ethics

by

What’s Ethics Got to Do With It?

When we hear objections about the proposed punishment of Syria by targeted and limited bombing, we hear the litany of isolationism and the dangers of involvement in the Middle East. No one addresses the issue of whether the use of chemical weapons should be punished  or that unprecedented brutality should be opposed.  And we hear recriminations about the war in Iraq and how that has to be avoided at all costs.

You have to be pragmatic about war, and consequences matter, but is it possible that a circumscribed air attack on military targets is the ethical response to the brutal actions of the Assad regime in Syria? No one wants to address this, as if it were the last consideration of going to war. Or some want to make this proposed air strike equivalent to putting boots on the ground in Iraq.

Yes, consequences matter, but an ethical choice usually comes with risk, and the risks of action should be weighed against the risks of inaction. Risk by itself is not an argument sufficient to negate an ethical choice.

We wanted to be left alone prior to 9/11/2001, but then we found out there were  those who would not leave us alone.  We found out isolationism was a myth. So began the war on terrorism, which continues today. In Afghanistan we have tried to respond ethically by the counter-insurgency. We have tried to rehabilitate the political, educational and military institutions of Afghanistan, because we realized it was a breeding ground for our enemies.  History will judge how successful we have been.

But the lesson of this century has been that we are not safe as an isolated country, and we can not rehabilitate societies by our isolated effort.  We are both responsible and not responsible for the abuses beyond our borders, and we have to act and hold back from action with equal discretion.

The proposed attack on military targets in Syria is one such choice, and President Obama has proposed a plan that honors both intervention and restraint.  It is an ethical plan, not a politically expeditious plan, and that is what the opponents don’t seem to get.  They want reduce it to an “Obama-Plan” or “What’s-in-it-for-us?”  Plan. Even the Arab states are holding back, when they should be leading the charge against Assad. There’s not enough in it for them.

We are at a point in history  when nothing gets judged by its potential for good or evil.  We are all about consequences, even consequences we can’t foresee.  It is fine to see this proposed action as unethical, because of its potential for human carnage, but very few in opposition have taken that position.  They are all about preserving our own society and avoiding entanglements. I wish they had felt that way in 2001.

The ethics of opposing an absolute evil are at stake in Syria, and I wish the discussion would focus on that and not the p0litical agendas of opposing President Obama or the illusion of isolationism.  Refusing to get the point of the argument is to dodge the responsibility to act ethically.

by

Stifling Conscience

The firing of Rutgers’ basketball coach Mike Rice for his verbal and physical abuse of the players has overshadowed the university’s prior offense of firing the whistle blower Eric Murdock, who made the incriminating video of the abuse last summer.  It is questionable what is more egregious: the bullying of college athletes or the vindictive firing of the director of player personnel, without whom the abuse might have gone unchecked.

Perhaps there were extenuating circumstances that merited the firing of Murdock, but it usually turns out that whistle blowers have a tenacious and  independent streak that make them less than model employees.  Regardless of Mr. Murdock’s personnel record, the fact that his firing assisted the cover-up of Rice’s abuse of student athletes shows the depravity of college administrators when large sums of money are at stake.

The large sums of money would have resulted from Rutgers being invited to join the Big Ten, the nation’s most prestigious athletic conference. Murdock’s sacrifice on the altar of academic greed exposes a contempt for ethics and casts a dark shadow on public university administration.

The public university deserves the reputation of bringing first generation college students into the middle and upper-middle class through affordable tuition, financial aid, and flexible academic policies.  Arguably it is one of the most potent democratizing forces in the United States, and it has struggled in this millenium from depletion of state support.  It has done more with less better than many well-toned corporations.

But the pressure to compete with its peers and the temptation of the media gravy train may compromise the mission of the public university.  In Rutger’s case the seeds of corruption were already sown with the hiring of Tim Pernetti, a former TV executive with no athletic credentials, as the athletic administrator. In retrospect this looks like enlisting the fox to guard the chicken coop.

Clearly this fox did not have the psychological health of undergraduates among his priorities. Pernetti’s decision to keep the video from the university president or any public exposure and to fire the video-maker, Eric Murdock, shows his contempt for student athletes.  The ultimate firing of Coach Rice after the video went viral proves that the cover-up through the firing of Murdock was the only reason the coach was allowed to keep his job.

Greed in public education is reprehensible, but more appalling is the stifling of conscience.  We can understand the economic pressures that compromise the mission of the public university, but to deliberately suppress an ethical stand against such abuse shows a callous cynicism  that has no place in any university, public or otherwise.

