Tag Archives: ethics

A Method of Identifying Acceptable Views

Posted on by
Reply

The Wall Street Journal‘s Thursday Notable & Quotable contains an excerpt from a Times Literary Supplement piece in which the piece’s writer recounted a classroom incident in which he had touted a free market society and the instructor had written on his paper, “Are you Margaret Thatcher?” and left the paper ungraded. The classroom boy was mortified.

[T]he comparison shocked me into a more thoughtful politics and provided an early lesson: if you don’t like the fact that you share a view with someone objectionable, consider revising that view.

And

That doesn’t mean that every person with [fill in that disagreeable person’s identity] views endorses those links, but some soul-searching is surely called for.

Of course. It isn’t the merits of the message that’s important; rather, it’s the merits of the person carrying that message.

This is what has passed for teaching our children for too many years.

“Ukraine Needs a Guarantee from NATO”

Posted on by
Reply

That’s the headline of Andrew Michta’s op-ed in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal. Michta is the George C Marshall European Center for Security Studies’ College of International and Security Studies Dean in Garmisch, Germany, so he would seem to speak with some knowledge.

His piece objected to the EU’s emphasis on fast-tracking (to the extent it really is) Ukraine’s membership in that body at the expense of guaranteeing Ukraine’s security by bringing it into NATO’s defense perimeter if not actually into NATO (which Michta favors).

He’s ignoring reality here, though, and so to borrow a term from a cable advertiser, Nonsense.

Guarantees of Ukraine’s security are as worthless today as they were with the Budapest Memoranda and the Minsk Protocols.

What Ukraine needs is stepped up transfers of serious weapons, ammunition, and supply—including air- and missile-defense systems, armor, and increased supply of HIMARS, including the full-range missiles that nation currently is denied.

Full stop.

EU membership and even NATO “security guarantees” can follow only on Ukraine’s successful defeat of the barbarian’s invasion and the permanent ejection of the barbarian from that nation. Absent that, there will be no nation to bring toward the West; it will have been utterly destroyed by the barbarian, which is the avowed goal of the Vladimir Putin.

Snowflakes

Posted on by
Reply

A New York University chemistry professor—at NYU after four decades at Princeton—has been fired because his students, many of them doctor wannabes, circulated a petition complaining about how hard his class was. Their petition read in pertinent part,

We are very concerned about our scores, and find that they are not an accurate reflection of the time and effort put into this class….

Neither should grades be a reflection of the time and effort; they should be a reflection of actual performance and learning. Imagine a patient whose illness was prolonged, or who was maimed, by a botched treatment being told “So sad, but I tried really hard.” Or the survivors of a patient who died from that botched treatment being told, “Too bad, but I put in a lot of time on your son.”

The seemingly unjustified firing because some precious snowflakes didn’t want to work is not the only problem here, though. The other problem is NYU itself.

I wouldn’t hire anyone who had New York University on his resume. NYU appears unconcerned that its graduates cannot think critically, or that its graduates are afraid of the hard work the real world contains, even as it appears to take student whining seriously. NYU graduates would seem to be a waste of any enterprise’s payroll.

Based on What Evidence?

Posted on by
Reply

Acting Archivist of the United States Debra Steidel Wall claims the National Archives hasn’t received all the presidential records that were supposed to be turned over at the end of the Trump administration. She wrote this to House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D, NY) in all seriousness:

While there is no easy way to establish absolute accountability, we do know that we do not have custody of everything we should[.]

And

Specifically, Mr. Ferriero informed you in his February 18, 2022, letter that NARA [National Archives & Records Administration] has identified that some White House staff conducted official business using non-official electronic messaging accounts that were not copied or forwarded into their official electronic messaging accounts, as required by section 2209 of the PRA [Presidential Records Act]. NARA has been able to obtain such records from a number of former officials and will continue to pursue the return of similar types of Presidential records from former officials.

Since Wall has succeeded in tracking down “missing” records of messaging accounts by tracking down the messages’ recipients, on what basis does she claim there are further such accounts—or is she simply…assuming?

In the end, if she doesn’t know, by her own statement, how does she know? Or is Wall just another Party acolyte making politically convenient allegations without any substantiation at all?

Wall’s letter can be read here.

Well, Of Course

Posted on by
Reply

Given the vasty numbers of mail-in ballots expected in the Progressive-Democratic Party stronghold of Illinois, State officials are predicting delays of as much as two-weeks post-election before results from the current mid-terms will be known.

The bulk of these mail-ins will be coming from Chicago and Cook County—Party fortresses within that stronghold.

Of course it’ll take those two weeks to get the mail-ins counted. Party will need the time to get the numbers from downstate (i.e., from outside Cook County) and so the numbers from Cook County and Chicago that are needed, and so how those mail-in ballots should be counted.

Party’s machine politics in action.