patriotism

Comment Of The Day: “Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 5/16/ 2018: The Fake Moussaka Edition”

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

I fear that a theme on Ethics Alarms over the next few days is going to be the awful conduct and deteriorating ethical standards of the Trump-hating left. This situation is not really debatable, and flagging it from an ethical perspective should not be regarded as a partisan or an ideological act. It is, though: I have the emails, comments and Facebook insults to prove it. Why aren’t progressives and Democrats properly outraged? Why don’t they find this conduct by their apparently unhinged compatriots as repulsive as I find it—as repulsive as it is? I don’t understand it. When they are confronted, and I have confronted many, they have no answer, no reason. Just rationalizations, or more often, just emotional outbursts. Today a Facebook friend, and a real friend too, an actor and, I am pretty sure, a Communist, wrote in Facebook that he would rather have Harry and Megan running the country, because republican democracy wasn’t working out so well. He wasn’t kidding, either, and nobody in the progressive Facebook echo chamber challenged him. People are going insane, and they are rotting from the inside out.

Steve-O-wrote this in response to Item #1 in the 5/16 Warm-up. That section was about all the Democrats and pundits actively cheering for the North Korea talks to collapse, because they are so filled with hate that they want Trump to fail even when his successes would be good for the country and the world. That is, in a word, diseased. And that is what the “resistance” has devolved into in less than two years. I could not be more disappointed in my fellow citizens. I thought they were better–fairer, smarter, more patriotic, with a firmer hold on the values they claimed to possess—than this.

They’re not.

Here is Steve-O-in-NJ’s Comment of the Day on the post,Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 5/16/ 2018: The Fake Moussaka Edition:

David Gergen once said that those who dislike and criticize this nation, particularly blacks who don’t celebrate July 4 because they are still bitter about their history aren’t unpatriotic, they just practice “a different form of patriotism.” He also said that Jeremiah Wright might well love this country more than conventional patriots, but just believe we have fallen short of our ideals. The concept of “matriotism,” a sort of pacifistic yin to patriotism’s yang, was floated for a while, but never really caught on.

The fact of the matter is that a lot of us on the right loathed Obama and loathed his policies, but we never let that turn into us hating our own country, and we never stood against our own servicemen, even when Clinton wasted our efforts in the Balkans and Obama led from behind to topple Gadaffi…without a clue of what to do afterwards. We (except a few crackpots) also never talked of taking up arms against our own elected officials, nor rioting. Guess who put mobs in the street before the War on Terror and rioted the day Trump was sworn in, the duly elected president? Hint: it wasn’t the right.

The fact of the matter is that the left is a strange mix of the ultra-violent (the Black Panthers, antifa) and the ultra-disloyal (the National Lawyers’ Guild, the Peace and Freedom Party) held together by a few charismatic folks who want ultimate power and don’t give a damn how they get it. The only problem is that the right is in the way, and after Vietnam the right has pretty much a lock on the flag and conventional patriotism, which the average Joe still reveres. Like it or not, Donald Trump has become identified with the flag, strong law enforcement, a strong military, and other conventional symbols of pride in this nation. That’s still pretty powerful. Worse still, under Trump the economy is doing better, people have more money in their paychecks, and overall things seem to be looking back up after years of looking down. Continue reading →

No, Fergie’s Star-Spangled Banner Wasn’t The Worst Rendition Ever….[ UPDATED ]

/ Jack Marshall / 58 Comments

Not even close.

This was…

The ethical problem in both cases is the same, however. The National Anthem is not, or should not be, an excuse for a performer to grandstand or make headlines by controversial renditions. The National Anthem is not about the singer. It is a musical declaration that the nation is strong and thriving, and that it is equal to whatever challenges it encounters. Performed respectfully and with skill and forethought, The Star-Spangled Banner can communicate this, and be stirring to all Americans irrespective of musical preferences and tastes.

Here is what a great rendition sounds like, just so you can get Rosanne and Fergie out of your brains…

[Be patient, however: the NFL won’t let any site play this but YouTube, so you have to click on the link, then listen to a gratuitous intro, then finally you get Whitney. Please come back afterwards: we’re not finished!]

