Musings on Honor

I've been mulling over a couple of the more recent burlesques in Blogistan, most notably Professor Juan Cole's laying down of the smack on The National Review's Jonah Goldberg and, of course L'Affaire Gannon/Guckert. For some reason my musings kept returning to the seeming non sequitur of the concept of honor. Honor is a pretty amorphous and sadly anachronistic notion. In these cases I'm referring specifically to the, "insult to my honor" sort in the case of Dr. Cole and of the more noblesse oblige, "there are certain things a gentleman just doesn't do", sort of Guckert in particular and among our conservative compatriots in general.

For the whole Cole-Goldberg drama you'll just have to check out both men's blogs for the entire saga. this post by Goldberg set the whole thing off, where he said

Consider Juan Cole. You probably haven't heard of him, but he's the dashboard saint of lefty Middle East experts. President-elect of the Middle East Studies Association, Cole has made a new career for himself in finding the dark lining of every silver cloud. After the Iraqi elections he harrumphed on his Web site that he was "appalled" by the media's cheerleading of the election. He absurdly declared that the 1997 Iranian elections were much more democratic (Iranian candidates had to be approved by the mullahs). He whined that Bush did not originally intend to have elections of this sort and only agreed when Ayatollah Sistani insisted. Suddenly, Bush the rigid ideologue is too flexible.
Most telling, Cole offered a world-weary sigh that "This thing was more like a referendum than an election."

Apparently that was enough for Cole who responded by essentially challenging Goldberg to put up or shut up in a debate. Granted, I was not reared in the rarified air of gentility such that the rules of such things are second nature, however I've consumed quite enough fiction and non-fiction regarding 17th and 18th Century manners to figure out the rules of the game. In this case, Cole felt his honor impugned and called out Goldberg. A traditional violent duel being quite (rightly) out of the question, Cole suggested a duel of wits. From here out things are pretty cut and dried if your are the called out party. You have the following options: a) issue a public apology and withdraw the offending remarks, b) meet the aggrieved party on the field -- or podium in this case -- of honor and defend yourself, or c) slink away like a coward. Guess which option Mr. Goldberg chose? Yes, we can now say with some certain assurance that Jonah Goldberg is, like so many of his neoconservative brethren a rank coward of the lowest order, lacking even the meanest concept of honor or dignity.

Now to Mr. Guckert. How self-loathing an individual do you have to be to be on the one hand a rather enthusiastic homosexual and on the other be actively enabling the power structure that is using fear and intolerance of homosexuality in order to rally its right-wing political base? Or was it simply a cold calculation on his part; Machiavellian choice of the ends justifying the means for the young neo-con go-getter? If the first is true, how sad for Mr. Guckert and I wish him some measure of peace with his obviously tortured soul. But I really suspect the latter.

Once upon a time, ladies and gentlemen the Republican Party was the party of the elite, blue blood of America. Many of its members, if surely not its leaders, were quite familiar with the concepts of honor defined above. Oh how the worm has turned. Honor now lives only in the hearts of the working class father who sticks by his family, working two or three jobs to keep food on the table, staying sober, and keeping the kids in school. It lives in the line soldier going about his grim duty in Iraq and hoping, praying every goddamn day that it all turns out right; that all of the horrors he has seen and perpetrated might somehow be washed away by this mess coming good in the long run so that his friends haven't died in vain, so that he will not be haunted for the rest of his life by the faces of those he killed. It lives in those of us "on the fringes" of the "mainstream media" doing our level best to hold the filthy, power-besotted networks and politicians to some standard conduct and human decency.

A genteel sense of honor was once considered one of the chief signs of good breeding and nobility. Realistically it was terribly elitist notion and the egalitarian plane of American culture over the last century or so shaved its meaning and relevancy away. But honor is something that all people are endowed with and it seems to me that we could all stand to reexamine our definition of honor and its place in our lives and in our society. We need to take its measure and then filter our lives through it. There ARE some things no (wo)man of honor will do for any cause or any price, i.e. torture helpless prisoners.

When we do this and hold our party leaders to the same standards then we can talk with authority to the American people about values and morality. Then our accusations that vast swaths of the Republican party are power-mad whores without a shred of honor; who are going about selling out the honorable people of this country in the service of blind ideology and greed will be nothing more than stating the obvious.

Reid on the right track.

Well, someone in the Minority Leader's office is getting the message. Very good stuff from Reid's response to the StOU speech. Check it out if you missed it

Too many of the president's economic policies have left Americans and American companies struggling. And after we worked so hard to eliminate the deficit, his policies have added trillions to the debt -- in effect, a "birth tax" of $36,000 on every child that is born.


You know, today is Groundhog Day. And what we saw and heard tonight was a little like the movie "Groundhog Day" -- the same old ideology that we've heard before, over and over and over again. We can do better.


Democrats are all for giving Americans more of a say and more choices when it comes to their retirement savings, but that doesn't mean taking Social Security's guarantee and gambling with it. And that's coming from a senator who represents Las Vegas.


Sometimes important questions, like Social Security or the economy or education, get reduced to dollars and cents with the competing policies of political parties.


But really, these are questions about our old-fashioned moral values that don't get talked about much in Washington but matter so much to our country.


Are we willing to do right by our parents and take care of our children? Do we believe that big corporations with powerful lobbyists should get special favors and that the wealthiest should get special tax breaks? Or do we believe we are all God's children and that each of us should get a fair shot and a say in our future?

That's what I'm talkin' about! Give 'em Hell, Harry!

Excuses, excuses.

Yeah, I know it's a long time between posts. You try being a full time businessman and taking care of a six year-old, five year-old and three year-old, at least one of which has been home sick every day since new years as the various colds and coughs work their way through the family and school system.

I give to you, you give to me. Buy some swag, peoples! If you buy stuff I'll make more cool stuff. Deal?