Category Archives: ethics

The Business with Iran

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The Wall Street Journal opined on Iran’s missile launch last week and President Donald Trump’s imposition of sanctions against Iran in response.

[I]t does look as if President Trump may be willing to do what Mr Obama refused to do, which is to rigorously enforce the [nuclear weapons development] agreement….

Trump said during the campaign that he might not tear up the Executive Agreement, but instead enforce it to the letter.

Why would his doing so now be such a surprise? Oh, wait, the NLMSM spiked that part of his commitments while focusing, disparagingly, on his earlier musing about tearing up the EA.

The EO That Banned Muslim Entry into the US

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Or at least that’s what House and Senate Democrats, along with the NLMSM, claim President Donald Trump’s Executive Order does.  It’s certainly true that the EO suspends, for a time, entry from seven countries with predominantly Muslim populations: Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen.  Wow, that’s a lot.  That’s 199,200,000 Muslims.

However.  There is some small bit of information that’s carefully ignored by those Democrats with their badly manufactured tears and by the NLMSM.  The EO doesn’t touch some other predominantly Muslim nations; their ability to come and go into the United States is deliberately left untouched.

Minor nations like Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Turkey, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Uzbekistan, The People’s Republic of China, Malaysia, Russia, Niger, Philippines.  And on and on.  Globally, there are roughly 1,700,000,000 Muslims.

That terrible order that’s targeted at the terrorist or terrorism-sponsoring seven that ex-President Barack Obama (D) himself designated as terrorist or terrorism-sponsoring affect a small minority of Muslims and it does that much solely as a side effect of the effort to keep out terrorists.

Security Holes

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Recall the hoo-raw over Apple’s refusal to help the FBI hack an iPhone used by the San Bernardino terrorists, the FBI’s claim that they couldn’t get into the iPhone without Apple’s help, and then the FBI’s successful penetration of the iPhone from hiring a third party to do hack it.  Recall further the FBI’s subsequent refusal to tell Apple about the security hole in Apple’s iPhone software (supposedly limited to the generation of cell phone used by the terrorists) that was exploited by the hack and the FBI’s associated refusal to tell Apple how the hack itself worked.

The FBI has been in court defending those refusals.

…the Justice Department argued that the information it withheld, if released, could be seized upon by “hostile entities” who could develop their own “countermeasures”….

This is curious logic, indeed.  The FBI is leaving the security hole in place on the assumption, apparently, that hackers can’t already identify the hole and exploit it—as that third party did so promptly after being hired by the FBI.  So, leave the hole unplugged; a countermeasure would just be found by hackers.

Never mind that any hack—all of them to date, against any software in any milieu, as well as any future hack—is a countermeasure against the software being penetrated.  There’s nothing static about any of this; software security and hacks are in a dynamic arms race.  It’s foolish to leave existing holes in place in the expectation that the arms race will stop.

A Failed Culture

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That’s what exists in the State Department, has existed for administration after administration, and has been exposed lately by White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s remark earlier in the week about State Department personnel: I think that they should either get with the program or they can go.  The precious ones in the culture are out in force.

Some examples, with my attitude…exposed [link added]:

This ban, which can only be lifted under conditions which will be difficult or impossible for countries to meet….

Then these self-important ones should stop wasting time on their hurt feelings over not being personally consulted and spend their energies instead on helping those countries meet the conditions.  Whether or not they should have been consulted is an entirely separate argument, but the boss had and has no obligation to consult with them (see below) for all that it might be a good idea to do so.  Even at that, though, “consult” does not mean “get permission from.”

“I hope the White House is not suggesting that the officials would be fired,” [John Bellinger, State Department and National Security Council legal adviser in Bush the Younger’s administration] said….

This is completely disingenuous. “You should resign” is not at all a threat of being fired.

…the dissent channel is “a long-respected format” for diplomats and other State Department officials to express disagreement.

Indeed it is. However, it’s not a channel for employees to veto their boss’ instructions.

“It’s a specific example of the total lack of understanding, let alone respect of basic democratic norms,” a second official said.

A carefully anonymous official, notice. With good reason, too; he doesn’t understand that the organization isn’t a democracy—no organization other than a nation as a whole can be—it has a boss and employees.

Whose Seat Is It, Again?

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A “journalist” asked then-Senate candidate Scott Brown (R, MA) whether he was willing to sit in Teddy Kennedy’s seat and block the Democrats’ health care bill.  Brown answered in pertinent part,

With all due respect, it’s not the Kennedy’s seat, it’s not the Democrats’ seat, it’s the people’s seat.

What brings that up is Senator Jeff Merkley’s (D, OR) claim in the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s announcement of his nominee for the Supreme Court, 10th Circuit Court Judge Neil Gorsuch.

This is a stolen seat. This is the first time a Senate majority has stolen a seat[.]

Stolen from whom?  Who owns this seat, exactly?  In the feverish minds of the Democrats in the Senate, a Supreme Court seat belongs to the Democrats, or maybe if we take Merkeley’s claim literally, it belongs to the minority party.  Or the seat belongs to a Liberal/Progressive wing of…somebody.  (Never mind that the liberal wing of the Supreme Court doesn’t even support the Constitution, holding that it lives through judicial rulings and not through Article V.)

And this, from Juan Williams, author of the piece at the second link:

[I]f a liberal now sitting on the court retires or dies and Trump has another nomination, get ready for fireworks if not all out war on the nomination.

Because somehow, that seat belongs to a liberal, if not a Democrat, or the “right” to pick who sits in that seat “belongs” to Democrats or other liberals.

And here’s that so-familiar view of morality, this time as articulated by Williams, and concerning the Republicans’ block of ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) nominee, DC Circuit Court Judge Merrick Garland, made in a Presidential election year.  Keep in mind that the purpose of the block was because Senate Republicans believed that the people in the upcoming election should have a voice in who the nominee should be.

Turnabout is fair play, acted on with glee in these politically polarized times.

There it is: the morality of a behavior isn’t at all intrinsic in the behavior, it’s strictly in whether someone else did it or is doing it.  Morality is strictly situational, the Democrat says, it’s whatever is politically convenient in the present case.  And that’s the immorality that the Democrats are applying to justify their opposition in the present case: payback’s a bitch, and we’re gonna be bitches.  Nothing at all on whether Gorsuch is qualified for the Supreme Court.

And this little detail.  By the Democrats’ logic, the vacant seat—Scalia’s seat in the Democrat lexicon—belongs to the conservative wing of…somebody, or it belongs to a Conservative, if not a Republican, or the “right” to pick who sits in it “belongs” to Republicans or other Conservatives.  Yet these Democrats in that election year demanded to install their left of center candidate into “Scalia’s seat,” and they’re determined to block the Republicans’ “right” to pick “their” judge for the seat.

But the question of whose seat the vacant one on the Supreme Court is—indeed whose seat each of the nine is—has been answered quite clearly, and the answer was plainly stated in the block of Garland.  Just as with all of the seats anywhere in the Federal government, we the People own the seats on the Supreme Court, including any vacant ones.  Not Democrats.  Not Republicans.  We the People.

Did I say feverish minds?  No, that’s wrong.  These Democrats know exactly what they’re doing, and the sad thing about it is that they’re doing it anyway.