 

That’s my favorite, but I have to say, Lady Gaga did great job in 2016. Here she is–same process as with the previous video. Sorry. You know…the NFL:

Just so you don’t think only female singers can knock the song out of the park, here is Chicago’s Jim Cornelison, a powerful tenor, whose rendition is fast, no-nonsense, and if this doesn’t get your blood pumping, nothing will.

UPDATE: All right, I’m going to have to post this, in my opinion the greatest rendition of the most dramatic and musically stirring of all national anthems, though it isn’t ours. The version in “Casablanca” is terrific, but this legendary performance is better:

An Ethics Quote Of The Day From The Washington Examiner and A Jumbo From The Editor Of The Washington Post

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

light-on-the-truth

“[T]he mainstream media has dropped its standards since President Trump was sworn in. Rather then adjusting adeptly to Trump’s easy relationship with the truth and his tendency to abuse members of media, by dialing up their standards, a significant number of journalists have tripped over themselves recently to repeat every bit of gossip and half-cocked rumor involving Trump and his administration….Now this isn’t to say that all coverage of this new administration has been slipshod. Rather, it’s to say that there has been a disturbing and unusually large number of stories that have turned out either to be overhyped, inconclusive, half-true or flat-out incorrect. There have also been a number of reports whose sourcing is so thin, that to believe them would be to take a major leap of faith.The one thing that these reports have in common is that they fail to provide readers with a clear and indisputably accurate picture of what is really going on at White House. The press’s most important role is to shine a light on those in power. Bad reporting only muddies the waters, and it gives powerful people more room to do as they please. After all, whom are you going to believe: the guy at the top or the newsroom with a recent track record of botched reporting? We didn’t get to the point where people find the press less credible than the Trump administration by some freak accident.”

—-The Washington Examiner, in a story today called “Mainstream media errors in the Trump era: Your catalogue of the media’s bias-fueled failure-fest.”

What the Examiner calls its database of biased and incompetent reporting since January 2o can be found here.

It’s a fair list, and I will quote the exactly accurate point above when I get another comment that says, “Why do you think the mainstream media reporting is more important than Trump’s outrageous conduct?”  and “How can you say the news media is untrustworthy when the Times, Post and Wall Street Journal do excellent investigative reporting?”

President Trump is trying to do his job, as he promised he would, as well as he can. To have any chance of doing it successfully, he will require more than the usual amount of patience, support, and responsible criticism from the nation. He may well fail, but no respectable and patriotic American or organization, news or otherwise, should be trying to make him fail. ( I refer you to this post, For The Last Time: This Is Why The Post-Election Attacks On Trump And His Election Are Unethical)

(Yes, in case I haven’t made this clear before: The so-called “resistance” is undemocratic, unethical, and thoroughly despicable.)

Journalists, in contrast, are not doing their jobs, and indeed are doing the opposite of their job, which is properly and ethically to convey facts, not to distort them for their own political purposes. At this point in the post-election left-wing freak-out, the news media doesn’t even see its own obvious bias, just as  fish aren’t aware that they are in water. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunces Update: 59 And Counting Democratic Members Of Congress Boycotting The 45th President’s Inauguration

/ Jack Marshall / 96 Comments

democrats-boycott-trump

The epic hypocrisy continues.

Last October, the Democratic Party furiously insisted that it was dangerous and undemocratic for Donald J. Trump to suggest that he might not accept the results of the 2016 election. Today, while their leaders stand mute, a large, prominents and vocal segment of that party and its leadership is refusing to accept the results of the 2016 election.

The #1 task fasing Donald Trump, say his critics (and his supporters too), is to heal the divisions and rifts in the nation. His foes (I’m a critic, not a foe) say that he is the primary cause of those divisions and rifts. (Of course, the primary cause has been the intentionally divisive Presidency of Barack Obama.) Now 59 members of Congress, all Democrats (it may be over 60 by the time I write this), have intentionally signaled to their constituents that they want and intend the division to continue, and indeed to worsen. They are leading their constituents to oppose and reject the government of the United States. They are rejecting their duty as representatives of that government, showing disrespect to the citizens who chose its leadership, encouraging civil discord and risking violence.

