Tag Archives: ethics

Culture and Badminton

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The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that four(!) doubles teams of badminton players were thrown out of the Olympics for deliberately attempting to throw their first-round round robin matches in order to gain a better seeding in the next, elimination round.

Cheating in the Olympics—or in any sport or any sport’s tournament—isn’t new, and it’s no less reprehensible for that.  But what are the players saying about this?  Many—most?—favor the disqualifications.  But the People’s Republic of China’s Lin Dan, one of their top male badminton players, said he didn’t think the players were at fault, saying the sporting body

should have thought ahead and seen that this kind of situation might happen and thought what they could have done to avoid this situation.

What kind of culture teaches its people that it’s OK to cheat unless some external authority tells them not to?  What kind of culture teaches that if an individual fails of his honor, it’s not his fault—it’s some external authority’s fault?  What kind of culture takes away individual responsibility, individual honor, and usurps them to some external authority to see to?

The Bust Lies Busted

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Recall President Obama, through his Communications Director, Dan Pfeiffer, vehemently denying that he had returned the bust of Winston Churchill that had been in his (nee President Bush the Younger’s) Oval Office setup.  ObamaPfeiffer responded to a Charles Krauthammer column last week that mentioned the return in passing by accusing Krauthammer of lying and doing so with a lie of his own.

[N]ormally we wouldn’t address a rumor that’s so patently false, but just this morning the Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer repeated this ridiculous claim in his column.  He said President Obama “started his Presidency by returning to the British Embassy the bust of Winston Churchill that had graced the Oval Office.”

This is 100% false.  The bust still in the White House.  In the Residence.  Outside the Treaty Room.

When the facts came out, and…Pfeiffer’s…lie was exposed, he attempted to backtrack and emailed Krauthammer this:

Charles,

I take your criticism seriously and you are correct that you are owed an apology.  There was clearly an internal confusion about the two busts and there was no intention to deceive.  I clearly overshot the runway in my post.  The point I was trying to make – under the belief that the Bust in the residence was the one previously in the Oval Office– was that this oft repeated talking point about the bust being a symbol of President Obama’s failure to appreciate the special relationship is false.   The bust that was returned was returned as a matter of course with all the other artwork that had been loaned to President Bush for display in his Oval Office and not something that President Obama or his Administration chose to do.  I still think this is an important point and one I wish I had communicated better.

A better understanding of the facts on my part and a couple of deep breaths at the outset would have prevented this situation.  Having said all that, barring a miracle comeback from the Phillies I would like to see the Nats win a world series even if it comes after my apology

Thanks,

Dan Pfeiffer

He got one thing right: Krauthammer is “owed an apology.”  My question is this: when will one be made?  This email plainly isn’t it.  The White House called Krauthammer a liar and backed up that scurrility with a lie of its own.

This email acknowledges an apology being due.  It makes an unsubstantiated claim of intent.  But the rest of this is just a string of “clarifications” and changes of subject.  There’s not a single word of apology.  Not even an expression of regret for his error.

Separately, I do sympathize with the Nationals, who apparently are destined never to win a World Series.

Finally, I should point out that Krauthammer has accepted the apology.

Well, I must say it was a gracious apology.  I was stunned.  I didn’t expect it to happen.  I actually wrote in my column that I thought the Nationals would win the World Series before I’d see an apology.  So, now I suppose the Nationals are going to win the World Series.  But it was a gracious apology.  They are still clinging to a tiny point on this but the argument is over.  I appreciate that the correction and retraction.

If the victim is happy, then the argument is concluded.  Except for the Nationals’ future.

Iran Warns Arab States Over Syria

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With apologies to The Wall Street Journal, from whose article I took the title of my post.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi warned Sunni-led Arab states and Turkey, who are supporting Syria’s opposition in its battle with Tehran’s ally President Bashar al-Assad, that their insistence on toppling the Syrian regime will destabilize their own countries and the entire region.

“If they continue moving in the wrong direction then let them rest assured that the consequences of this will affect them too,” said Mr. Salehi in a joint news conference with his Syrian counterpart, Walid Moallem, who was visiting Tehran Sunday.

