EXTREMEEthics

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11/23/2014

Ethics is about what’s right, good and true, and being ethical is all about ‘doing the right thing. Do we need ethics? If you don't know by now...

06/17/2014

ETHICS ISSUES: THE NEED for ETHICS
Ethics is about what’s right, good and true, and being ethical is all about ‘doing the right thing.’ Well, what is ‘right’? What’s right for some may not be right for others? What’s right in one situation may not be right in another? What’s right at one particular time may not be right at another?
The same goes for good. Being ethical is also about doing good. Well, what’s ‘good’? What’s good for one may not be good for another, etcetera, etcetera.
But there’s hope. What’s ethical must perforce be true, and here we have an anchor, for truth is not relative. Truth is an—the—overarching principle, the first of first principles in fact, and as such is inviolate—absolute. Truth can’t even be tied down to a simple definition using words, which must themselves be based in truth. It’s so basic that it must be understood, unfailing no matter the time or place. Something either is true or it is not. Truth compromised is meaningless. This must be implicit and accepted or there is no basis for essentials such as facts, knowledge or understanding, all anchored in truth. We have to start somewhere, and truth is that place, from the beginning, regardless of the time or circumstance.
So how do we know we are ‘doing the right thing’? Well, if we base our decisions in truth and handle them honestly, we are well on our way. Decisions founded in truth (rather than bias or prejudice) will also be right and good in the larger context. Even if not perfect they will be right and good in terms of humanity generally (in other words, moral), and we are beholden first to the humanity to which we all belong.
Doubts? Well, consider the alternative. Try basing your decision in a lie, and see what happens…
Speaking of which, whom do you trust? Here’s hoping that you trust those with whom you’re in close personal contact. Don’t you do business with people you trust? And if not your friends, who can you trust? Isn’t trust one reason they’re your friends in the first place? And how about yourself? Do you mean what you say? Say what you mean? Can your friends trust you? It’s worth thinking about.
The fact is that we’ve become comfortable with denying the very idea of truth. We studiously avoid the use of the word lie, replacing it with any number of excuses to cover up the general lack of honesty in our society. We embrace political correctness (PC), finding other words to avoid making someone uncomfortable by stating the facts as they are.
Our problems won’t be solved until they are faced squarely, and until anything less than the truth is not tolerated. Lying cannot be tolerated.
The linchpin of ethics is absolute. If something isn’t true, it is false and, needless to say, unethical. The ethical person is nothing if not truthful and trustworthy. Be ethical.
The first thing to do is to be honest with yourself. It starts on the individual level, and that’s you. Then insist on the truth from others. Don’t settle for less.
Truth, the first of First Principles, is integral to the natural law to which we and all other laws are subject, and the basis of ethics. Truth is square one. Without truth nothing that follows, including our civilization itself, has a sound basis.
The author George Orwell put it this way: “In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act.” Revolute. It’s the thing to do, and high time to do it.
And when is that? NOW. That’s the only time that matters. THEN was. WHEN is yet to come. There is only NOW. How do you go on an effective diet? How do you stop smoking or drinking? In short, YOU DO IT AND IT’S DONE. Tom Peters (One-Minute Excellence) agrees. You can achieve your goals in a nanosecond. Just DO it. Never look back.
Anything less says that you’re satisfied with the status quo. If you are, stop complaining and live with the lies. If not, DO something about it. You can, and you matter. It’s up to you.
Yes. We really need ethics. Truth is what to do. So do it.

06/13/2014

The National Security Council is an administrative entity with duties to advise the President on matters of National Security and Foreign Policy. Traditionally the NSC has “been by procedure and…tradition a rare apolitical forum, a place for the President to hear hard reality” consisting of “foreign policy grownups.” Meetings were heretofore barred to political henchmen.

Bob Gates (a former member)’ memoir and an enlightening article by Kimberly A. Strassel in the 6/6/14 Wall Street Journal tell a different story.

The National Security Advisor is now Susan Rice, a political apologist and confirmed liar, who replaced Tom Donilon, political hack and lobbyist, who in turn replaced the supremely qualified Marine General Jim Jones, who bailed following clashes with Mr. Obama's personal (unqualified) appointees. Also gone are experienced members Leon Panetta and Gates. Who’s left?

Noteworthy toadies who have come and gone since General Jones include Tommy Vietor, Obama spinmeister and campaign flack famous for his convenient memory failure when questioned on the Benghazi disaster: “Dude, that was like two years ago!,” Obama campaign manager David Plouffe, former press secretary David Gibbs, and Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau. These supremely unqualified political sycophants, who formerly would have been (wisely) barred from NSC meetings, now run those meetings with zero knowledge of foreign policy (confirmed*). Foreign policy grownups? You decide…

Then there's Ben Rhodes, Deputy NSAdvisor for strategic communications(!) and former Obama speechwriter (he's the one who advised his colleagues to spin the Benghazi story and blame it all on a YouTube video, which Ms Rice dutifully did, on national TV, several times). Unbelievable? Perhaps, but confirmed true. A strategic communication indeed--a lie designed and timed to ensure Obama’s successful re-election. Foreign policy grownup? Hardly. Political hack, Obama bootlicker, and liar.