Their conduct is exactly like a citizens group holding a protest demanding that the government extinguish fires burning out of control around a town, then marching to each conflagration and tossing gasoline on it.

Piers Morgan, of all people, a British citizen and tabloid journalist who was sharply anti-Republican and anti- conservative in his unsuccessful run as the successor to talk show host Larry King on CNN, demonstrated that even he has a firmer grasp on this nation’s ideals and traditions than many Democrats, writing in part, Continue reading →

For The Last Time: This Is Why The Post-Election Attacks On Trump And His Election Are Unethical

/ Jack Marshall / 108 Comments

This is the last time I’m going to try to explain why the fair, patriotic, ethical and rational approach to the impending Presidency of Donald Trump is to be supportive of the office and the individual until his actual performance in the job earns just criticism. Attempting to undermine a Presidency at its outset is a self-destructive act, for nobody benefits if a Presidency fails. Wishing for a failed Presidency was what Rush Limbaugh did in 2008, and he was justly condemned for it, substantially by the same people who are saying the same thing he did, but about Donald Trump. They were right then, and they today are just as wrong, and despicable,  as Rush was.

I have had numerous debates, on and off Ethics Alarms, with usually reasonable people who take the #NotMyPresident position, which is nonsense on its face. If you are a citizen, Trump is your President. We don’t have, or allow, citizen states. You can dissent, and support political opposition, but you still must obey the laws and be loyal to the nation, which means loyalty to the nation’s elected leadership. Loyalty doesn’t require agreement, but it does require respecting legitimate authority, and seeking what is best for the United States of America. Constitutional crisis is never good for any nation. A crippled government is never good. A leader estranged from the public is never good. Seeking these things is irresponsible and foolish, but more than that, it is dangerous.

In The Caine Mutiny, a film version of the stage drama and novel “The Caine Mutiny Court Martial,” Captain Queeg (Humphrey Bogart), a man whose war-shattered nerves and self-esteem problems have rendered him an erratic and an unpopular officer, falters in his command during a storm. His officers, frightened and already convinced that their captain is unfit for command, mutiny. At their military trial, their defense attorney causes Queeg to have a breakdown on the witness stand, winning the case for the accused mutineers. Later, however, at the post trial victory party, the lawyer, Barney Greenwald (Jose Ferrer),  shames his clients. He represented them zealously, but he tells them that they were, in fact, at fault for what occurred on the Caine: Continue reading →

Snap Out of It! A Crucial Integrity Check For Responsible “Never Hillary” Voters

/ Jack Marshall / 131 Comments

In a less than a week, all of the rationalizations used by the desperate, in denial “Never Hillary” and “Never Democrat” voters have crumbled under the crushing weight of Donald Trump’s epic unfitness to lead. In the comment threads on Ethics Alarms and elsewhere, these otherwise sane and rational individuals have insisted that they would either vote for Donald Trump, increasing the chances of him being able to do to the United States—and maybe the world— over four years what he has done to the Republican Party in less than a year, that is, wreck it, or vote for a third party, essentially abdicating responsibility to protect the nation from Trump in order to bleat “Don’t blame me!” when the inevitable awfulness of a Hillary Clinton administration is fouling the air. Continue reading →

Is It Fair To Question The Democratic Party’s Values When It Has No American Flags Visible During Its National Convention?

/ Jack Marshall / 170 Comments

Yes.

Of course yes.

One of these things, is not like the others...

One of these things, is not like the others…

Opening night of the Democratic National Convention—that gathering of the historic institution created by Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson to facilitate democracy by fulfilling the idealistic vision of the Founders, who bravely led the original colonies, represented by thirteen red and white stripes, to rise up against a hereditary monarchy and through courage, sacrifice and enterprise create the most successful and humanist nation ever seen on earth…you know, that Democratic National Convention?—showed no American flags on the stage, no red, white and blue symbolism, and an apparently flagless crowd.

