Category Archives: Ethics

Entitlements: Let’s Get Our Constitution Straight

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English: Painting, 1856, by Junius Brutus Stea...

English: Painting, 1856, by Junius Brutus Stearns, Washington at Constitutional Convention of 1787, signing of U.S. Constitution. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I read with fascination an article in The New Civil Rights Movement decrying a law recently passed in Arizona – the Women’s Health and Safety Act – because it defines pregnancy as beginning not at conception, but with the end of the last period. I am not going to dive into the specifics of the law, because the argument over the specifics on abortion is taking place in other fora.

What caught my attention, however, was the digression in the piece where author David Badash attempts to discredit the law’s sponsor, Arizona State Representative Kimberly Yee, by belittling her advocacy of drug testing for welfare recipients.

In a strongly-worded op-ed in USAToday, Yee wrote:

States have an obligation to hold those on public assistance accountable for their actions. Receiving a public benefit is a privilege, not a right. The debate on drug testing welfare recipients is simply about the responsible use of tax dollars.

We can argue about whether this is the right answer to the problem, or whether there are some pieces missing to this approach. Rather than doing so, though, Badash takes another course:

It’s unclear where in the U.S. constitution [sic] it states that the states “have an obligation to hold those on public assistance accountable for their actions.”

Okay, he went there. I will, too.

First, Yee said nothing about a Constitutional obligation. She could have been referring to a moral obligation, a fiduciary responsibility, or a statutory obligation.

Second (and this is the key point), it is unclear where in the U.S. Constitution it says anything about any government organization being obliged to offer public assistance of any kind. Go check. I’ll wait.

Nobody is entitled to public assistance according to the founding documents of this nation. Indeed, Franklin D. Roosevelt had to fight brutal political battles during his first term in the heart of the Great Depression to make the case for any public assistance because it was an alien concept up to that time.

Where I agree with Yee is that the original idea – the Democratic idea – behind public assistance was to provide a temporary safety net to catch those who were by no fault of their own unable to provide themselves, not to create a state of permanent dependency on the government. That intent has been twisted. When we provide public assistance to habitual drug users, we not only enable a self-destructive habit that invites crime into society, we are turning public assistance into a hammock rather than a safety net.

There is no question that an individual caught in the downward spiral of dependency deserves compassion, help, and an opportunity to get clean and turn their lives around. Several, if necessary. But it is a hand up that these people need, not a hand out. We can argue what form that hand-up should take, but simply handing someone a check when all their mind can comprehend is the next drink, the next hit, or the next fix places our government in league with he pusher, not the user.

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Taking Out the Trash

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Reading John Bolton‘s thoughtful review of Peter Collier‘s Political Woman: The Big Little Life of Jeane Kirkpatrick (“Blue Jeane” in June’s Commentary Magazine), I was surprised to learn that Kirkpatrick was lambasted during her career by feminists. How is that possible? A woman who succeeded in academic circles that had heretofore been dominated by men, who considered herself a feminist, and who rose to the highest levels of government, was rejected by the very people who should have been cheering her success.  Bolton notes:

As she put it, “with a bitter smile,” in Collier’s description, “Gloria Steinem called me a female impersonator. Can you believe that? Naomi Wolf said I was ‘a woman without a uterus.’ I who have three kids while she, when she made this comment, had none.” A professor at Brown named Joan Scott said, “She is not someone I want to represent feminine accomplishment.” And those were the polite criticisms.

So much for sisterhood. My point, however, is not about feminism. It is about trash politics.

I had a discussion on Facebook recently with my friend Ada Shen and a gent by the name of Greg Diamond. Greg, for those of you not following Orange County (California) politics, is a self-proclaimed “very liberal” Democrat running for State Senate in the 29th Senatorial District representing the cities of Brea and Fullerton. Greg and I would likely find ourselves debating the opposite sides of any given issue, and I have some very strong objections to some of his positions.

Nonetheless, as I told him in our conversation:

I tread carefully on feelings because I think it is high time to exorcise the ad-hominem attack from politics. We need to assume the best of intentions on the part of those with whom we disagree, not the worst (unless proven otherwise in a court of law, of course.)

I write this not to pat myself on the back, but to point out that it is possible to have a conversation with a liberal (or, in a liberal’s case, a conservative) with whom we disagree without having the discussion implode into name-calling and a suspicion that the other person is an Epsilon-minus semi-moron.

