pluralism

Why Aren’t People Ashamed To Ask A Question Like This?

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

invasion-of-the-body-snatchers-1978--470-75

Kwame Anthony Appiah, aka. “The Ethicist,” received this question three weeks ago. He answered correctly and excessively nicely, as I would expect him to, but my concern is with the question and the questioner. “E.K.” asked,

“My husband and I employ a local dog walker….She is an excellent dog walker: reliable, responsible and kind. A friend told me that throughout the fall and after the presidential election, she frequently posted rants on Facebook about liberals and immigrants, pro-Trump messages and falsehoods about how the election was stolen. We are disgusted by the postings and now wonder if we should use her again. On the one hand, we respect people’s right to their opinions and appreciate the good service she provided. On the other, we do not want our money to go to someone who supports viewpoints that we believe are hurtful and detrimental to our democracy.“

This is why I’m not an advice columnist, I guess. Here is how I would have answered that question:

Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Month: Hillary Clinton On Government Control Of Non-Conforming Viewpoints

/ Jack Marshall / 46 Comments

mind-control-tests

“I believe that we need a more thoughtful conversation, we cannot let a minority of people — and that’s what it is, it is a minority of people — hold a viewpoint that terrorizes the majority of people.”

—-Hillary Clinton, forcefully inserting her leg in her mouth up to the knee during a CNN town hall as she talked about gun control, and, apparently, the new Democratic-progressive goal of government censorship of words, thoughts and beliefs.

Yup, Hillary really said that we cannot allow a minority to hold viewpoints the majority objects to. Oh, I know: she just said “terrorizes.” But if you can stop people from holding terrorizing viewpoints, there will  no longer be any prohibitions on barring other viewpoints that “the majority” believes are unwise.  This is the progressive paradise, I guess: all dissenting thoughts, opinions and viewpoints banished. I can almost feel the electroshock treatments now.

This is just a gaffe, right? I doubt it. I don’t think someone committed to free speech, open discourse, liberty and pluralism makes such a gaffe. The Left has been working over-time to suppress opposing opinion, dissent and non-conforming views for much of this President’s administration. Why should we believe this is a mistake?

Hillary will, and should, have this quote shaken in front of her face from now on. It is disgraceful, and terrifying (but I’m probably not part of Hillary’s “majority,” so what terrifies me doesn’t matter) for a former U.S. Senator and Secretary of State to assert such an un-American sentiment.

And immediately, the news media has begun trying to clean up the mess. The Huffington Post, realizing most people read headlines, not full posts, titled its report this way:

“Hillary Clinton On Gun Control: We Can’t Let ‘A Minority Of People’ Terrorize The Majority”

That is, you will notice, a lie. That is not what she said, and it is not up to journalists to decide for us what she “meant.” She said, very specifically, “holding viewpoints” is what we cannot permit, although the Constitution and a long line of Supreme Court cases says quite specifically that viewpoints are exactly what the government must permit. Later she said,

“I don’t think any parent, any person, should have to fear about their child going to school or going to college because someone, for whatever reasons — psychological, emotional, political, ideological, whatever it means — could possibly enter that school property with an automatic weapon and murder innocent children, students, teachers.”

This is less totalitarian, arguably, but dumber. “Could possibly” enter that school? I guess we have to lock them up, then, right, Mrs. Clinton? Can’t take any chances.

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Pointer: Democratic Underground

 

 

Accommodating Minority Religious Requirements vs Human Rights: Ethicist Chris MacDonald Get The Balance Right

/ Jack Marshall / 64 Comments

garyclementEthics Alarms is an unabashedly U.S.-centric ethics blog, for both practical and philosophical reasons, but mostly practical: I can’t cover all the worthy ethical issues that arise in this country, much less cover the world. Obviously useful ethics problems arise outside U.S. borders, and here was one I missed until now.

