Category Archives: ethics

More Government Thinking for Us

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Big Brother is at it again.

Now Uncle Sugar’s National Highway Transportation Safety Administration wants every automaker to follow the exact same rule about how to turn off a car.  Because we’re unable to figure out how to turn off our engines and electric motors unless all the systems look alike.  Next, NHTSA will be mandating the size of the fins on our cars.  Oh, wait….

There is a superficially sound argument for this mandate.  Steven Stepanian, a driving instructor at Driving Concepts, supports it this way:

The faster you can get the car disabled, the faster you are out of danger.  If the situation is such that you need to shut down the power to the engine or electric motor, you want it done as soon as humanly possible. I can’t come up with a reason that you would want to delay that action.

There are a couple of problems with this, though.  What is the danger, exactly?  Shutting down the engine disables the power steering and power brake systems: the car doesn’t become uncontrollable, but it does get, suddenly, a lot harder to control.  Second, how often does our car actually run away with us?  Most often, runaways turn out to have been caused by operator error: the driver stamped on the gas pedal instead of the brake pedal, and then panicked (even if only momentarily).  Reaching for the Emergency Off switch is faster than getting off the wrong pedal?  The driver is going to think of that switch while he’s panicked?  I can’t come up with a good reason why I need another switch to manipulate in such a situation.  The ignition key turns everything off just fine.  Even in keyless entry cars.

Electric cars certainly would benefit from a kill switch that disconnects the battery system from the motor (and that cuts off the ignition from the backup gasoline engine).  (If that disconnects the battery system from the power steering and brakes, too, that would be a design flaw that wants correction.)

NHTSA also worries that, with the many and varied ways there are to start a car (really?  Turn the ignition key or push the boot-up button—how many ways are there to do that?), we might get confused in a rental or a newly bought car.  I’ve never been confused, and I’ve driven all over the country, and all over the world, in my cars and in a wide variety of rental cars (OK, I’ve not driven in Great Britain, but they all drive on the wrong side of the road, anyway, so that datum is well contaminated).  Have you ever been confused by your car’s ignition key or boot-up button?

There’s a larger question to all of this, and that is why Big Government is mandating what we must have in our cars, why Big Government is insisting on doing our thinking for us: apparently our Betters think we’re just too stupid to function in an environment that isn’t absolutely identical everywhere we go.

Big Government and Racism

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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, NV) likened Republicans who objected to Obamacare to congressmen (Democrats, incidentally) who, 150 years ago, fought to delay anti-slavery laws.

Congressman John Lewis (D, GA) manufactured charges of racist slurs aimed at him as he approached the capital building on the passage of Obamacare.

Ex-President Jimmy Carter (D) announced that “an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he’s African-American.”

Congresswoman Frederica Wilson (D, FL) blames black unemployment on racism.

On the other hand, Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D, CA) doesn’t think President Obama is black enough; she’s called him out for not doing enough to target jobs efforts at blacks in particular, instead of pushing them for all Americans.

Attorney General Eric Holder cries out that photo ID requirements for voter registration are racist: they’ll inhibit minorities from voting because they don’t already have the “correct” ID.  Apparently Holder thinks minorities are too stupid to figure out how to get an ID, and how to do so sooner than the day of an election—including one that’s still 10 months off.  Holder’s performance is just the racism of low expectations.

It seems that a failed government is hiding behind racism to try to distract us from its failures and to prevent any criticism of it for its failures.  As Charles Krauthammer has pointed out, though,

…it’s…a cowardly use of the race card and it’s unbecoming. It also is dangerous in a country where it can stoke that kind of racial animosity.

Here is another case where our government is missing a great opportunity to shut up.

Religion vs. Atheism in the Public Square

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The atheists are at it again.  The Daily Caller describes this situation in Warren, MI.

It seems that the city has allowed a Nativity scene to be displayed, as it has done for a number of years, in the City Hall lobby.  This offends the Freedom From Religion Foundation and a local associate, complainant Douglas Marshall.  Marshall wants to place his own sign next to the Nativity to balance the display.

City Mayor Jim Fouts appears to have a clear understanding of the issue at hand, though.  In response to last year’s letter to Fouts, in which Marshall also objected to the Nativity, the mayor stated that the city was not at all endorsing any religion; on the contrary, all religions were free to have their displays present:

Your objections focus on freedom of religion guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and that the nativity scene somehow was a violation of that constitutional right because [it] favors one religion over another. I vehemently disagree with your objection[.]  The city of Warren in no way whatsoever shows any favoritism to any religion. All religions are welcome to celebrate their religious seasons with a display in city hall[.]

Indeed, the 1st Amendment says this about the government’s role vis-à-vis religion:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof

Eliding the reference to Congress, notice carefully that the clause discusses religion, and only religion; it makes no mention of atheism.  By Marshall’s own statement (see below), his view, and by extension atheism generally, is not a religion, and so his complaint is outside the scope of the Constitution: he has no constitutionally protected freedom of religion right to present his atheism in the public square (he certainly does have a freedom of speech right to do so, but this he seems not to assert).

