prohibit a child’s name if bureaucrats determine that the name is not in the child’s best interest, and “Hades” has been dinged. The future Hades’s folks have hired lawyers to challenge the ruling.

That’s Hades above in the Disney animated film “Hercules.” The character was voiced by James Woods, so you know he was a bad guy. The film was a bit unfair: in the Greek myth universe, Hades just ruled over the Underworld, and was no worse (or better) than his brothers Zeus and Poseidon; he wasn’t like the devil. When you died, you went to Hades whether you were good, bad, or average. Nevertheless, it’s a strange name to use in 2023, and one with inevitable negative connotations (the name “James Woods” wouldn’t be great either).

That doesn’t mean France presuming to tell parents what they can name their kid isn’t an abuse of power, a slippery slope, and an incursion on personal liberty. It is all of those, and the parents of little Hades are properly standing up for a principle that is worth fighting for.

If only they weren’t using their innocent child as a prop for their ideals. This is a bright-line violation of Kant’s Categorical Imperative, which directs us never to use a human being to achieve our ends, however worthy they might be.  Using a child is particularly unethical…but so is giving your kid a bizarre name. Continue reading →

Paging Mel Brooks! Madison, Wisconsin’s Halloween Hitler Costume Freak-Out

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

I don’t understand this story at all. It represents a complete loss of perspective, human, societal and ethical. I do not know how we got to this place, but we need to get out of it, and the faster the better.

On Halloween, a man was seen in Madison, Wisconsin walking down state street dressed as Adolf Hitler. We are told that horrified onlookers called the police. Oh, fine. In a college town, more than one person, who would normally be the village idiot, thinks it is illegal to dress as a historical character. The police department felt it had to issue a statement explaining that wearing the costume did not “rise to the level of a prosecutable crime” and that the faux Nazi leader “engaged in protected freedoms of speech and expression.” The statement, however, also said that the act of such costuming  justified “fear and disgust” and was “troubling.”

Well, after Ethics Breach #1 in the episode, the ignorant fools calling the police, this was Ethics Breach #2. It is not the police department’s job or function to critique Halloween costumes, especially in Halloween. “Fear’??? This was too scary a costume for Halloween? Or does “fear” mean that the alarmists legitimately felt that they would be harmed by…what, looking at the guy? Were they afraid he would invade Poland? As an ethicist, I’m disgusted that the Madison police would validate hysterical feelings of disgust. The guy was wearing a costume on Halloween! It is not the police department’s business to announce how anyone else should feel about it. Continue reading →

On Distributing The Wuhan Vaccine: An Old Ethics Dilemma With No Solution

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

I was waiting for this one.

Back when ventilators were the rage (before we found out that once you were on a ventilator, you were pretty much toast anyway–Science!), I had filed an article about the likelihood that Down Syndrome sufferers would be deemed unworthy of high priority when scarce equipment was being rationed. I never got around to writing about it, but I knew, like the giant swan in “Lohengrin,” the issue would be sailing by again. Sure enough, as the prospect of a Wuhan virus vaccine seems within view, the same basic question is being raised: if there aren’t enough vaccines for everyone, who gets the first shot  (pun intended)?

Well, there is no right answer to this one, unfortunately. All debates on the topic will become that popular game show, “Pick Your Favorite Ethical System!” or its successful spin-off, “What’s Fair Anyway?” That’s fun and all, but the debates are completely predictable.

The issue is essentially the same as the “meteor or asteroid about to hit the Earth” dilemma in movie like “Deep Impact,” where only a limited number of citizens can be sheltered as a potential extinction event looms. If you follow the Golden Rule or the John Rawls variation, you end up with survivors being chosen by lot, or pure chance. Kantian ethics also tends to reject any system that sacrifices one life for a “more valuable” one. Competent and rational public policy, however, has to take into consideration more factors than these over-simplified (and this appealing) ethical systems can.

Like it or not, a decision in the rationing of a vital resource problem has to come down to utilitarianism, or balancing. That means winners and losers, and the losers in such decisions always feel that the winners being favored is unfair. From their perspective, they are right. Policymakers, however, have a duty to society as a whole, and the long-term best interests of the whole population. Being human, they also have biases, and how they weigh the various factors involved in balancing interests inevitably is affected by their own agendas.

If the job of determining who got the vaccine first was delegated to Black Lives Matters, how do you think it would approach the problem? Continue reading →

Unethical Website Of The Month: reddit (ProRevenge)

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

I often have thought that I ought to research reddit more thoroughly for ethics stories. Then I stumble onto something like this, have to take a shower, and decide that I’ll be happier if  don’t. There is also the persistent reddit problem that one can never be sure when what you are reading isn’t completely made up by some aspiring James Frey wannabe. I have been burned in the past.