If the internet has a downside, it is that it has aided in the decline of political dialogue until most of it rests in the gutter. Enough, already. The loss of civility in political discussion does not elevate a cause, convince a skeptic, or improve the nation. Let’s give respect, even undue respect, to those who disagree with us.

After all, this is, in the end, the United States. It would be nice to keep them that way.

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Citizen Responsibility

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Admiral Luke McNamee, Naval leader and Governo...

Admiral Luke McNamee (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One of our biggest causes is that of citizen involvement. Captain Luke McNamee, USN, at the time serving as Director of Naval Intelligence, put it better than I could when he said the following in the May 1923 issue of Proceedings:

If popular government is not to fail, our voters cannot take up too soon the earnest study of their duties and responsibilities as citizens of America. Our country has become so vast and so diversified in its interests that those voters capable of taking a broad national view of our necessities are in danger of sharing the fate of the dodo. Yet statesmen can accomplish little without your support.

Hear, hear.

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Government Trough Alert: The GSA

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GSA executive traveled to Hawaii, South Pacific after warnings – latimes.com.

Amid all of our partisan debates about big government vs. small government, we are missing out on the most important opportunity we have to get more out of our taxpayer dollars: eliminating FAT government.

Fat Government is our term for taxpayer money that is used to pay for activities that neither contribute to nor support the broader goals of government and the nation, that is wasted due to inefficiencies,  that is lost to corruption, or that is siphoned by government employees who are “working” the system.

Paying for a GSA employee, regardless of his level, to take non-essential travel is wasteful. Paying for him to travel on what were essentially junkets is worse. Where he went is irrelevant: if he spent the government coin to go goof off in Bethesda would have been morally every bit as reprehensible as flying off to Napa Valley, Hawaii, and the South Pacific.

There is now a bipartisan tide of fury growing around the “culture of excess,” wastefulness, and entitlement at the GSA. The system is not working and it needs to be fixed.

It would be delusion to believe that the waste ends there. We need not only to hunt down such institutional cultures and practices wherever they may exist in government, we must replace them with positive cultures of frugality and service.

The same applies not just in the federal government, but at every level of government in the US. Where is the fat?

American government needs a liposuction. Where else can we look?

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The Other Movement

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The Great Restoration – NYTimes.com.

In a thought-provoking editorial, David Brooks suggests that while the Wall Street Occupiers make visceral the widespread disgust with the worst excesses of the past three decades, other Americans are conducting their own quieter but equally significant movement. Americans, he says, are returning to a set of values that would have resonated more strongly with our grandparents, but that are deeply relevant in the face of “the new normal.”

More Americans are returning to a lifestyle where they spend within their means, where they admire those whose rewards are commensurate with their effort or contribution, and where loyalty matters once again.

This is encouraging, but it must be seen for what it is: a good start. As Dennis Prager notes in a speech from 2008 (regrettably seated next to Governor Palin), the greatest danger the nation faces is that we have stopped teaching the principles and values that form the foundation of our American civilization.

It is time we all start to recall what we believe those principles are, debating them if necessary. Is that not a more important debate than what happened in Las Vegas last night?

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Adultery and Double Standards « Commentary Magazine

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One of the most difficult magazines for me to read every month is Commentary. While I, like most of its editors, am both Jewish and conservative, the magazine’s decidedly neocon bent strikes a tone of disharmony with the times.

But a recent editorial by Peter Wehner proved to me once again the worth of my subscriptions. Contrasting the conservative opprobrium heaped on Bill Clinton for his infidelities with the defense waged by the same conservatives of Newt Gingrich, Wehner barely hid his disgust:

The examples of sanctimonious hypocrisy are almost endless. And truth be told, we all engage in it to one degree or another. None of us come at these things from a position of perfect objectivity. Our personal histories, dispositions, and preferences in all kinds of areas—from politics to faith to our favorite foods and athletic teams—cause us to view the same set of facts through different lenses. The question isn’t whether hypocrisy occurs; the question, I think, is how much we strive to minimize it. Do we even try to employ a single standard, or are facts and events simply tools to be used in a larger ideological battle?

via Adultery and Double Standards « Commentary Magazine.

Moral and ethical standards are not relative, and where the American political system is failing is where partisans of one side or the other apply their standards only to the enemy.

The sweetest fruits of party loyalty are sour poison if they are attained via relativization of our values. It is time we all articulated those moral and ethical standards that ring to us most true, then stood by them. To do less is naked hypocrisy, political prostitution of the basest kind.