Situational Ethics

F.A. Hayek noted that advancement within the collectivist culture required an abandonment of any ethics other than that of the leader.

Unfortunately for America, situational ethics (where right and wrong are a function of the situation) have largely replaced objective ethics (where right and wrong are functions of a moral code).

I know I will get comments from the left that “Both sides do it!”, but that qualitative perspective completely ignores the QUANTITAVE dimension that even if “both sides do it”, situational ethics exist in dimensions far wider and deeper on the left than it does on the right.

For decades, the right has demonstrated a penchant to punish their own people for things at which the left merely laughs.

That is why, the day after the leak of a draft SCOTUS opinion indicating Roe would be overturned, I told my wife that while the leaker may never practice law, the left will take care of them for the rest of their lives because they reward people who do unlawful or unethical things for the “cause”.

That is why I am not shocked in the least to see Kevin Daley’s post at the Free Beacon noting that the top six law firms he contacted had no comment on whether the leaker was toast within the legal community.

America is seeing this same perspective leech into enforcement of criminal law. The Soros backed DA cabal is determining, on their own, whether something is “really” a crime – if you are poor or of a “protected” class, your crimes are less than those perpetrated by people not of those classes.

Situational ethics even applies to politics, as we see when we look at the differences between Eric Holder (Obama’s wing man) ignoring a Congressional subpoena and when Peter Navarro did the same thing. Holder went on to rejoin Covington & Burling, the law firm at which he worked before becoming attorney general. He did so without incident or interference and now represents many of the big banks and organizations he refused to prosecute when he was the AG. Navarro was arrested, handcuffed, and put in leg irons as he was about to board a plane. He and Trump ally Roger Stone got treatment usually reserved for heads of drug cartels.

Situational ethics will be on full display over the next few weeks via prime-time broadcasts of the January 6th Witch Trial.

There are two major players in this made for TV event – Democrat Chair Bennie Thompson, representing the Second District of Mississippi and Republican Co-Chair Liz Cheney, representative for Wyoming’s at-large slot. Thompson is a perpetual back bencher who has accumulated a 29-year congressional career of voting with the Democrat Party without question. Cheney is an establishment NeverTrump Republican who rode her father’s name, his establishment GOP connections and big money uniparty donors to a vanity job that apparently includes ignoring the will of the people in her state.

Thompson displays the most common form of situational ethics as he apparently never has an independent thought and for three out of the past 6 years has a zero rating from the American Conservative Union. Cheney has abandoned any semblance of ethical behavior in a quest to finally “get Trump”.

The January 6th proceeding is the bastard child of the failed Russia “collusion” investigation and the two failed impeachment attempts, all of which were carried out free of any sort of ethics. Run by House Democrats, these “investigation” relied on Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler, Eliot Engel, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, James Comey, Nancy Pelosi, Andrew Sussman, Kevin Clinesmith, Mark Elias and Hillary Clinton – all of whom have broken oaths and/or laws and none of whom could spell “ethics” if you spotted them five of the six letters.

In WWII, about a thousand Japanese soldiers occupied an island off the coast of Burma, called Ramree Island. Due to its strategic importance, the British took the island, routing the Japanese. Rather than face the known risk or surrendering, the Japanese fled into the massive mangrove swamps surrounding the island. One night, the British soldiers reported screams and the sound of gunfire emanating from the swamp. The swamps around Ramree are filled with the largest reptilian predator in the world, the saltwater crocodile. With the ebb of the tide, the crocodiles moved in on the dead, wounded, and uninjured men who had become mired in the mud.

Only 520 Japanese soldiers made it out of those swamps.

Washington, D.C. is often referred to as a swamp. I can assure you there are beasts lurking there exponentially more dangerous than any two-ton saltwater croc.

Obviously, there are more overt attacks on what America is, but as it was at Ramree in 1945, the greatest danger is always lurking just beneath the surface where it can’t be seen, just waiting for the tide to ebb.

Situational ethics is America’s saltwater crocodile, biding its time before dragging us under and dismembering us.