Category Archives: ethics

A European Plan to Hold Open the Strait of Hormuz

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They’re finally getting around to talking about setting something up—after declining to help force it open in the first place. That would be too dangerous for fragile European militaries, they say. Might get poked in the nose. Or as French President Emmanuel Macron so carefully euphemistically put it,

…reopening the strait by force would be “unrealistic[.]”

What’s really interesting, though (as an aside, I do wonder why those nations have military establishments if they’re not intended to fight), is who has been invited to this diplomatic coffee klatch and who has not (of course the US has not, but that’s not the interesting part). They’ve invited the People’s Republic of China and India. But they’ve apparently chosen not to invite the Republic of Korea, Japan, or Australia, each of whom also has a serious interest in the free flow of cargo, oil, and natural gas through the Strait. Of course, they chose not to invite the Republic of China; that would offend the PRC, and Europe is much too fearful of the PRC to do anything that would even remotely hint at that.

Saudis Want Negotiations

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Saudia Arabia is worried that the Houthis, a terrorist client of Iran, will close the Bab al-Mandeb and thereby block Saudi oil shipments from leaving the southern end of the Red Sea enroute to India, Asia, and points east. They fear an Iranian push on the Houthis in response to President Donald Trump’s (R) move to block the Strait of Hormuz against Iranian oil leaving, ships entering with a view to loading up on Iranian oil, and ships exiting that have paid the Iranian protection money.

Never mind that ships leaving with non-Iranian oil or other cargo—including the Saudis’ oil—and that have not paid the protection vig are free of the Trumpian blockade.

Against all that, the Saudis want Trump to go back to negotiating with the Iranian terrorists. Negotiate, the Saudis want, anything, anything to keep the Bab al-Mandeb open. Please.

No. Trump’s blockade must stay in place, and the destruction of the IRGC’s small boat fleet must resume forthwith, along with the resumed destruction of Iranian missiles and rockets and their launchers, along with the destruction of Iran’s drone inventory, launchers, and ability to manufacture any weapons of any type. It’s not possible to have meaningful negotiations with terrorists.

If the Saudis really are that married to negotiations and attendant terrorist accommodations, let them reach their own accommodation with the Houthi terrorists. Alternatively, the Saudis could get serious about fighting and destroying the Houthis themselves in place of their years of desultory, perfunctory potshots at the occasional Houthi enclave.

Hungary’s Election

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The results of Hungary’s election last Sunday are pretty much in, and the upstart Tisza Party, led by Péter Magyar, has won a resounding victory, 53.6% of the votes compared with 37.8% for Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party, with 98% of the votes counted. That puts Tisza on track for a better than two-thirds majority in the nation’s unicameral Parliament.

Some on the Left in the US and in Europe are calling that a defeat of a traitorous right-wing Orbán and his party. Others have a different take on the outcome:

Notre Dame College Republicans
@NDRepublicans
Orbán was just voted out democratically and conceded. Meanwhile countries like France, Germany, and Romania ban opposition candidates from running, cancel elections, and surveil parties for “extremism” if they oppose immigration.

Rasmus Jarlov @RasmusJarlov · 19h
This is the biggest and most needed defeat for traitor right in Europe in modern times. It is not a victory for the left. But a victory for sane conservatism that believes in democracy and does not ally with the enemies of Europe. This is what….

In the event, we’ll see. Magyar wasn’t very unifying in his victory speech:

Together we replaced the Orbán system. Together we liberated Hungary and took back our country. Those who commit the sin of dividing the nation must leave power.

Neither was Orbán:

What today means for our homeland, we do not know, time will tell. In any case, we will serve our homeland even in opposition.

It appears, though, that the Notre Dame Republicans have the better read. Divisive rhetoric, or not, this was a more democratically achieved election outcome than those of the so-liberal France and Germany and Romania.

In Which the Editors Get One Right

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The Wall Street Journal‘s editors this time. Don’t expel him [California Progressive-Democrat Congressman Eric Swalwell] from Congress. Let California voters have their say, goes their subheadline.

Swalwell is about as unsavory a man, let alone a politician, as it gets this side of Tren de Aragua, and the sexual assault and rape charges being leveled against him are even worse. However, as the editors point out near the end of their editorial,

He deserves a chance to explain himself, while accusations alone shouldn’t be enough to drive an elected Representative out of office. ….
The [House] Ethics Committee can take up formal complaints, sift the evidence, and recommend an appropriate punishment.

That’s right. In our legal system, an accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a trial court. The legalism doesn’t apply to Congress; each house can expel its members for any reason at all, if two-thirds of its members can be persuaded to the expulsion. However, the principle underlying the legalism assuredly does apply to Congress, as it does to all of us citizens.

Let the House Ethics Committee do its investigation and recommend the punishment it deems fit, but short of expulsion. Let the matter also come to serious criminal trial, and if he’s convicted, the Ethics Committee then can revisit the matter and recommend expulsion—and the House then should vote unanimously for that expulsion.

All of that may have become moot, though: Swalwell announced Monday that he was resigning from Congress with immediate effect. Withal, my claim regarding presumption of innocence remains unbloodied and unbowed.

A Sanction of New York over its Board of Elections

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New York’s State Board of Elections has inadequate safeguards regarding its elections and appears to be refusing to correct that.

Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections (RITE), a nonpartisan organization focused on election security, alleges the New York State Board of Elections (NYSBOE) stonewalled a request to fix the state’s voter registration form to comply with federal voting law.

Absent those corrections, the State-dominating Progressive-Democratic Party could register loads of voters of whom Party approves, thereby cementing Party’s reign over the State for generations.

If RITE’s allegations are true, and the NYSBOE continues to refuse to correct its errors, there is a sanction that would have strong and sharp teeth. Here’s Article 2 of our 14th Amendment:

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

The 19th and 26th Amendments modify this Article only to the extent of extending the right to vote to women and lowering the minimum age of eligibility to 18 years old.

Allowing ineligible persons to vote dilutes the votes of eligible, legitimate voters, and that is a functional, even if not direct, denial of those eligible voters’ right to vote. That dilution means their votes no longer count as whole votes, but only as reduced, fractional votes. In our system of elections, any reduction in the value of a vote to less than that of the entire vote is a denial of that vote.

The sanction, then, should be a reduction of New York’s representation in Congress according to the proportion of registered ineligible voters to registered eligible voters plus the proportion of eligible voters denied registration to the whole number of voters in the State.