Tag Archives: ethics

Personal Responsibility

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Business executives lack it. Or at least those who sent a letter to members of the Senate demanding action on gun control.

The letter asks senators to pass legislation requiring background checks on gun sales and said failing to take action on the issue is unacceptable.

With no trace of irony, the letter insists

We are writing to you because we have a responsibility and obligation to stand up for the safety of our employees, customers and all Americans in the communities we serve across the country[.]

So you have to satisfy our responsibility for us.

Cue Bill the Cat.

There’s nothing stopping these executives from barring firearms from their places of business on their own responsibility. Federal—and State—laws only authorize individual carry; they do not mandate it, nor do they prevent private businesses from saying, “not in our house.”

However, it’s easier for some to demand Government do something in their name than it is for those some to act on their own responsibility.

“Impartiality Is the Source of a Newspaper’s Credibility”

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That’s the headline of Walter Hussman’s piece in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal.  Impartiality certainly is a contributor, but the Critical Item for a newspaper’s credibility—for any journalistic entity—is integrity.

To set themselves on the path back to honesty, and so to believability—not just credibility—members of the journalism industry must address these items:

  1. identify at least some of their sources
  2. if an anonymous source refuses to be identified, show two things

-the source actually exists
-why the source should be believed

  1. if the anonymous source is a whistleblower, show that the source has exhausted all internal whistleblowing channels before deciding to leak

4. most importantly, journalism used to have a standard that required two on-the-record sources to corroborate the claims of anonymous sources. An editor-in-chief must address the following:

-why his news outlet has chosen to walk away from that standard of journalistic integrity
-explain the standard he currently uses in place of that one.

These questions have been asked before, and journalists continue studiously to duck them.  Interestingly, Hussman, as publisher of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, is among those ducking the questions.

None of this does anything for newspapers’ or other journalistic outlets’ credibility.  After all, merely impartial lying is still lying.

Distractions

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Recall the hoo-raw the NLMSM is raising because President Donald Trump, in a brief press opportunity, used a dated map of Hurricane Dorian’s path.  The map also had been modified with a hand-drawn additional line that forecast Dorian’s progress into lower Alabama.

Howard Kurtz, Fox News‘ journalism critic, was on the case Friday, and as he often does, he exaggerated some and he missed some.

The exaggeration:

Now there’s obviously a legitimate story here. Who wielded the now-infamous Sharpie?

You bet there is. For grocery store tabloids like National Enquirer, Globe, Star.

The miss:

…the constant back-and-forth over a black squiggle feels like a giant distraction.

Sadly, Kurtz should know better than this, being a maven of the industry, and all. The only ones distracted are he and his fellow pseudo-journalists who’ve made the conscious, deliberate editorial decision to obsess over this, to distract themselves with this non-story.

The rest of us have better things to do, and better focus with which to deal with them.

Brexit and Sovereignty

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This is amazing.  And an utter betrayal.

Senior MPs opposing a no-deal Brexit sought assurances from the EU that their bid for a three-month delay would be granted, it has emerged.
European leaders were sounded out before MPs, including the “rebel alliance,” passed a bill…forcing Boris Johnson to ask for an extension.

For the EU to participate in such scruffy deal would seem to be a naked interference in sovereign British domestic politics.

Except that….

On the one hand, this is those MPs selling out British sovereignty.

On the other, this is the European Union, by its ready participation in the sordid affair, telling the British citizens that their nation is not sovereign; it is subordinate to the European Union: Great Britain has no domestic politics that are beyond the reach of Brussels—which is to say Great Britain has no domestic politics of its own.

As Conservative MP and former minister David Jones has it:

Senior EU figures gave private assurances to British MPs…. This confirms the level of EU interference in our internal affairs and makes the need for Brexit all the more pressing.

This collaboration [sic] arguably invalidates the bill just passed. Or would in an honest government and court system, even one like the Brits’ where the courts can be overruled at the whim of a Parliament like today’s mendacious one.

Trust

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Our individual liberty—and liberties—depend on a number of things: sovereignty of us citizens over our government; understanding that our rights and duties are inherent in us as gifts from our Creator and not grants from that government; the tools with which to enforce those rights and duties—free speech and religion, keeping and bearing arms, among others.  And an ability to trust one another.

Laura Ingraham addressed this peripherally.

The Second Amendment be damned. You see liberals don’t really trust regular people. They prefer a system where a small set of elites in Washington make decisions for everybody else. Including on issues of self-defense.

And

Law abiding gun owners are invariably seen as suspicious. Their motives untrustworthy.

This is yet another example of the Left’s contempt for ordinary Americans.

This is yet another example of their projection: the people of the Left don’t trust themselves. Or each other.

This lack of trust is as much a threat to our nation’s commitment to individual liberty, personal responsibility, self-reliance as is the Left’s overt attacks on our right to keep and bear Arms and the rest of our Bill of Rights.