Was the American flag actually banned from the convention? That can’t be…but it certainly looked like it.  The absence of any flags can’t be an accident, or unintentional.

What’s going on here?

Nothing good.

Nothing healthy.

In the eight years since Barack Obama was nominated…by the way, here is the scene of his second nomination, just four years ago…

Obama Accepts Nomination On Final Day Of Democratic National Convention

…the Democratic Party has morphed into an organization that is increasingly dependent on the pleasure and approval of anti-American groups. The supporters of illegal immigration, some of whom advocate returning the Southwest to Mexico; angry black liberation movement activists, who regard the United States as a racist nation and culture; radical internationalists, who believe the United States should not only behave like “other first world nations,” but allow itself to be governed by them; progressives whose view of the United States, nourished by indoctrination in the public schools and colleges dominated by far left faculties, is relentlessly negative; growing numbers of socialists, anti-capitalists, anti-law enforcement activists and fans of soft totalitarianism—-these are increasingly the voting blocs that the professional politicians who  run the Democratic Party feel they must pander to and satisfy. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of This Day, July 2: The Inscription On the Monument To The First Minnesota Regiment At Gettysburg National Battlefield Park

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

first-minn-fort-snelling

 “On the afternoon of July 2, 1863 Sickles’ Third Corps, having advanced from this line to the Emmitsburg Road, eight companies of the First Minnesota Regiment, numbering 262 men were sent to this place to support a battery upon Sickles repulse. As his men were passing here in confused retreat, two Confederate brigades in pursuit were crossing the swale. To gain time to bring up the reserves and save this position, Gen Hancock in person ordered the eight companies to charge the rapidly advancing enemy. The order was instantly repeated by Col Wm Colvill. And the charge as instantly made down the slope at full speed through the concentrated fire of the two brigades breaking with the bayonet the enemy’s front line as it was crossing the small brook in the low ground there the remnant of the eight companies, nearly surrounded by the enemy held its entire force at bay for a considerable time and till it retired on the approach of the reserve the charge successfully accomplished its object. It saved this position and probably the battlefield. The loss of the eight companies in the charge was 215 killed & wounded. More than 83% percent. 47 men were still in line and no man missing. In self sacrificing desperate valor this charge has no parallel in any war. Among the severely wounded were Col Wm Colvill, Lt Col Chas P Adams & Maj Mark W. Downie. Among the killed Capt Joseph Periam, Capt Louis Muller & Lt Waldo Farrar. The next day the regiment participated in repelling Pickett’s charge losing 17 more men killed and wounded.”

On July 2, 1863, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 262 Union soldiers in the First Minnesota Regiment rushed—which apparently specialized in desperate fighting-–to throw themselves into a breach in the Union line at Cemetery against a greatly superior force, knowing that they were almost surely to die. 215 of them did, but the regiment bought crucial minutes that allowed reinforcements to arrive.

It is perhaps one of the most inspiring of the many acts of courage that day, the second day of the battle that changed the course of the Civil War. I first wrote about the sacrifice of the First Minnesota five years ago, here.

Let’s try to remember.

(A recommendation: Sometime between July 1 and the Fourth ever year, we always watch Ted Turner’s excellent film, which also has one of my favorite film scores.  It  helps.)

Hoping That Future Presidential Candidates Won’t Be Asked About Whether They Would Kill Baby Trump

/ Jack Marshall / 37 Comments

back-to-the-future-delorean

I refused to weigh in on the brief and silly ethics question being asked of various Presidential candidates regarding whether they would kill Baby Hitler given the chance via DeLorean or Star Trek gateway or something similar. I am beginning to wonder, though, if candidates to lead whatever is left of the U.S. 50 years from now will be asked a similar question about killing Baby Trump.