And this is the nation our administration is so timid with regarding its nuclear weapons program.

But that’s OK—if that misunderstood al-Assad or those bad Iranians continue to misbehave, we’ll talk even more, and we’ll shake our fingers especially firmly at…someone.

Broadening Attacks on Vote Sanctity

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Now President Obama is having his DoJ attack Pennsylvania’s Voter ID law.

The letter from DoJ to Pennsylvania’s Secretary of the Commonwealth can be viewed here.  Not only is Obama objecting to protecting the sanctity of a legitimate vote by trying to block efforts at screening “voters” who are ineligible, in this letter he’s also demanding a potful of wholly irrelevant personally identifying information on voters and potential “voters.”  Here’s a sample from his DoJ’s letter:

  • The current complete Pennsylvania voter registration list, including each registered voter’s full name, address, date of birth, identifying numbers (including driver license, social security, or other numbers), voter history, and race.
  • The current complete Pennsylvania driver license and personal identification card list, including each individual’s full name, address, date of birth, identifying numbers (including driver license, social security, or other numbers), and race.

There are a total of 16 different items of information being demanded, including the legitimate request for clarification of the apparent disconnect between the governor’s statement that 99% of eligible voters already have acceptable ID, and the commonwealth secretary’s statement that 758,000 registered voters lack acceptable ID.  However, this question’s legitimacy only exists on the basis of a legitimate concern for voter eligibility and has nothing to do with any voter ID requirement itself.  Since the administration’s attack on the Pennsylvania law has no legitimacy, the question about the disconnect is irrelevant.

Moreover, a voter’s voting history is wholly irrelevant to such an inquiry: what other fishing expedition is Obama’s DoJ conducting, sub rosa?  Nor is the individual’s address or age relevant.  Nor is the voter’s race, except that this administration intends to play, again, its race card.  In fact, the prior question that must be answered is whether legitimate voters are being removed from the voter registration lists in any significant number.  Only then can a question of racial motivation come into play.  (Disparate impact has no legitimate role, here, only motive.)  Since DoJ hasn’t established that legitimate voters are being removed in Pennsylvania, the entire investigation is bogus.

Finally, the Supreme Court already has upheld a substantially identical Voter ID law passed by Indiana.

Why is Obama running this, then?  So he can add names and addresses to his campaign and fund-dunning mailing lists?  So he can target those who might vote or support the wrong candidate?

You Didn’t Build That

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Now President Obama has an ad out in which he tries to walk away from his earlier comments that business owners—especially small business owners—didn’t build their businesses, that they owed government for their success.

Now he’s insisting that what he was talking about was Big Government “investing” in education and training, roads and bridges, research and technology.  And more:

Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive.

No.  Today’s successful schools are charter and other schools to which parents send their children by choice.  These schools are run by private businesses; they’re not government organs, as today’s public schools are.

Private enterprises built the roads and bridges; Big Government didn’t send in the Seabees or the Army Corps of Engineers to build our transportation network, or to maintain it, except in the direst of localized emergencies, like post-Katrina.  Even then, though, the government’s constructors have been adjuncts to the private construction companies.  It’s true that Big Government funded significant portions of those build-out and maintenance projects, but the Government’s “investment” was heavily inflated: the privately run construction companies were—and are—required to pay “prevailing” union wage rates; the companies are not allowed to bid competitively.

It was Xerox that built the Internet, for instance, not Government, as Obama claims, and Xerox built it so they could share internal data on internal computer networks more easily, not “so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.”

And that “unbelievable American system that we have?”  That’s our free market economy that private individuals, singly and in groups, built up since our inception as a nation.  Big Government had no role in that.  Little Government had the important role of staying out of the way of our private, free enterprise, only enforcing laws against cheating and the like.

As an aside, President Obama had a closing refrain in his “You Didn’t Build That” speech: Americans often work together to do things they can’t do, or do as efficiently, alone.  But who was he talking about in this “working together” of his?  Not Americans working together on their own initiative—forming companies or charitable organizations, for instance—oh, no.  Obama was talking about Big Government as the “together,” a Government that does things for us.  Not at all anything about Americans working together without government…help.