The roles of the athletic director and the university president in the firing of Eric Murdock should be carefully scrutinized to determine what was intentionally stifled– the bad publicity or the voice of conscience.  It is too late to salvage reputation, but the right to speak against abuse on a college campus can still be defended.

by

Cheaters!

When I first read about gerrymandering in eleventh grade U.S. History, my sense of injustice was inflamed.  What could this be called but “cheating,” pretending to give everyone a vote, but fixing the outcome? Mr. Smith calmed me down by explaining the practice had been controlled in the present era, which would have been the 1960’s.

Yet in the past year the re-drawing of voting districts for political advantage has again emerged under the guise of representing shifting populations following the 2010 census.  At the end of the current election cycle we can see the skullduggery active again: Republicans dominate state and Congressional elections despite being a distinct minority in the popular vote.

The gerrymandering of voting districts is a subtle form of voter fraud. The party currently in power in each state gets to draw the lines of the voting districts, pushing voters into districts that will be lopsided for one party, so that more of the other districts can be commanded by the other party. In a February 2 article in the N.Y. Times Sam Wang reported how he used statistical probability to show how re-drawn districts compared to those created by an unbiased computer simulation of the voting map. He particularly noticed gerrymandering in swing states controlled by Republican legislatures:

Confounding conventional wisdom, partisan redistricting is not symmetrical between the political parties. By my seat-discrepancy criterion, 10 states are out of whack: the five I have mentioned, plus Virginia, Ohio, Florida, Illinois and Texas. Arizona was redistricted by an independent commission, Texas was a combination of Republican and federal court efforts, and Illinois was controlled by Democrats. Republicans designed the other seven maps. Both sides may do it, but one side does it more often.

Wang accused the state legislatures of changing the distribution of Republican voters in Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. In North Carolina Republicans changed a 7-6 disadvantage to a 9-4 advantage. In other words they gained three seats in the legislature merely by changing the district boundaries.

CHEATERS! my high school id cried out. While savvy politicians smiled and shook their heads, my heart churned with indignation. How can this be anything but manipulation of an ethical voting system, one that promises government “of the people, by the people, and for the people”? Why should cheaters prevail?

Yet many politicians of the Republican persuasion believe if you aren’t cheating, you aren’t trying,

The N.Y. Times (February 5) documented how inequities in the voting process are achieved in outrageously long waits to vote and overly complex ballots, which slow the voting process to a crawl.  A study by the Orlando Sentinel and an Ohio State professor estimated that 200,000 Floridians were denied their right to vote by the length of lines at the polls.  The Florida legislature had previously reduced the days for early voting from fourteen to eight, and the ballot was a jungle of initiatives that would make a lawyer blink.  No one can tell me that this was not a premeditated strategy to keep less privileged voters from exercising their Constitutional rights. Florida’s problems with voter irregularities have been documented in 2000 and 2008, as well as in the past election year.

In contrast the Times article cited California as a paragon of enabling voting with smaller voting districts resulting in average wait times of six minutes. Florida’s average wait was 45 minutes.  Is it a coincidence that California has a  Democratic legislature, while Florida, a perennial swing state, has a Republican legislature? Even suffering the humiliation of questionable election practices in the 2000 presidential election has not humbled the Florida legislature to facilitate voting, because it is not in the political interests of Republicans to encourage voting.

This is not shrewd strategy, it is unethical voter suppression.  Of all the political shenanigans that tamper with fairness and equity, this is the most despicable, because it threatens a fundamental right of American citizens.  It approaches the manipulative practices of pseudo-democratic nations, which record landslides of 90% or more for the party in power.  Republicans supporting such schemes should blush with embarrassment when they speak of defending the U.S. Constitution and our precious freedoms.

Now I understand why Republicans were so astonished at losing the Presidential election, plus a handful of Congressional seats. They had rigged the election! They had predetermined its outcome!

Ah, but the Democrats registered and drove their supporters to the polls, winning an election by increasing voter registration and participation, of all things. Justice smiled in Florida, where President Obama won a close tally of votes, but it could have easily gone the other way. The ballot and the voting lines were mercilessly long.

Instead of improving their political appeal, Republicans tossed us a banana peel, and we slipped headlong into making them the majority party wherever representatives are elected by red-tainted voting districts and where voting regulations favor the shrewd and privileged.

Is politics so grimy that we can’t call “Cheater!” anymore? Is no one else outraged that one party consistently undermines democracy by scheming so only their kind gets to vote or gets represented? Is this not the most un-American scheme allowed by law?

Don’t tell me I’m a sore loser. My guys won, despite Republican dirty tricks. So there, CHEATERS!