One of the reddit sub-site communities is devoted to revenge, and participants send in their alleged experiences. Revenge, as we all know, (I hope), is unethical. It’s also frequently entertaining and fun. Revenge has been a staple of drama since the ancient Greeks, and it’s vibrant still, perhaps because there is nothing unethical about revenge fantasies.

One particularly exhilarating (and disgusting) example is the original “I Spit On Your Grave” (yes, there are sequels), an extremely violent and graphic cult film in which a young writer is gang-raped and left for dead by five locals in “Deliverance” territory. She returns, trained, dead-eyed, determined and remarkably creative in a Marquis de Sade way, to pick them off, one by one.

Women seem to especially enjoy the film. I would not be surprised to learn that Hillary is a fan.

But I digress. The following story recently turned up on the reddit ProRevenge section. The disturbing thing was how few of the many commenters were critical of the writer’s alleged conduct, which is, as you will see, appalling.  Here is his account, redacted a bit for length, with periodic comments from your host. Continue reading →

From The Ethics Alarms “Awwww!” Files: The Happy Shoplifter

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

At a Whole Foods in New York City,  a woman attempted to steal some food and was detained by supermarket security officers. Three police officers on the scene, however, chipped in and paid for the food she had been seen slipping into her shopping bag.

Naturally the heartwarming scene was  captured in a photo, showing the woman’s tears of gratitude. Their deed, as well as the woman breaking into tears, was captured in a photo that was shot by a customer who described himself as heartened by the unexpected gesture. “It was a nice moment for, you know, people, it was compassionate and the woman obviously was really grateful,” the amateur photographer said.

The police department approves, I guess.  NYPD Chief Terence Monahan tweeted, “Cops like Lt. Sojo and Officers Cuevas and Rivera of the Strategic Response Group are the kind-hearted cops who quietly do good deeds for New Yorkers in need.”

Is this the new department policy then? When officers decide that a thief is in genuine need, they will now pay for the merchandise stolen? I may have rolled out of bed bitter and jaded, but this seems like the “Awww!” Factor, where sentimentally appealing conduct is mistaken for ethical conduct. From the Ethics Alarms glossary: Continue reading →

The Nauseating Caravan Apologists

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

As usual regarding illegal immigration, there is no “other side,” only rationalizations, dishonesty and Trump hate and emotionalism. Still, the Left’s…and the media’s but, you know, same thing… rhetoric response to the happenings at the border over the weekend represented a new low. I may just let my deranged Facebook friends stew in their own hateful craziness for a while, so I avoid snapping and telling them exactly how they are acting, which might be ethical but wouldn’t be civil. Here’s international law and human rights expert Alyssa Milano, former witch and Tony Danza’s daughter on Twitter:

“You tear-gassed women and children, asswipe! And on Thanksgiving weekend, you piece of shit, asshole, motherfucking, evil-creature-person!!”

Now, I count at least five ways this is unforgivably moronic (It’s not unforgivable to be a moron, but it is unforgivable to make moronic statements in public), but maybe you can find more that five. It is also, except for its exact choice of words, pretty much the same level of logic as most of my lawyer friends on Facebook: yes, they have been reduced by Trump-hate to the abysmal level of a washed-up celebrity with (I think) a high school education.

One: women who break the law and participate in violent attacks on law enforcement officials are as legitimate targets of non-lethal response as men. Funny how feminism evaporates when it is convenient to the feminist.

Two: Using children as human shields is child abuse, and essentially what sops like Millan are arguing is that an adult with a child should be subjected to different law enforcement standards and more lenient ones than anyone else. Wrong. Also unworkable. Also stupid. There were pictures coming out of yesterday’s chaos of men holding up toddlers as literal shields. Nice. By all means, Alyssa, let’s make that an effective tactic.

Three: Democrats, reporters and Facebook sillies were using “gassed” to describe tear-gassing as if the U.S. was breaking the Geneva convention with chemical weapons. Tear gas and pepper spray are legal, useful, necessary alternatives to deadly force in riot situations. My college classmates were subjected to tear gas twice while I was in college, and deserved it.

Four: Wait, did I miss the new law that says that violent illegal immigrants get a pass on a holiday they don’t acknowledge? Or the one that says that other laws are suspended on Thanksgiving? Or the one that says that besieged law enforcement officials are supposed to throw stuffing and cranberry sauce at their attackers?

As for Five, I offer this to Alyssa and any other hypocrite who had no complaints when this was going on, but who now excoriate Trump in vulgar terms: this link, where we find, Continue reading →