[lit-ideas] Regrowth of honorable standards
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2006 10:42:10 -0700
I am nearing the end of Honor, A History by James Bowman, published in 2006.
I have enjoyed it immensely, for which I thank the lurker who recommended it
to me.
Bowman builds a convincing case that in getting rid of honor we have
replaced it with things that don't work nearly as well especially in the
face of a threat by a society, the Islamic, that emphasizes honor. He
doesn't believe we should revert to the mores of an earlier period but that
we should reacquire and more clearly understand the good and necessary
aspects of honor. In his last chapter he describes 5 things that would need
to occur for America to regain a sensible attitude toward honor. Here is
what he has to say about his third recommendation:
"A third means of encouraging a regrowth of honorable standards in the wake
of the terror attacks of 9/11 might be to pay less attention to making
airport security so tight that a nail file or cigar cutter is confiscated as
a potential weapon, and more attention to the response people are encouraged
to make to any potential airline hijacking. The passivity of the crews and
passengers on three of the four jets hijacked on September 11 was
characteristic of post-honor society. We grew to assume that if we do not
provoke those who threaten us, and meekly acquiesce in their demands, they
will not harm us. The hijackers with no more weaponry at their disposal
than knives and box cutters must have counted on this. But the behavior of
the passengers on the fourth jet, Flight 93, that crashed in a field near
Shanksville, Pennsylvania, showed how quickly we can revert to older more
honorable assumptions once we know, as the passengers on Flight 93 knew,
that appeasement would only enable the enemy to do his worst. The heroes of
Flight 93 should be our models of how to deal with the threat of terrorism,
and the timorous caution of our routine passenger screenings at airports,
now taking in even belts and shoes, should be relaxed. After all, the one
time a shoe might have been used as a terrorist bomb, the terrorist, Richard
Reid, was prevented by the vigilance of crew and passengers around him. In
this respect, I think we are already on our way to a new and updated sense
of honor -- for who can imagine passengers subjected to a 9/11-style
hijacking today who would not resist? -- and we won't allow ourselves to
acknowledge it."
Lawrence
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