Tag Archives: ethics

Because Shut Up

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A surgeon in Minnesota—and actual, licensed doctor, one who practices and not a government bureaucrat who happens to have a medical degree—spoke in favor of individual choice and especially of parental choice regarding their children on the matter of Wuhan Virus restrictions.

He did so publicly, too. Worse, he said it to a school board, one of those fonts of Know Better wisdom.

Dr Jeffrey Horak, a surgeon in Minnesota, told the Fergus Falls school board on October 11 that parents should make the decision about whether or not their children wear masks.

And he was fired for being so impudent. After all, the received wisdom from those bureaucrats who got a medical degree some while back held otherwise and that wisdom must be accepted by the unwashed masses, including those ignorant parents.

The Lake Region Healthcare hospital, his ex-employer, insisted he was fired because his views were no longer congruent with the hospital’s.

In other words, because shut up.

The hospital managers expounded on that. From their spokesman:

To be clear, this was a decision that was made by Dr Horak’s peers who serve on the Medical Group Board, not by Lake Region Healthcare[.]

Finger-pointing and blame-shifting regarding who did the canceling.

In this fashion, too, because shut up.

Facebook Employees and Virtue-Signaling

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Here are a couple of examples, from a batch of leaked Facebook internal emails.

Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer asked employees to “hang in there” as the company figured out its response. “We have been ‘hanging in there’ for years,” one person replied. “We must demand more action from our leaders. At this point, faith alone is not sufficient.” [Emphasis added]

And

“All due respect, but haven’t we had enough time to figure out how to manage discourse without enabling violence?” another staffer responded. “We’ve been fueling this fire for a long time and we shouldn’t be surprised it’s now out of control.”

And

“I’m tired of platitudes; I want action items,” another staffer wrote.

And

[Y]et another staffer wrote[,] “History will not judge us kindly.”

And yet, none of these Precious Ones, along with so many of their cronies, cared enough about these failures and their claimed inability to do anything about them to resign rather than continue to go along with them.

All of these Precious Ones, along with so many of their cronies, plainly care more about their paychecks than they do about their integrity or their morality.

As the New York Post put it in a related piece summarizing The Atlantic article,

Mark Zuckerberg’s obsession with growth has overridden ethical concerns and allowed hate speech and incitements to violence to spread unchecked….

That’s Facebook, from top to bottom, for all the…whining: management’s demand for growth above ethics and employees’ demand for paychecks above ethics.

Restoring Police Funding

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…in Progressive-Democrat-run cities. But I repeat myself. There aren’t any Republican/Conservative-run cities that have defunded, or even tried to defund, their police departments.

Some of those Progressive-Democrat jurisdictions are seemingly starting to refund their police departments.

In Texas, the Democrat-led Austin City Council voted last August to cut funding for the Austin Police Department by $150 million, slashing a range of services that one year later have proven to be sorely missed. Last month, the department announced it was no longer responding to non-life-threatening emergency 911 calls, and its homicide rate spiked.

But not unless forced:

In response, a citizen-led movement collected enough signatures for a petition that resulted in adding a November ballot measure to restore police funding.

Baltimore is another being forced to refund and expand:

Maryland Republican Governor Larry Hogan (R) announced the state was investing $150 million in a “re-fund the police” initiative. …
“Our $150 million ‘re-fund the police’ initiative will provide a desperately needed shot in the arm to our state and local police agencies and their critical efforts to stop crime,” Hogan said.
…
The city of Baltimore is a poster child for the basic failure to stop lawlessness. There’s a prosecutor who refuses to prosecute crime.

And this foolishness in Seattle:

[T]the Downtown Seattle Association called on city leadership to use federal COVID relief money to subsidize private security costs….

Because there aren’t enough cops left on the force.

New York City and Los Angeles are trying pay raises to stem the outflow of officers from their departments and to recruit replacements.

Burlington, VT’s, “Democratic/progressive-led city council”

cut the police budget and ordered a 30% reduction in the number of uniformed officers.

Now the city is trying $10,000 bonuses just to keep existing officers from walking and $15,000 signing bonuses for new hires. And Burlington suburbs

South Burlington is offering a $7,000 sign-on bonus to fully certified officers, Berlin a $4,000 bonus to senior officers, and St. Albans a $10,000 bonus[.]

Frankly, I can’t think of any reason why anyone would want to go to work, or go back to work, in any of these Progressive-Democrat-run cities, no matter the level of claimed “refunding.” Especially since in at least some of those jurisdictions, the refunding has to be forced into their unwilling budgets.

At least not until the incumbents in those city governments have been replaced 100%. Those worthies already have demonstrated they cannot be trusted actually to support police or policing.

“Take the American People for Fools”

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That’s what Congressman Jodey Arrington (R, TX) says the Biden-Harris administration and their Progressive-Democratic Party syndicate are doing to us average Americans with their claims that their $3.5 trillion reconciliation package won’t cost us anything.

It’s actually more like $5 trillion, Maria, and their gamesmanship and their sleight of hand will be to try to truncate the duration of these policies. But no matter how short the duration the policies are, they will be extended, they will be made permanent, and they will be expanded like every other mandatory spending and entitlement program that has ever showed up on the balance sheet of our government.

But it’s not only Biden-Harris and their syndicate who are taking us for fools.

They will be extended. They will be extended only because politicians—Republicans and alleged Conservatives, as well as Progressive-Democrats—will actively vote to extend them, and Presidents—Republican and alleged Conservative, as well as Progressive-Democrat—will sign those extensions into law.

Certainly, it’s hard to cancel, or to expire, such policies. Certainly, it’s hard to stop trading welfare payments—however unneeded they are in truth, however damaging to our free market economy, and so to our individual liberties and responsibilities, they might be. It only gets harder, though, the longer such unneeded programs are allowed to exist.

Those who vote for extension, permanence, expansion while proclaiming the damages such programs do are choosing their own, their personal, political fortunes over what they know to be their duty to their constituents and to our nation.

It’s often hard to do one’s duty. Hard, though, means possible. And duty is a necessity, not a nice to have.

Those who, like Arrington, claim to be against such programs yet keep extending them are the ones who take us for the biggest fools. Just like they do with every other mandatory spending and entitlement program that has ever showed up.

An EU Attack on National Sovereignty

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Poland’s Prime Minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, is objecting to the European Union’s claims to overriding authority over its independent constituent nations, Poland in particular. In an open letter to the EU’s parliament, then in debate during the next parliament session, he said

…EU mission creep…would lead to a “centrally managed organism, governed by institutions deprived of democratic control.”

And then,

EU competencies have clear boundaries, we must not remain silent when those boundaries are breached. So we are saying yes to European universalism, but we say no to European centralism.”

Which argument for the sovereignty of the Union’s constituent nations was answered dismissively by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen:

Your arguments are not getting better. You’re just escaping the debate[.]

She then laid out three options by which the EU would seek to compel Poland’s acceptance of EU suzerainty:

  • first: a so-called infringement, where the European Commission legally challenges the Polish court’s judgment, which could lead to fines
  • second: a conditionality mechanism and other financial tools whereby EU funds would be withheld from Poland
  • third: application of Article 7 of the EU’s treaties. Under this, rights of member states—including the right to vote on EU decisions—can be suspended because they have breached core values of the bloc

Despite this,

Poland’s ruling nationalist Law and Justice party says it has no plans for a “Polexit[.]”

Maybe the party and the citizens should begin thinking about it.