The Democrats’ “Leading Against White Supremacy Act”: So You Really Still Can’t Believe The Democratic Party Has Totalitarian Aspirations, Eh? [Corrected]

January 21, 2023January 25, 2023 / Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Oh, I know what you’re going to say: “That’s unfair, Jack! You know that the wacko bill is the brainchild of Representative Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), and she’s not like most Democrats!” It is true that Lee, whose Ethics Alarms dossier is as damning as any one could find on a current member of Congress with the possible exception of Nancy Pelosi, is a particularly awful member of Congress. She’s a fanatic supporter of reparations for slavery; she’s a knee-jerk race-baiter (any criticism of President Barack Obama, a serial bungler, was racist in her view). She’s one of those not very bright people who speak assertively and defiantly because they are laboring under the delusion that they are intelligent, thus fooling others who aren’t very smart either.

Lee once mixed up Wikileaks and Wikipedia in an interview. She has complained that the naming of storms is racist, because the names are “too white,” but we know that if we gave hurricanes names like “LaShonda” to hurricanes, she’d complain that blacks were being deliberately compared to destructive forces.

Nonetheless, you watch: House Democrats will overwhelmingly support Lee’s Leading Against White Supremacy Act, maybe even unanimously, despite the fact that it is unconstitutional, an attack on free speech and thought, and designed to let the government criminalize political positions it doesn’t like.

They will vote for it in part because it has no chance of passing. They also assume that their constituency is so ignorant of our rights it will see Republican opposition as more proof of racism.

Continue reading →

Tag-Team Comment Of The Day: “And This Is What The Great Stupid Looks Like…”

May 19, 2022May 19, 2022 / Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

JutGory and Steve-O-In NJ gave us a spontaneous call and response Comment of the Day on the topic of “white supremacy,” which has seemingly taken over for “racist” as the progressive/Democrat/mainstream reflex term to demonize conservatives, Republicans, patriots, anyone who believes in the Constitution, or anyone who opposes in good faith the Black Lives Matter agenda.

Here is their joint Comment of the Day on the post, “And This Is What The Great Stupid Looks Like…”:

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JutGory:

White Supremacy has been pretty meaningless for quite a while now.

What really annoys me about this is that the “problem” pointed out here has exactly no solution that will satisfy the complainers.

Whites should be barred from watching the NBA?
Whites should stop supporting the NBA?

That is the point: no matter what happens, they will not be satisfied.

Before you know it, we are back to the Negro Leagues again. And, you know what they will complain about then?

White Supremacy.

Steve-O-in NJ responds:

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Comment Of The Day: “Sunday Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 2/27/2022…”[#2]

February 28, 2022 / Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Few read Ethics Alarms on weekends (I guess I should write, “even fewer”), and I may start Mondays with more comment highlights from the Dead Zone past. This weekend was unusually lively. This Comment of the Day by Null Pointer took off from item number #2 of yesterday’s warm-up, regarding the GOP’s Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Rep. Paul Gosar speaking at white nationalist event, in which I quoted The National Review’s David Harsanyi:

“ On social media, conservatives grouse that there’s a double standard. Democrats, they say, never condemn their extremists, they celebrate them. That’s a double standard worth living with. After all, any denunciation of Omar, Tlaib, or any other Squad member lacks credibility if House Republicans can’t publicly take the position that hanging out with (actual) white supremacists is deplorable.”

Here is Null Pointer’s Comment of the Day on “Sunday Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 2/27/2022…”:

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White supremacy is bad. All forms of racial supremacy are bad. All forms of supremacy are bad.

Republicans need to jump on the “all forms of supremacy are bad” principle, hard. Otherwise you will see white supremacy taking off again.

No, you cannot have a double standard. If you have a double standard, you do not have a fair principle that addresses the problem equally across the entire spectrum of the problem. If you don’t have a fair principle, no one is going to listen to you. People will not agree to operate by unfair principles. Continue reading →

White Supremacy Confirmation Bias: How Do You Argue With Someone Who Reasons Like This?

May 24, 2021May 24, 2021 / Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

confirmation_bias

A blog that has been out there much longer than mine (and which conveniently leaves the blogger’s identity mysterious) argues that “implementing vaccine passports would be a white supremacist measure.” The Biden administration is encouraging such documentation, and the ultra-woke state of Oregon has announced that these will be required for its citizens to go unmasked in any indoor, public-access gathering. I am not concerned here with the wisdom of the policy. I want to know how anyone can have a rational conversation with someone who is convinced such a measure is evidence of “white supremacy.”

