So now it's ethical to be a bully

UPDATE:  Insta-lanche!  We hate the Instapundit a bit less now.  Don't forget to check up on our fun Hutaree comedy series.

I didn't pay a lot of attention to the five students disciplined for wearing American flags on Cinco de Mayo (that's the day after Cinco de Quatro for the folks in the White House).

But this story on the follow-up is both enraging and amusing at the same time (h/t the Hated Instapundit).

Now it should go go without saying that the district played this exactly wrong.  If kids wanted to wear American flags, this should have been not only allowed but encouraged and Mexican students should have been told that they have no ground to complain because it's all one great cultural mosaic.

Instead, the district caved to the trouble-makers who are now emboldened enough to march against display of the U.S. flag on a secondary Mexican holiday.

And then the district of course met with kids who should have been disciplined for skipping class to "hear their concerns."  That's the enraging part.

This next bit is just hilarious, though:

Kirk Hanson, executive director of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, said the action taken by the school on Wednesday was warranted if their objective was to maintain the security and safety of the other students.

"Was there a danger of a fight between the students celebrating Cinco de Mayo and the students wearing the American T-shirts? If there was a threat, then their action was ethical," Hanson said.

"The decisions regarding student dress are always difficult for school authorities and it is possible that any particular dress, including the American flag, could under circumstances be threatening," Hanson said. "But when the students' rights are at stake, the school authorities clearly should try to find some way to protect those rights and at the same time defuse the situation."

Got it?  If freedom of expression is faced with the threat of illegal violence, freedom should be curtailed.

Note also that this guy is supposedly an expert on ethics.  So now it's ethical to give into violent mobs.

The Tea Party has gotten beaten up for the past year for embodying a threat of violence that doesn't actually exist.

The lesson we are getting is that maybe it should.  After all, if you want something, the ethical thing is to threaten somone who disagrees with you.

In my moral universe, the opposite is true: if kids threatened violence for any reason, they should severely punished - and maybe get a lecture about that wonderful diversity the schools are so eager to celebrate.

That would be a good lesson - a worthwhile lesson and one essential for the survival of our civil society.

Instead the school has taught a different lesson:  Be a bully.  It works.

And people wonder why bullying is such a problem.  Gee, the schools are teaching kids how to do it.

Comments

[Jim Ryan]

I was an ethics prof. I can tell you that there is no such thing as an expert on ethics. I would sooner trust the first ten people in the phone book to make a moral decision than I would ten ethics profs.

[Thomass]

PS
I've been to other ethnic holiday get togeathers (German, Hungarian, et cetera) before and at the other ones no one would mind a US flag shirt... another big problem (err, red flag?) that should be talked about. I thought nationalism in general was bad / fascist... I guess unless it anti US....

[Thomass]

I also like how they turned to word threat around on the people being threatened with potential violence (because the symbol on their shirt was a 'threat').

[Montjoie]

Just the idea of an "expert on ethics" makes me laugh.

[Tcobb]

By this token, the civil rights protesters of the 50's and 60's should have been suppressed by the authorities in light of the threats made against them by the KKK. It would have been the ethical thing to do. Sure.

But I'm sure Mr. Hanson doesn't really mean this in any absolute sense. I have a funny feeling that if the school had sent students wearing Mexican flag T-Shirts home he would have sang a far different and outraged tune.

[John Gordon]

So just how many of these "Mexican-American" students know what Cinco de Quatro celebrates? Mexico's victory over the Spanish?, over the U.S.?, over the Germans?, over the French?

And from what I've been reading, this big "holiday" is simply a Miller Beer day in the U.S. Mexicans in Mexico couldn't care less...

John

[Lisa]

All fabulous reasons to promote homeschooling.

[Dave in Dallas]

If the American flag, worn by an American on the grounds of an American school in America is EVER 'threatening', then we first need to CLEAR THAT UP.

The school officers were clearly worried about a fight, but ONLY because they know that the supporters of illegal immigration would happily START one for the thinnest of reasons. That implied threat works on bureaucrats in exactly the same manner as the Islamic implied threat of violence if 'offended'.

It "SELF CENSORS" fearful liberals. In this case, they chose to censor the 'message' which MIGHT have been delivered either purposefully or by accident through these shirts, by ordering the American students to stop wearing them or go away.

Mexican rioters don't even have to throw a punch. Fearful liberals do their bidding out of fear of the THREAT of violence.... and then they blame the potential violence on the OTHER side, OUR side, Americans.

makes me queasy. And even MORE likely to show up at a rally, or vote, or recruit friends or neighbors to vote, AGAINST CREEPING LIBERAL SOCIALIST CRAP.

They can self-censor and be cowards, but it only makes our side more and more numerous and determined. Yes, it's like they used to say about the Iraq war 'creating more terrorists' only the Libs are creating more and more involved voters out of formerly ordinary American people who used to just live their lives and not worry much about government.

Self-censorship is one of the most obvious and disgusting forms of cowardice.

[hitnrun]

"Note also that this guy is supposedly an expert on ethics."

"Ehtics," as an academic term, means basically the exact opposite of what it sounds like it means.

An ethicist in a university is someone whose job is to rationalize the unethical.

[Mr. Biswas]

Perhaps the Hispanic kids learned a lesson or two from Muslim extremists who threaten those who oppose them. This is the calculus the school has now taught students: Mexicans and Mexican Americans = Muslim extremists. Well, they are all BROWN, and I suppose the school authorities (being the densest substance known in the entire Universe) wouldn't expect them to act any differently.

[A to the F]

"if kids threatened violence for any reason, they should severely punished"

That's really what you want to teach your kids? No wonder our nation is turning into a bunch of preemptive-surrender monkeys.

There are several good reasons for kids to threaten violence and just as many good ones to engage in violence -- defending a sibling, standing up to a bully, protecting the weak, among others.

[wagnert in atlanta]

With the Markkula precedent and a little effort, I think I could prove that the American Revolution was unethical.