This is, to some extent though, a sophistry.  Readers of my blog know that I’m as in favor of the free competition of ideas as I am of the free competition of a market place.  This is the sign that Marshall wishes to place next to the Nativity:

At this season of the Winter Solstice, let reason prevail.  There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell.  There is only our natural world.  Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.

Hmm….

Let him put up his sign.  Let the free competition of ideas play out.  The good people of Warren will see the right of this.

Politics and Racism

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There has been some press in the last few days (actually, in the last few years) about the role of racism in political criticism.  I want to look at the record, in this non-scientific review, and see whether there’s anything to that press.

This is Presidential Candidate Obama’s view from the campaign trail:

They’re going to try to make you afraid. They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. They’re gonna say, “You know what, he’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?”

Here’s President Jimmy Carter’s view, from a 2009 interview:

I think an overwhelming portion of the intentionally demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man. That he’s African-American.

Here’s Keith Olbermann, from his 28 January 2010 “Worst Persons” segment of his Countdown show, describing various commentators that had remarked on President Obama’s State of the Union speech:

…our winners, these guys, assessing not the speech but the president himself.  Eric Erickson, “cocky”…. John Hood, “flippant” and “arrogant.” Glenn Beck, “like a punk.”

…the racist white guys revert to euphemisms and code words and among the code words that they think they’re getting away with are “cocky, flippant, punk, and especially arrogant.”

There’s this from an August 2011 interview with Congresswoman Frederica Wilson (D, FL)”

TAMRON HALL: Let me get your response to David Axelrod saying the jobless issue, the unemployment issue, is not exclusive to one community.
FREDERICA WILSON: Well, it sounds good, but it is exclusive to one community….  Well, when you look at African-American males, 40% of them are unemployed, those under 30 years of age.  And I understand exactly that the entire nation must be involved in this recovery, but the black community is experiencing a great recession.  That’s what we’re experiencing.  And all of the growth in the past 30 years, we see it slipping away.  From home ownership, the middle class: it’s slipping away from our hands.  And it has a lot to do with a lot of issues: racism….

And this from our Attorney General, Eric Holder, in an interview from last weekend:

Mr. Holder said he believed that a few [of his “more extreme” critics] were motivated by animus against Mr. Obama and that he served as a stand-in for him.  “This is a way to get at the president because of the way I can be identified with him,” he said, “both due to the nature of our relationship and, you know, the fact that we’re both African-American.”

To which, Congressman Joe (R, IL) Walsh points out that Obama’s continued silence in the face of Holder’s…remarks…demonstrates that the president shares in the blame for the attorney general’s choice of words.

What’s interesting is who it is that’s hollering “racism” and what the hollerers are doing about the actual issues before them.  Besides hollering “racism,” I mean.

Hypocrisy

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For some time, President Obama has been demanding that the payroll tax cut, due to expire at the end of this year, be extended for another year—the whole year, together with a blanket extension of the unemployment subsidy.  Leaving aside the wisdom of defunding Social Security as a means of providing a tax cut, or of paying the unemployed for not working, let’s explore what’s happened with Obama’s demand.

Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have refused to pay for a one-year payroll tax cut and the unemployment subsidy extension with any means that doesn’t include a parallel tax increase elsewhere, as they demand a continuation of their class war programs.  Failing to get agreement for that for a complete year’s extension, the Senate passed a two month extension of the tax cut and subsidy—with, I’m embarrassed to say, the complicity of Senate RINOs who lack the character or courage required to fight this class war.  Certainly, at the end of those two months, the Progressive demand for tax increases on Americans of whom they disapprove will resume, even more loudly.

The House had passed, some time prior, a bill that would have extended the payroll tax cut for the entire year, extended the unemployment subsidy on a gradually decreasing schedule, and paid for all of it without tax increases anywhere else, but with spending cuts only.

When the Senate passed their two-month bill, they ran for the exits to start their precious month-long vacation, their personal welfare being more important to these Senators than the welfare of us Americans.  On the way out the door, they ordered the House to pass the Senate bill with no further argument.

The House rejected the Senate’s failure and voted, instead, to send the two bills to a House-Senate conference committee to resolve the differences, as is the normal way of doing business in the Congress.  “Let’s get this done today,” House Speaker John Boehner told Obama in an effort to enlist the President’s help to get the bill which Obama has been demanding passed.  However.

Reid is actively refusing to negotiate.  He’s actively refusing to bring the Senate back—or to send any Senators back to take part in the conference committee.  He demands that his two-month bill be passed by the House as a precondition to any negotiations.  And he’s castigated those evil Republicans for holding out for Obama’s year-long extension.

Obama is actively refusing to negotiate on the passage of his own bill.  He says:

Now let’s be clear.  The bipartisan compromise that was reached on Saturday is the only viable way to prevent a tax hike on January 1. The only one.

So, Obama, who has been demanding a year-long extension of the payroll tax cut for Americans, doesn’t really mean it.  The only bill he wants is his pet Harry Reid’s two-month extension.  And an opportunity to fight again for divisive tax increases on Americans whom he doesn’t like.