These brownnosed minions were “architects of the…decision to drop his ‘red line’ warning to Syria…on Congress, and then blame Congress for (failing to act.) They gave us 'resets,' 'pivots' and 'leading from behind,' and (recently) explained that Mr. Obama’s foreign policy is best described as ‘Don’t do stupid s***.’” Grownups? Really...

*Now America’s national security team assures us (as Iraq evaporates) that Baghdad will not fall because of the high concentration of military forces there. Have they not heard that their boss decreased the substantial American force planned to have been left behind after the war to a trifle? U.S. embassy officials are laying out contingency plans for evacuation. My bets are on them…

This is your National Security Council, America: Stupid sh**s. We’ve come a long way (down) since responsible government.

One question: How long will we tolerate this?

Your answers would be appreciated...

05/27/2014

A recent New York Times article entitled “To Fib or Not To Fib: How Religious Are Americans?” raises at least one interesting question: Why is ‘fibbing’ tied to religion? And what has lying got to do with church attendance?
There’s more than one answer, as well as other questions raised. There seems to be a natural connection between honesty and religiosity, and an implicit connection between a lack of religiosity and a tendency to lie. People who attend church regularly, notably ‘Christians,’ tend to think of themselves as more honest than others who do not, but there is by no means a linear relationship.
There is a similar implicit relationship between religion and ethics; in fact, many consider religion to be the source of ethics and morality. This certainly is not the case. Atheists may well be more ethical than regular church-goers, and in my experience often are. (For the record, I am a spiritual person—broadly Christian—who does not attend any particular church with regularity.) An ethical base can be found in Homer’s Iliad, and the Golden Rule, the very kernel of morality, predates any modern church. That churches may have embraced philosophical ethics is an effect, not a cause.
It’s my thesis that philosophically, ethics is a reaction to the politics of pre-Socratic days (ca. 500BC). If true, as I posit, this would have major implications. A reaction is an effect to a cause, in this case politics. This would make politics by definition dishonest, and ethics the formalization of introducing honesty to politics. I leave it to you to judge its success over the past 2500-years….
But I digress. The point is that church attendance has more to do with justification than it does with fibbing. A critical evaluation of any modern formal religion will find plenty of evidence of its wandering from the truth—the gods preceding the founder of our calendar seem to have been notably unethical. Using religion as the source of ethics and morality is unwise. The true source is philosophy (the pursuit of TRUTH), and the source of philosophy is lost in history.
The answer to “To Fib or Not To Fib” is: DON’T FIB, and it doesn’t matter if you go to church or not. It’s simply a matter of morality.
For plenty of information on this subject, GoTo www.extremeethics.org and enjoy.

Barack Obama rode out of nowhere into Washington on a wave of popular adulation. Hailed as THE ONE who would bring our nation back from the brink, he vowed to fix what his predecessor broke. He cheerfully accepted praise and outright worship (not to mention a Nobel Prize) with smiling face and outst…

05/05/2014

We Shall Overcome…
Barack Obama rode out of nowhere into Washington on a wave of popular adulation. Hailed as THE ONE who would bring our nation back from the brink, he vowed to fix what his predecessor broke. He cheerfully accepted praise and outright worship (not to mention a Nobel Prize) with smiling face and outstretched arms. He would preside over a new nation of peace and prosperity, befriending enemies and ending war while governing with transparency and bipartisanship. Results: Nobel—wasted. Promises—fruitless. Opportunity—squandered. What happened?
He found that his job included more than smiling, promising and being adored. He was hired to govern but didn’t know how so he set about passing laws that would ‘fundamentally change’ our culture. His way. But ambiguity replaced the promised transparency. Past questionable associations were buried and he refused to make public any personal records.
Bipartisanship was history. Instead of the promised vetting of proposed legislation on public television, we received seriously flawed partisan law crafted behind closed doors. He discovered that ending an ill-conceived war was not so easy. He has failed to govern, choosing instead to rule by Executive Order, to continue campaigning and raising funds, while unemployment and government intervention into business increased and the national debt burgeoned. His Way was not working.
The smiles and outstretched arms have given way to frowns—even petulance—when criticized. It appears that he likes crowds but not the people in them.
Who is this man? We still don’t know, yet we elected him—TWICE—on the strength of charisma and promises not to be fulfilled. Non-taxpayers flocked to vote for him believing that they would benefit from government largesse. So far, no one has benefited. We’re still losing.
Our nation has been fundamentally defined down in the past few years at the hand of one man, and we have only ourselves to blame. We bought the promises of an empty suit on his word alone. Desperate people do desperate things, and deserve what they get.
What we got was a duplicitous President who bypassed Congress, ruling by fiat while ignoring his executive duties (to execute the wishes of the citizenry) as well as those of Commander-in-Chief. Saying that Al Qaeda was decimated did not make it so, a fact underscored by his deceitful treatment of the terrorist Benghazi attack and holding back critical details in its reporting so as not to jeopardize his running for (successful) reelection which would likely have been unsuccessful had he not lied and the facts about Benghazi made public.
But there’s a brighter side. It showed that our predominantly white nation could put its faith in a black man—TWICE—for the highest office in the land (so let’s not hear about racism). And we got a wake-up call. We learned to be more cautious when electing our president. Our faith was misplaced, but we’ll survive and grow from the experience.

