Questions of Ethics: Charles Rangel, Bradley Manning, et al.

Questions of Ethics: Charles Rangel, Bradley Manning, et al.

Making ethical judgments is a complex business, fraught with nuances and subjectivity.

Ethics has been defined as “the study and evaluation of human conduct in the light of moral principles. . . the standard of conduct that individuals have constructed for themselves or as the body of obligations and duties that a particular society requires of its members. Ethics has developed as people have reflected on the intentions and consequences of their acts.”

That definition may be reduced to four words, doing the right thing.

There’s a narrow distinction between unethical behavior and simply lying although some form of lying is usually associated with a lack of ethics.

Thus, when Elena Kagan dissembled in her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee by saying she had merely “suggested” changes in the language of an anti-partial birth document to which she objected she was both lying and acting unethically to accomplish her goals: http://tiny.cc/9l5jb

On the other hand, when President Obama appeared on “The View” today and listed dealing with the H1N1 “pandemic” as one of the “thorns” of his first 18 months in office he was dramatizing, bloviating, in a word, lying. There was no H1N1 pandemic in 2009 as he well knew. It was no more a pandemic than the average year’s flu. The Center for Disease Control had grossly exaggerated the H1N1 virus danger and the manufacturers of the Swine Flu vaccine reaped a windfall in the billions.

Much more clearcut as unethical behavior were the actions of United States congressman Rep. Charles Rangel and Pfc. Bradley Manning of the 10th Mountain Division Second Brigade in Baghdad. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1812)