Whoeverthehellheorsheis writes,

“[P]oor people are much less likely to be vaccinated than higher-income persons…According to the long-set standards of Black Lives Matter and other critical-theory advocates, whether racial disparities like this are intended or not is irrelevant. These disparities are the results of racial discrimination and white privilege baked into the social-legal-medical networks for centuries. Therefore, it does not matter that this gap in immunization is not intended. It does not matter that the men and women managing the vaccine program and distribution, or administering it to the public, do not discriminate at the vaccine sites by the race of persons who come for the shots. Lack of deliberate intent does not excuse systemic racism. The fact that matters is this: “Black and Latino people are far more likely to live in poverty than white people, and despite having died at higher rates throughout the pandemic, they are receiving fewer vaccines than white people.”

The argument is instructive, which is why I am bothering to publish it. If any disparity exists in any area where blacks and other non-white groups have statistically less positive outcomes than whites, it is per se proof of “white supremacy.” The fact of statistical variation is the proof, and reasons don’t matter. This is an especially useful example, because there is no reason at all for poor people or minorities not to be vaccinated. The vaccinations are free and ubiquitous. The greatest cost imaginable would be a cab ride. One doesn’t need online access to get one.

Minorities and poorer populations—they are not the same thing—are lagging behind in getting the shots, and by choice. Now, in the case of African Americans, an argument could be made that systemic flaws in the school system, or systemically rooted inadequacies in nutrition leading to cognitive damage, or pockets of African American culture crippled by paranoia and superstition as an outgrowth of centuries of abuse from slavery, are examples of harm from past white supremacy. However, a policy that only confers a disadvantage on a group because that group chooses to be disadvantaged cannot be condemned as an expression of hostility toward that group, or as a means of keeping that group disadvantaged.

Continue reading →

“ARRGH!” [Translation: “Here Are Some Oct. 1 Ethics Notes Before I Snap After A Horrible Day!’]

October 1, 2020October 1, 2020 / Jack Marshall / 38 Comments

And, to make the day perfect, WordPress is forcing me to use its damn new “block” system, which I do not have the time of patience to fool with. In the immortal words of Basil Fawlty,

1. JAMA says that it’s important to help people with dementia vote.

Nearly 6 million people in the US have some form of the condition, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates, and they represent almost 2.5% of the 253.8 million US residents who are of voting age. The oldest voters, those aged 60 years or older, are more likely to vote than younger age groups, according to the United States Elections Project; the lion’s share of people with dementia fall into that demographic….having dementia doesn’t revoke a person’s fundamental right to cast a ballot.

“Alzheimer’s disease is progressive, and it evolves over many years. A person in the early stages, and even into the more moderate stages, still has the capacity to vote,” Beth Kallmyer, MSW, vice president of care and support for the Alzheimer Association, said in an interview.

They may have the capacity, but it unethical for them to exploit that capacity if their cognitive functions are impaired. Anyone with diagnosed dementia should voluntarily decline to vote. Such individuals are, of course, invitations for voter manipulation and fraud.

It should go without saying that it is also unethical to run for office when one is suffering from dementia,

2. I don’t understand this at all. The Commission on Presidential Debates has chosen Steve Scully, C-SPAN political editor and host of the network’s “Washington Journal” call-in program, to moderate the second presidential debate on October 15 in Miami. The puzzling part: When he was in college, Scully worked as an intern for Joe Biden in the Senate. Later, he was as a staff assistant in the late Sen. Ted Kennedy’s communications office.

The background doesn’t mean Scully is necessarily biased, but how hard can if be to identify a qualified moderator who has no ties at all to either candidate? Continue reading →

Saturday Ethics Warm-Up, 8/1/2020: I See Bad People And Penis-Talkers

August 1, 2020August 1, 2020 / Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

1. This may not be the most trustworthy advocate for the President’s favorite Wuhan virus medicine…President Trump’s supporters among the punditry and conservative bloggers briefly celebrated the endorsement of hydroxychloroquine, despite recent studies questioning its effectiveness and safety, by Dr. Stella Immanuel. Support for her was redoubled after her posts were taken down by both Facebook and Twitter as “misinformation.” That’s censorship, of course, and arguably partisan. Immanuel has an opinion. However, her response to the censoring of her posts does not enhance her credibility. She tweeted,

2. I see…he shouldn’t be honored because he was white, right? I have reached the point where I have to conclude that Rep. Ocasio-Cortez just isn’t very bright, and those who support her passionate—but stupid!—pronouncements have a similar basic competence problem. Take this example: AOC complained in a video,

Even when we select figures to tell the stories of colonized places, it is the colonizers and settlers whose stories are told — and virtually no one else. Check out Hawaii’s statue. It’s not Queen Lili’uokalani of Hawaii, the only Queen Regnant of Hawaii, who is immortalized and whose story is told. It is Father Damien. This isn’t to litigate each and every individual statue, but to point out the patterns that have emerged among the totality of them in who we are taught to deify in our nation’s Capitol: virtually all men, all white, and mostly both. This is what patriarchy and white supremacist culture looks like! It’s not radical or crazy to understand the influence white supremacist culture has historically had in our overall culture & how it impacts the present day.