I have written…

Donald Trump’s revolting candidacy…cannot fairly be called the most unethical presidential candidacy, but it is early yet. It may well prove to be one of the most harmful. As the United States faces some of the most difficult challenges in its history, Trump has chosen to use the nation’s process of deciding on its leader for his own ego gratification and self-promotion, without  preparation for the job, deference to fair campaign rhetoric, or acknowledgment of his own fatal flaws as a candidate. Exploiting his status as a media celebrity in a celebrity-besotted culture, as well as the news media’s lack of discipline or principle, he is opportunistically advancing his candidacy on the lack of credible GOP contenders, using tabloid headline tactics….Donald Trump is perfectly happy to make a mockery of the presidential nomination and election processes while distorting them too. If he manages to convince enough fools to vote for him, hell, sure…he’d have a blast running for President. If his run peters out, it’s still worth lots of publicity, and increases the value of the Trump “brand.” Even the most unethical of the previous candidacies were based on a sincere, if misguided belief that the country’s welfare would be served by it. Does Trump have that belief? I wonder. No, his can’t be called the most unethical candidacy. But it is reckless, and it is intentionally appealing to the worst in 21st Century American character: fear, celebrity worship, ignorance, and materialism. Meanwhile, every second of attention his candidacy distracts from serious consideration of our nation’s leadership reduces the chances of the public doing its hardest and most important job carefully and competently.

I wrote that five years ago. Continue reading →

More On Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s Massive Leadership Failure

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

big-lie

Texas governor Greg Abbott says that he’s monitoring the eight-week military exercise, known as Jade Helm 15, that will take place in his state and six others, so he can bring calm to some Texans who fear it is a prelude to an armed U.S. take-over.

Honest. That’s really his explanation.

Abbott wants Texans to understand that the military is only there to be better prepared to protect them, not to install martial law or take away their guns.  He says been in contact with the military, and has been assured that the exercise will be a normal military operation. “It’s so important to understand that there probably is no state in America that is more deeply connected to the military or honors the military more. And my office has been in communication with military at multiple levels, and we have the greatest assurances that these are normal military operations and they’re going to work out just fine,” Abbott said.

With supporters like Abbott, the federal government should find ISIS less threatening by the minute.

Hey, Governor! Texans are convinced that a Jewish cabal is trying to undermine financial system! Quick: put state monitors in the synagogues to reassure them that it’s not true! Oh, and they think gays are out trolling for young boys to convert to queerdom. Make sure you surveil all openly gay men, so you can reassure straight Texans that their fears are unwarranted. A lot of your voters also think that Democrats are secretly in league with the Communist party. That’s nuts, so tap the Dems’ phones so you can reassure the good Texas that they are not Red, just wrong

The Big Lie tactic works when a scurrilous and unjustified smear is given legitimacy by efforts to deny it, and the claim that the U.S. government is preparing to jackboot conservatives into submission is a classic Big Lie. Playing right along, Abbott gave credibility to the insane, and I use the word without hyperbole, belief that standard military exercises were secretly an attempt to remove Texas citizens’ rights by force when he  behaved as if the threat might be real.

This isn’t just pandering leadership and irresponsible leadership. It is disloyal, un-American and incompetent leadership. If Abbott really wanted to address these irrational fears, he had an obligation to do so like a leader who trusted and respected the national government to at least the essential minimum: no, they don’t want to enslave and kill us.  He should have said,

“Apparently some of our citizens are concerned that a planned military exercise involving U.S. Specials Operations Forces such as the Navy Seals and the Green Berets might be a hostile attack on our state.  Shame on them. We are all Americans, and while we may differ intensely on the best policies for our nation, we are united by a love of country, reverence for its values and traditions, and the Constitution of the United States. The suggestion that the President is any less dedicated to those values, or that our military would ever participate in an efforts to destroy them, demonstrates the depths to which political discourse has fallen. It has been suggested that I use the State Guard to monitor these exercises. I will order no such thing. To do so would be an insult to our President, our armed forces and the nation. I trust the good will and patriotic motivations of our national government without reservation, and so should every patriotic Texan.”

Instead, Abbott chose to fan the flames of division and distrust.