Category Archives: morality

Gimme, Gimme, Gimme

Posted on by
Reply

That’s what French unions are demanding with their strikes against French President Emmanuel Macron’s and French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe’s plans to streamline, standardize, and otherwise reduce the cost to French taxpayers of France’s byzantine pension system.

Never mind that the pension system consists of 42 different pension plans or that French civil servants insist that they are, somehow, special and so should have special perquisites unavailable to petty private sector workers.

Trains, subways, and buses were still severely curtailed on Friday, and hundreds of domestic and regional flights were canceled. There were no demonstrations on Friday, but unions have warned the strike could last days and become one of the biggest in France in over two decades.

And

Civil servants, in particular, fear they may lose advantages they have over private-sector employees.

To hell with their fellow citizens attempting to get to and from their own work, to and from their own necessary errands, to and from their own entertainments.  The unions want theirs, and no one else matters.

All the government wants to do is to

extend the number of years needed to collect a full pension and create a universal plan that would do away with the so-called special regimes enjoyed by French civil servants, including rail workers.

Currently, full retirement occurs after 43 years of work or age 62; the latter being the youngest full-retirement age in the OECD.

“Screw you,” say the unions, exemplified by Catherine Perret, Confederal Secretary of the CGT trade union:

We won’t let go[.]

This is the naked, if strictly legal, extortion of union strikes made national.  The US has Taft-Hartley, in which the government can order the end to a strike for a significant period during which serious negotiations could occur.  France, not so much; its unions are amok.

YGTBSM

Posted on by
Reply

Congressman Al Green (D, TX) is upset that, of all of the law professor witnesses testifying at Wednesday’s Jerry Nadler-run (D, NY) Judiciary Committee impeachment hearing, not one of them was “a person of color.” In his upset, he actually said this on the House floor before the Committee began its round of the Progressive-Democrats’ inquisition:

It hurts my heart, Mr Speaker, to see the Judiciary Committee hearing experts on the topic of impeachment—one of the seminal issues of this Congress—hearing experts…and not one person of color among the experts.
What subliminal message are we sending to the world when we have experts but not one person of color? Are we saying that there are no people of color who are experts on this topic of impeachment?

Because, for this man, the most important characteristic, the defining characteristic of anyone is the color of his skin.  What subliminal message are we sending to the world when we insist we cannot have a collection of experts unless some of them are “persons of color?”

Apparently Green does not believe in Martin Luther King’s dream: that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

The racism is strong and stench-ridden in this Congressman.

Head in the Sand?

Posted on by
Reply

Volkswagen is building cars in Xinjiang, People’s Republic of China.  You know Xinjiang, the “semi-autonomous” region of the PRC that’s home to tens millions of Muslims and to President Xi Jinping’s “reeducation” camps, Mao-ist internment camps for millions of those Muslims, a people of whom Xi disapproves.

VW thinks all of that is jake.

Speaking with DW on Tuesday, the company said its 2012 decision to open the Urumqi facility was “based purely on economics.” VW says it expects “further economic growth in the region over the coming years.”

Sure. Because economics isn’t just important (such considerations are), it’s all that matters (because principles, apparently, are for academics and parlor small talk).  And: economic growth in the region for whom?  The camp inmates?  Volkswagen?

Never mind the likelihood that Volkswagen’s facility uses forced labor.

We do not assume any of our employees are forced laborers.

Well, alrighty, then. A forced labor force is assumed away, so it doesn’t exist.  It’s all good.

Nuclear Disarmament

Posted on by
Reply

Pope Francis wants it—completely, totally, for any purpose, even deterrence (assuming, for now, that this can be done verifiably and verifiably maintained).  The Pope thinks an arms race involving nuclear weapons adds to the danger of their existence, never minding the race, at least on the US’ part, is for self-defense and the defense of our friends and allies—the very purpose of NATO stationing nuclear weapons in Europe, for instance.

The Pope, though, avoided addressing how a non-nuclear nation with a small conventional military establishment would defend itself against an aggressively acquisitive non-nuclear nation with a large military establishment.  Like, say, the Soviet Union against the nations of Europe, individually or collectively. Or like, perhaps, the People’s Republic of China against the Republic of Korea or Japan—or us.

He appears unconcerned that this might lead to a conventional arms race and conventional military building-up race, a race whose deterrence exists only in the ability to conduct a follow-on mobilization race to the frontier—sort of like what turned out to be the first steps of European wars in the latter half of the 19th century and of two global wars in the first half of the 20th.

Of course, in the case of the PRC, the Pope already has abjectly surrendered control of the Catholic Church and of Catholicism—the Universal Church and universal religion—to the PRC government inside the PRC.

Maybe he expects the rest of us to meekly surrender politically, like he has done religiously.

No, I’m not going to turn the other cheek to conquerors and slavers. Not even St Augustine suggested that, for all that he decried preemption.

Rule of Law and Roe

Posted on by
Reply

There’s a Letter to the Editor in a recent Wall Street Journal that “explains” why his DAGA organization is against Pro-Life Attorneys General.  The man’s letter centers on the proposition that

Roe v Wade is settled law.

Wow. The hysteria is strong in this one. Of course, no law is “settled.” Not even our Constitution, in which Sean Rankin, the letter-writer, so piously cloaked himself, is settled; that’s clear in and from the existence of Article V and all those Amendments.

Regarding the relationship between AGs and the rule of law—absolutely, upholding the rule of law is the core of their role. Notice that, though: their role, their duty, is to uphold the rule of law, not blindly uphold any particular law—because no particular law is settled.  With respect to the present case, a subset of the rule of law is supporting the universal and inalienable law of the right to life of babies.

What Rankin also so carefully ignored is that Roe was a technologically oriented ruling, based entirely on the viability of the fetus outside the womb. Roe suggested, those decades ago, that the threshold for viability was the start of the third trimester. Medical technology advances have pushed that threshold sharply earlier in pregnancy. Defending additional restrictions on abortion, protecting babies’ lives, easily can be done from within Roe.

Beyond that, upholding the rule of law also includes challenging any particular law when facts come to light that alter, if not outright obviate, the conditions under which that law was written.  That includes challenging Roe.

Pro-Life AGs do far more for upholding rule of law than does any “settled law” AG; the latter obliviously puts laws above the rule of law.