Category Archives: morality

Discrimination

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Recall the California law that requires (required) the boards of directors of California-headquartered public companies to have at least one member of an “underrepresented” race, ethnicity or sexual orientation, and two to three for larger boards. Recall further that California Superior Court Judge

Terry Green judge struck the law for violating California’s constitution.

Now The Wall Street Journal includes a bit of the judge’s reasoning from his opinion.

the judge says no one “appears to have made any effort to identify, define, or survey the qualified talent pool for director positions.”

Oops.

In an associated footnote, the judge went on, with clarity that even a California Progressive-Democrat should be able to discern.

Some of the experts have identified common feeder positions (such as “C-Suite” executive roles) and academic qualifications (such as an MBA), but there appears to be no one single” gatekeeping “qualification that could be used to define the pool in the way that a license might for lawyers and medical professionals, or a credential might for teachers.

Then he drove the point home in his conclusion.

Corporations Code § 301.4 [the board of directors membership law] violates the Equal Protection Clause of the California Constitution on its face. The statute treats similarly situated individuals—qualified potential corporate board members—differently based on their membership (or lack thereof) in certain listed racial, sexual orientation, and gender identity groups. It requires that a certain specific number of board seats be reserved for members of the groups on the list—and necessarily excludes members of other groups from those seats.

It’s hard to get any clearer than that, but if the California Progressive-Democratic Party legislators are true to their history, they’ll work hard to find a way to be confused.

What if Ukraine Wins—Or Loses?

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This is Part Four of Four; Part One can be read here, Part Two can be read here, and Part Three can be read here. This is a series of pieces talking about the implications of a Ukrainian victory or a Russian victory on situations around the world. Heads up—each Part will be a long-ish read.

Moral considerations

Emer de Vattel wrote[i]

Nations or states are bodies politic, societies of men united together for the purpose of promoting their mutual safety and advantage by the joint efforts of their combined strength.
Such a society has her affairs and her interests; she deliberates and takes resolutions in common; thus becoming a moral person, who possesses an understanding and a will peculiar to herself, and is susceptible of obligations and rights.

With this, he established the intrinsically moral nature of nation-states, bringing them into the framework of what is moral behavior and the requirement to behave so. Having established the moral core of a nation, de Vattel went on:

Those alone, to whom an injury is done or intended, have a right to make war.
From the same principle we shall likewise deduce the just and lawful object of every war, which is, to avenge or prevent injury. To avenge signifies here to prosecute the reparation of an injury, if it be of a nature to be repaired, — or, if the evil be irreparable, to obtain a just satisfaction, — and also to punish the offender, if requisite, with a view of providing for our future safety. The right to security authorizes us to do all this.

In the present case, between the two primary belligerents only Ukraine has the right to fight; it is fighting in self-defense. Russia has no right to fight, having attacked in the first place and without basis. Beyond that, Ukraine has the right to demand reparations—restitution—from Russia for the damage and killings done in Ukraine by the Russian barbarian. The last sentence of the cite applies presently, also: the right to security authorizes all of us to fight to defend Ukraine and to demand restitution for Ukraine. I say, not only authorizes us, but requires us at the least to go all in on supplying Ukraine with the weapons, ammunition, (re)supply, and training Zelenskyy’s generals say they need, and not only to do this for our own damage, but to assist Ukraine in its moves to gain compensation from Russia.

Hugo Grotius presaged this[ii]:

In speaking of belligerent powers, it was shown that the law of nature authorizes the assertion not only of our own rights, but those also belonging to others. The causes therefore, which justify the principals engaged in war, will justify those also, who afford assistance to others.

And here’s de Vattel on the matter, again:

For an injury gives us a right to provide for our future safety, by depriving the unjust aggressor of the means of injuring us; and it is lawful and even praiseworthy to assist those who are oppressed, or unjustly attacked.

These are not legally binding on today’s nations, but they are most assuredly morally binding, and the US, UK, NATO member nations, EU member nations, and on and on, are obliged to come to Ukraine’s aid. I assert further, that half measures, providing inadequate amounts or types of weapons, ammunitions, logistic support, and medical support are worse than a moral failure to aid Ukraine, they’re an entirely immoral (not merely amoral) betrayal of our obligation and a betrayal of Ukraine. Such shortfalls do not support final Ukrainian victory; they serve only to keep Ukraine in the fight, to keep Ukraine bleeding, to keep Ukraine dying, to keep Ukrainian civilians being murdered, to keep Ukrainian women being raped and murdered, to keep Ukrainian children being butchered.