04/12/2014

You’ve read my carryings-on about the “’60s Generation” and how it was instrumental in changing the American Way from a general collaborative effort to a ‘me first’ attitude. In the 1950s, when the nation was united after winning two World Wars and patriotism, prosperity and religion were the order of the day. Now they are mocked.
In fact, the ‘60s Generation’ began about 1963 and ended in about 1973. The ideas of these ‘new intellectuals’ were based on the individual rather than on the united nation generally—the ‘highest and best’ moral good became personal fulfillment rather than the advancement of the existing culture. It was in fact the American ‘Enlightenment,” when the cultural past (including religion) was largely discarded, science became king, and the principles of America’s founding fathers were seriously questioned. The New Liberalism became a revolution in social norms about clothing, music, drugs, dress, formalities, schooling, feelings, justice, individual freedom, same-sex ‘marriage,’ abortion, civil rights (theirs) and free speech (theirs again). Religion was purged from their agenda, relegated to the sphere of private opinion before being derided. Patriotism in time of war (Korea, Vietnam) was replaced with flag-burning and anti-war demonstrations, and religion was disparaged.
The 60s were indeed the Culture Wars, and their protagonists are now running and ruining the nation. There aren’t many of us who were there who think that things are better now. I was able to do better than my father. Now my kids(!) struggle to have a decent life—you probably do, too. If we keep on the present track the country as we know it is done for—their kids (and yours) won’t have a prayer (oops!).
What to do? It’s time for a change. The last one didn’t work—maybe the next one will…

11/14/2013

ABORTION: Right or Wrong?
Abortion is unethical because it is in opposition to what is. And since what IS must perforce be true, anything other than truth is false.
OK. So abortion is unethical. But is it wrong? Well, ethics has always been about what’s true, right and good. It would appear that what’s unethical is wrong, and since abortion is unethical…
But what if it’s the answer to a problem with no other apparent solution? Is it STILL wrong?
Well, it’s still unethical. But who says you must always be ethical? Nobody. For more: www.extremeethics.org/?p=1250

10/25/2013

"It's laughable to think, as a private sector meteorologist whose livelihood depends on being right, that one can separate climate from weather.” And if we can’t predict the weather any more accurately than is the case, how can we be expected to come up with long-range predictions of climate?
Meteorologist Joe Bastardi makes a point: How can one accept a grant to study global warming and come back with the conclusion that there is no global warming? In other words, the study is outcome-oriented; the conclusion is predetermined by the phraseology of the grant, i.e., the idea is the product. The study is doomed to be biased—it is the antithesis of what science is all about.
This is arguably the case with the current global warming scare. It can’t be studied if there isn’t any, so in order to fulfill the grant the conclusion MUST be that there IS global warming. The grant can’t be justified unless the desired result concludes from the study.
Go figure…

09/18/2013

If you’re one who would rather let government do it, just look at what it’s done with and to the American Indian over the 150-years or so that it’s been in charge since running them off their lands. Created a virtually permanent underclass—that’s what. Look at the evidence. The average Indian on the reservation has a pretty sketchy existence, even compared with the illegal immigrant (and certainly with the legal ones). Now it wants to run health care? Give me a break. Like PJ O’Rourke says, “If you think health care is expensive now, just wait ‘till it’s free.”

08/10/2013

What I believe: GoTo http://www.extremeethics.org/?p=952

The philosophy professor greets his new class with the statement: ”Let me explain the problem that science has with religion,” and asks for a religious volunteer.

07/23/2013

ETHICS ISSUES - PC and RACE
www.extremeethics.org

“Any fool can tell you what you want to hear. It takes guts to speak the truth.” SJ Lewis

Racial profiling? You decide… (the following statements, many of them courtesy of Jason Riley of the Wall Street Journal (July 16, 2013), are true and can be corroborated by even the most cursory of research. http://www.extremeethics.org/?p=992