Paul Grayson, a professor at Toronto’s York University, was confronted with a male student’s request for a religious accommodation in a class assignment so that he would not be required to interact with female students in his class. The professor denied the request because, he wrote, “it infringed upon women’s right to be treated with respect and as equals.” The student accepted his decision and completed the assignment, interacting with female students as the assignment required. That did not end the tale, however. The dean of York University’s faculty of arts told Grayson that the student’s request would not have a “substantial impact” on the rest of the class, and should have been accommodated. That, in turn, prompted a national debate in  media, religious and educational forums. Some, citing Canada’s commitment to “pluralism,” felt that the student’s religious beliefs should have trumped the culture’s commitment to gender equality and non-discrimination. Continue reading →

Ethics Tales Of Three Governors, As Hope Slowly Dwindles

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

McAuliffe-Christie-Cuomo

The U.S.’s recent experiment with a Senator-President has been disheartening—persuasive words unhinged to action and actual principles. There was a remarkable example of this in the President’s NSA speech, in fact, in a quote that would have been the Ethics Quote of the Month had it not been so cynical coming from him. The President said…

“Given the unique power of the state, it is not enough for leaders to say: Trust us, we won’t abuse the data we collect. For history has too many examples when that trust has been breached. Our system of government is built on the premise that our liberty cannot depend on the good intentions of those in power; it depends on the law to constrain those in power.”

Wonderful! If only this had been uttered by a leader with credibility and integrity, rather than one who has shrugged off, firing no one, interference with the federal election process by the IRS, illegal spying by the NSA, and the intentional facilitation of illegal firearms coming into the murderous hands of drug cartels by his Justice Department, after bombing Libya illegally in defiance of law, selectively enforcing immigration laws, using drones to kill American citizens abroad without due process, making recess appointments when the Senate wasn’t in recess, and more recently, unconstitutionally amending the ACA on his own after it was signed into law.

This was all foretold, however. Community organizers and senators make speeches and inspire people, but unfortunately seldom have a clue how to actually govern unless, as Obama himself has wistfully noted, they have absolute power. This is why, in theory, at least, state governors, who at least have experience governing, now seem like a better recruitment field for the next occupant of the Oval Office. It sounds good in the abstract, but the recent news from the state houses  is like ice water in the face—-

Ethical Quote of the Week: Will Wilkinson

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

After the headlines and the drama, the real grunt work of democracy begins...or not.

“…now that the Occupy movement has succeeded in shining a spotlight on its primary concerns — rising inequality, political corruption, and debt peonage — Occupiers and their allies now ought to pull up stakes, give up their whimsically undemocratic semi-privatization of public spaces, and endeavor to reform public policy through the democratic institutions established to make the collective determination of binding public rules legitimate. Moving on to seek reform through established democratic channels would require giving up the insolent and frankly disrespectful presumption that these often radically left-wing congregations somehow represent not only a majority of Americans, but 99% of them. It would require Occupiers to square up to the fact that their movement’s implicit ideology is an ideology, and a minority ideology at that — just one among our society’s many rival moral and political worldviews. The intransigence of the Occupy movement suggests an unwillingness among its numbers to take seriously the fact of pluralism, and the corollary impossibility of consensus, which makes majoritarian democratic procedures necessary in the first place.”

—Blogger Will Wilkinson, in his essay, “The Occupy Movement’s Enthusiasm and Contempt For Democracy” on bigthink.com (Think Big).

You can read the entire essay by Wilkinson, who is much more supportive of the Occupy movement than I am, here.

Good thinking, good work.

Impolitic Question Dept.: Is It Unethical For Americans To Dislike Islam?

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

To read the bulk of the letters to the editor in the New York Times, Americans not only must extend full Constitutional rights to the worshippers of Islam (as they must), but they also better like it. Not being enthusiastic about the prominent physical manifestation of the religion in a neighborhood that witnessed the murder of nearly 3,000 innocent victims by that religion’s followers has been called evidence of bigotry, mindless hate, and “Islamophobia,” as if there are no rational and reasonable justifications for regarding Islam as a less than positive addition to the United States culture.

On the contrary, there are many tenets of Islam that are directly antithetical and in opposition to core American values. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week, Regarding the Most Unethical Idea of the Month: Prof. Herb Asher

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

“It might attract some customers. It might drive some away. If I were a businessperson, the first thing I’d ask: Is this a winner or a loser for me?”

—-Prof. Herb Asher, an Ohio State University political science professor, commenting on an initiative in Dayton, Ohio that will have participating businesses give discounts to Tea Party supporters.

Gee, Professor…I would think the first thing you’d ask would be, “Is this program ethical and civically responsible?”

Because it isn’t, you know. Oh, I’m sorry…that’s right, you don’t know, and that is why you said the first think you’d wonder is “What’s in it for me?” Continue reading →