The morality of the situation goes further. Nations consist of people, collections of individual persons acting in concert at a national level. I assert that, as individual persons, we have a Judeo-Christian obligation to help the least of those among us. The Christian Bible and the Jewish Torah are rife with such injunctions. The Biblical verses concerning Ruth and Boaz give one such example, and Rabbi Shlomo ben Yitzhak’s (with commentary by the Marasha) discussion of giving a coin and/or consolation to a poor man give another.

As individuals, Americans and Europeans—especially the Polish and Romanian peoples—are well and truly stepping up. The morality here goes beyond even that. We must push our nations, which are acting in our name, to behave as morally. That requires the nations, through our individual obligations aggregated to the nation, to fulfill the moral injunctions of Grotius and de Vattel.

[i] The Law of Nations

[ii] The Law of War and Peace, as cited by Robert W Hoag in his essay Violent Civil Disobedience: Defending Human Rights, Rethinking Just War in Brough, Lango, and van der Linden’s Rethinking the Just War Tradition

Some Progress

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The Alabama House of Representatives, on the last day of this year’s legislative session, passed—66-28—a bill that makes felonies out of performing certain essentially irreversible transgender procedures on children. The State’s Senate had passed the bill earlier, so now it goes to Governor Kay Ivey (R) for signature and passage into law.

Among the procedures proscribed by the bill are hormone treatment, puberty blockers, and gender-reassignment surgery.

It’s one thing if adults want to undergo transgender procedures, but it’s quite another for children. Not only are children—from an intellectual and emotional maturation standpoint as well as legally—incapable of making such decisions, they’re incapable of deciding for themselves their underlying desired gender recognition status. That status is determined solely by a child’s parents, and so are the decisions to act on their determination.

Such procedures are irreversible, and neither the parent nor the child can undo them later if either should wish to change his mind or recognize a mistake and wish to correct it. A parent imposing such a decision on the child is as guilty of child abuse as they would be of beatings or genital mutilation.

Ivey has not said whether she would sign the bill, and her office did not respond to a request by the wire service for comment.

It’s unclear why Ivey is hesitating. Protecting children from abuse should be a goal of everyone, including politicians.

Who is the EU Backing, Really?

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EU member nations, including those that also are members of NATO, are loudly supporting economic sanctions against Russia—except for Russian oil and natural gas—and sending arms to Ukraine—except for fighter jets and tanks and other armored weapons (Czech Republic is a notable and honorable exception) needed to drive the barbarian completely from Ukraine—in enthusiastically outspoken response to Vladimir Putin’s Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Now we see the graphic evidence of the atrocities that the Russian invaders are inflicting, as a matter of state policy, on Ukrainian civilians, including women and children. Bucha is just one example. Another is Putin’s targeting of a train station in Kramartorsk, waiting until it was filled with civilians trying to evacuate from the city before sending in the strike.

And yet,

But the shame is that the EU still won’t ban the import of Russian oil and gas. This means that each day Europe is subsidizing Russia’s war by financing the Kremlin.

Each day that the EU subsidizes Putin’s war on Ukraine, the EU is consciously subsidizing Putin’s campaign of butchery, rape, war crimes.

I ask again: Who is the EU backing, really?

Biden’s Timidity on International Display

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President Joe Biden’s (D) timidity before Russian President Vladimir Putin is illustrated internationally by his embassy moves.

Recall that when Putin invaded Ukraine and threatened Kyiv, Biden ordered his American embassy to cut and run relocate west to Lviv. When Lviv came under air attack, Biden ordered his American embassy to quit Ukraine altogether and run off relocate to Poland.

Recall further that the Prime Ministers of Poland, Czech Republic, and Slovenia, along with the EU’s President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola—while Kyiv still was under threat of Russian capture—visited with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv. Biden, on the other hand, even though he went to Europe while Kyiv was under siege—to Brussels and later to Rzeszow, Poland—was too timid to travel to Kyiv and meet with Zelenskyy on Zelenskyy’s (besieged) home ground.

It gets worse.

Now that the barbarian has withdrawn from the vicinity of Kyiv and Ukrainian forces have retaken and are consolidating national control over much of northern Ukraine [emphasis added]

Turkey…became the first major nation to send diplomats back to Kyiv….
Turkey’s embassy, which had relocated to the western Ukrainian city of Chernivtsi [never leaving Ukraine], reopened in Kyiv and will resume consular services, it said on social media. The US, by contrast, currently doesn’t have any diplomatic presence on Ukrainian soil, with embassy staff operating from Poland.

Even with Kyiv safe from Russian occupation, Biden has no intention of having his State Department move his embassy back to Kyiv. Biden has no intention of visiting with Zelenskyy in the latter’s Presidential Office Building, or even of sending his Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin or CJCS General Mark Milley to meet with the leaders of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, whose offices also are in the Presidential Office Building.

The Biden-Harris administration is an utter embarrassment to our nation.