Category Archives: morality

A Progressive-Democrat’s Morality

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The Arizona House of Representatives has passed and sent along to the Senate a bill that would require the State’s Board of Investment to divest from all companies that

[d]onate to or invest in organizations that facilitate, promote or advocate for the inclusion of, or the referral of students to, sexually explicit material in kindergarten programs or any of the 1st – 12th grades.

The measure was passed on party lines alone.

Here’s the Progressive-Democrat State Representative Morgan Abraham on why he voted against the measure:

This is about finance, and this is a terrible, terrible idea for our retirement system. Some people I’ve talked to think this bill would allow our retirement system to divest from 75% of the S&P 500.
… We should not be forcing our retired teachers, our retired police officers, whoever is involved with this public retirement system to not have the ability to have a diversified portfolio, regardless of the values you have on the underlying issue.

Diversified portfolio. Regardless of the values [we] might have…. Think about that. This Progressive-Democrat thinks it entirely morally acceptable to have a diversified portfolio of investments that includes child pornography.

This Progressive-Democrat thinks it entirely morally acceptable to build retirement funds, in no small measure, through the sexual abuse of our children.

 

Separately, the bill also would require divestiture from all companies that advocate abortion. From this, the bill as a whole is likely to fail on 1st Amendment grounds, regardless of how morally reprehensible abortion might be.

A Strategic Blunder

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Or not. In his Friday Wall Street Journal op-ed, Tunku Varadarajan cited the historian Robert Service as saying that two immense strategic blunders caused Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The first supposed blunder is illustrative of how far our…intellectuals…have deviated from reason and morality.

The first [immense strategic blunder] came on November 10, when the US and Ukraine signed a Charter on Strategic Partnership, which asserted America’s support for Kyiv’s right to pursue membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

No.

It’s never a blunder, large or small, to do a right thing, and acknowledging a sovereign nation’s right to pursue its own friendly, peaceful, or defensive ends always is a right thing. Beyond that, the right time to do a right thing always is right away.

If there was an immense strategic blunder, it was President Joe Biden’s (D) thinking he could virtue-signal with petty ink on a piece of paper and not actually have to back up those words with concrete support for Ukraine.

Full stop.

The West is Getting Serious

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Or so claims The Wall Street Journal‘s Gerard Baker. He spent 850 words touting the price Russian President Vladimir Putin will pay for his overrunning and destruction of Ukraine. Baker closed his paeon to Western earnestness with these two paragraphs:

But the price for him—crippling economic sanctions, Europe and North America in a rare show of unity, the strengthening of NATO, and the weakening of the pro-Russian forces in the West—will be high.
If we draw the right lesson, the biggest price he may pay is a renewed appreciation in the West of what our civilization has achieved—and a renewed determination to defend and nourish it.

And yet, having paid that price, Putin still will have Ukraine. How serious is the West, really, if it’s seriously considering accepting the vig it’s charging Putin for his conquering Ukraine, and calling the exchange a job well done?

How serious is the West in defending itself, really, if it continues to be satisfied with merely charging a price for Russian—and other tyrannies’—encroachment?

His Own Brothers and Sisters

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Russian President Vladimir Putin now seems intent on simply killing them. Putin’s clearly stated rationale for invading Ukraine is that Ukrainians and Russians are the same people and the area of Ukraine should be part of Russia.

Now, since his attempt at blitzing Ukraine and overrunning that nation has stalled, Putin has changed tactics.

Russian forces bombarded the center of the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv and warned of further strikes against the capital, Kyiv, as Moscow, frustrated in its plans for a quick victory, switched to a new strategy of pummeling civilian areas in an attempt to demoralize Ukrainian resistance.

And

On Monday, Russian forces unleashed a barrage of multiple-launch rocket fire against residential neighborhoods in Kharkiv, killing at least 10 civilians, including three children and their parents who were incinerated in a car struck by a Russian projectile, and injuring at least 40, according to Kharkiv officials.

Starvation or total destruction seems to be the purpose of the 40-mile long train of Russian soldiers and weapons moving to encircle Kyiv, also.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has the right of it:

A missile targeting the central square of a city [Kharkiv, for one] is open, undisguised terrorism[.] It’s terrorism that aims to break us, to break our resistance.

Putin’s own brothers and sisters, his own nieces and nephews.

Another Judge Gets One Right

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Recall that the Fairfax County School Board, last year, changed the admissions policy for its elite Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology from one of straight merit to one of discrimination to favor some racially preferred children and to disfavor some racially…not preferred…children. This racist policy was objected to in court by a broad coalition of average American residents of the county. In US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Judge Claude Hilton waved the racism flag and struck the racial preferences scheme.

Hilton ruled in part [citations omitted, emphasis added],

The Board’s main problem is its focus on the goal to have TJ [Thomas Jefferson] reflect the demographics of the surrounding area, described primarily in racial terms. Far from a compelling interest, racial balancing for its own sake is “patently unconstitutional.” The Board cannot transform racial balancing into a compelling interest “simply by relabeling it ‘racial diversity.'” The school districts in Parents Involved tried various verbal formulations to deflect from their intent to racially balance schools through race-based transfers. The Board here did not even bother with such “verbal formulations.” Board members and high-level FCPS [Fairfax County Public Schools] actors did not disguise their desire for TJ to represent the racial demographics…. Whether accomplished overtly or via proxies, racial balancing is not a compelling interest.

And

…steps…could have been implemented before the Board defaulted to a system that treats applicants unequally in hopes of engineering a particular racial outcome.

And

The proper remedy for a legal provision enacted with discriminatory intent is invalidation.

We may be making progress toward correcting the blatantly racist policies of the Left.

The ruling can be read here.