I’ll have to do a full post on the entire “white supremacy” canard, which is basically linguistic game-playing. Culture, everywhere, is primarily determined by the majority. In a majority white population, white people, their habits, preferences, interests and values, have the strongest effect on the culture. Because there are more of the majority than other groups, they also will tend to have the greatest visibility and participation in that area’s history. Framing this rather obvious and universal situation as something sinister is silly as an argument, and evidence of impaired critical thinking skills if one is persuaded by it. Continue reading →

Stipulated: The Emancipation Statue Represents White Supremacy. It Still Has To be Protected.

June 26, 2020June 26, 2020 / Jack Marshall / 57 Comments

Facts don’t matter to a mob. This is why indulging mobs–ever and at all—is foolish and dangerous. It is also why the current push to remove the Emancipation Statue, also known as the Freedman’s Memorial, has to be resisted, and successfully.

I know a slippery slope when I see one; I think I’ve established that since I saw this particular slippery slope being greased five years ago. I saw that it would slide right into the Founders and an attempt to separate the United States from its origins and the brave and brilliant patriots who risked everything to attempt this experiment in liberty.

If any statute of Lincoln is allowed to satisfy the mob’s lust for vengeance and power, any memorials and honors to Jefferson and Washington are doomed, including the Washington Monument. As with the less violent and more dignified—but no less dangerous— mobs that destroyed lives and reputations during the Red Scare and McCarthy era, politically motivated mobs like the Black Lives Matter-catalyzed demonstrators will treat each victory as a green light for escalation. It is astounding that so many supposedly educated people in government, academia, business and the arts have somehow forgotten this fact in their rush to grovel and submit, hoping, as Winston Churchill observed of appeasers, that the crocodile would eat them last.

The attack on America escalated when NFL players began “taking a knee” during the playing of the National Anthem, one of the main symbols of our nation and its values. The players and their spiritual leader, Colin Kaepernick, made incoherent efforts to explain why their disrespect during the Anthem wasn’t aimed at the melody, but at the nation it—well, the racism that—well, they never could manage to explain their logic. That’s because the protest was really aimed at the United States itself. Continue reading →

Terrific. Our Future Military Leaders Are Being Trained By Craven, Politically Correct Idiots.

December 13, 2019December 13, 2019 / Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Let’s start with this false headline from the Times: “West Point Strips Racist Motto From Its Football Team Flag.” The motto is ” “God Forgives, Brothers Don’t.” There is nothing racist about that motto, in meaning, history or intent. The Times implies that West point has been flying a racist motto since the line was added, about 25 years ago. Wrong. Fake news. Dumb reporters.

But that’s not all. Do you see any motto on that flag above? No? Perhaps it’s because there is no motto on it, just the initials of the motto. Is “I.G.W.T” a motto? How about “L.F.O.D”? Here, look closely at where the skull’s lip would be, if it weren’t a skull:

When the academy discovered that slogan that those initials represented was now being used by the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, a violent white supremacist prison gang where male members refer to one another as “brothers” and call their female associates “sisters,” it became all scared and stuff about being criticized by race-baiters and mean people, so it removed the words. Yes, this is how a venerable military academy thinks now. I know I feel safer.

Continue reading →

Ethics Note To The Chicago Cubs: Double Standards Promote Racial Discord Even When They Aren’t As Stupid As Yours

June 8, 2019June 8, 2019 / Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

The Chicago Cubs ridiculous virtue signaling and capitulation to political correctness bullying is metaphorically coming home to roost.

Love it.

In May, as I wrote about here, the Cubs banned a fan for life because he made the ubiquitous “OK” sign behind a black broadcaster. Nobody had any basis to say with certainty what the fan meant, but after the Twitter mob demanded the fans head, the Cubs meekly complied. You see, the OK gesture might have meant, “My race is better than your race,” because a rumor was circulated online that “OK” is a white power symbol. It might have been trolling by someone who knew that the symbol would trigger social justice warriors. Or, you know, OK might have just meant “OK” as it as for almost 200 years.

Hmmm…tough one! Occam’s Razor, anyone? Continue reading →

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“I really will not allow the simple gesture to belong to the moronic dogwhistling catfishing foghorning frogmarching pigsticking dickwaving few who attempt to appropriate it for their own fatuous fantasies.”

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