Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

See here. The university has a right to exclude the restaurant from campus. Alumni have the right to stop donating to the university.

By taking the side of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who, according to reports, the CIA has concluded ordered the assassination of American resident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi, President Donald Trump has applied his business acumen to the execution (pun intended) of foreign policy.

Profits take priority over people. Human rights are no big deal if they conflict with business deals. This is the philosophy of corporate capitalism unchained. With the subtlety meter on zero, this president is all business.

It is indeed noted that his campaign slogan was “America First” and not “American Values First.”

Brian Cutler, Seattle

….for electric cars. General Motors made a big China bet years ago when they built plants there (and in Mexico) – don’t think that bet is going to pay off. I am here to protect America’s Workers!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2018

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There are a number of different ways of teaching ethics, and there is ample room for a number of different ways of teaching ethics. I am sure that there is no one way that is right, but I am also sure that there are a number of ways, some of them in widespread use, that are wrong. It is wrong, for example, to teach ethics by simply presenting and discussing a number of ethical theories, in isolation from the actual or imagined problems of morality that these theories were developed in response to. It is wrong, in other words, to present ethics as a series or collection of disembodied abstractions. It is also a mistake to attempt to teach ethics simply by presenting the history of the subject, because this still presents the subject as consisting in the unregulated combat of a number of rival theories, and from this one's students can get no idea of what the problems are with which these theories were attempting to deal, or even whether they were all attempting to deal with the same problems. Yet this is better, if only because the early and important moral philosophers almost all had a very lively sense of what the problems were with which they were attempting to deal, and a careful reading of their works will bring these out. The move to higher and higher orders of abstraction started in the ninteenth century, and has reached its peak, apparently, in this one.

(Marcus G. Singer, "The Teaching of Introductory Ethics," The Monist 58 [October 1974]: 616-29, at 616)

Note from KBJ: Professor Singer's department must have had only one ethics course (or perhaps only one course in normative ethics). My department has two ethics courses: Contemporary Moral Problems (PHIL 1304) and Ethics (PHIL 2312). The former is a course in practical normative ethics; the latter is a course in theoretical normative ethics. When I teach Ethics, I do precisely what Singer says it is wrong to do, namely, "presenting and discussing a number of ethical theories, in isolation from the actual or imagined problems of morality that these theories were developed in response to." If I were to try to do more than this, I would end up giving the students only a superficial view of the theories. I tell my Ethics students on the first day of class that if they want to study particular moral problems, such as abortion and euthanasia, they should take Contemporary Moral Problems.

Sin After Sin (1977).

Here.

Here.

Re “Trump contradicts CIA on Khashoggi” (Page A1, Nov. 23): The office of the presidency has long been a top aspirational goal expressed by many parents and their children (“Someday I will be president of the United States”). Now we have Donald Trump in this office.

Here we have a man who refuses to hold another man accountable for ordering the luring of a journalist into an embassy, where the journalist is brutally murdered and dismembered. How can this be? Well, it appears that in a Trumpian world, which is a “very, very vicious place,” anything goes. Trump makes no attempt to aspire to making the world less vicious. Instead, he aspires to use the viciousness of his so-called world as an excuse to do whatever it takes to reach his own goals.

I hope that someday we can retrieve the presidency of the United States from the smear of this Trumpian worldview and that once again it will be an office to aspire to, to work for the betterment of all beings, not just mainly for white people who hold a certain point of view. I especially invite my Republican sisters and brothers to consider the price this country and the world are paying for the Donald Trump presidency.

Jana Howe

Merrimack, N.H.

Note from KBJ: We love President Trump, Jana. We're going to elect him again. Have a great day!

Here is Kurt Schlichter's latest column.

Mexico should move the flag waving Migrants, many of whom are stone cold criminals, back to their countries. Do it by plane, do it by bus, do it anyway you want, but they are NOT coming into the U.S.A. We will close the Border permanently if need be. Congress, fund the WALL!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 26, 2018

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