…that if you call yourself an “ethicist” on the one hand, but on the other seek to deny people either a good or service for which they’ve paid, or perhaps to which they are entitled, directly or indirectly, because they exercised their right to free speech, you’re not actually an ethicist.
You’re a wanna-be Mussolini given a stage, at least for a while, by the misery of others.
Glad I could settle that.
Carry on.
” . . . if you’re going to run around and claim exemption to endorsed and established behavioural policy, you should volunteer, if you get sick, to go to the end of the line.”
Ethicists aren’t what they used to be.
There is no theory of ethics that I have ever heard of where the ethical standard is “endorsed and established bahavioural policy.” If you can’t find the problem with that ethical standard, congratulations on your job running a Nazi death camp.
Just like we refuse to treat lung cancer in smokers, cirrhosis in alcoholics, overdoses in addicts. Well, it’s Canada where they have free health care, eh?
Well, now, hold on a minute. If we extend this principle to other areas, might Hennepin County Medical Center refuse service to gang-bangers shot up in drive-by’s? That would free up medical resources to vaccinate children and also free up judicial resources to deal with election lawsuits, and besides, they are Bad People who did Bad Things so they deserve to die.
And what about people who helped steal the election? Or that jerk who cut me off in traffic the other day? And that guy in college who stole my girl; him, especially.
I’m warming up to the idea.
The reason why the “ethicist” I quoted used those words (Arthur Caplan, founder of the division of medical ethics at NYU School of Medicine) and not others is that the protesters do not believe that masks are effective at slowing or stopping the spread of covid-19. In their own eyes, they are not acting unethically. You can’t condemn them, ethically, the way you could could condemn a murderer who knew that murder was wrong. So instead you have to drag out the argument from authority, and real ethicists have long had problems with the idea that ethical standards come from political authorities.
Am the only one who thinks ethists are the ones without any ethics? Is this another attempt to create jobs for Studies™ majors? These people are playing God for cripe’s sake! The judge and executioner! Damn we are blessed with the best ruling class EVAH!