Response to "Sword of Honour" in London Spectator

Mr. Robinson, a former British military intelligence officer, is apparently bothered by the possibility that American policy is in some way a function of Southern notions of honour. In his assertions, though, Mr. Robinson is mistaken as to American history, Greek literature, what precisely honour is and how it functioned both historically and presently. I will reply to him in the fashion the ancients preferred, “point by point.”

It is true that the Old South saw blacks as essentially outside of the realm of honour, which was part and parcel of the desire in the Old South to see blacks as alien generally. It is not true that women were without honour, however. Women’s honour was simply predicated on different principles than men’s. Women did not fight duels: but they certainly did not entertain insults.

As for the distinction between the “New” and “Old” South, it demonstrates that Mr. Robinson has an incomplete understanding of the culture about which he writes. In fact, the “New” South—urban and, as Mr. Robinson tendentiously puts it, “forward looking”—is not the opposite of the “Old” South. It coexists with several other sub-cultures in the contemporary South. Briefly, these are: The Highland South, which is quite traditional along Celtic/Germanic lines quite familiar to early Medievalists, extremely poor historically, and a culture that never knew slavery on any scale at all due to the relative infertility of the land, and where race is unimportant; the Lowland South, symbolized by “Gone with the Wind,” which is where the factor of race became all important due to the heavy importation of slaves to work the cotton plantations; the “New” South, which arose around some of the urban areas in response to the development of the post-agricultural economies; French Southerners, particularly near New Orleans; and African-Americans, whose culture is unique, vibrant, but largely separate—by choice, these days—from the others with which it coexists. Mr. Robinson conflates Highland Southerners, Lowland Southerners, and Texans —three groups with very little similarity.

The war against slavery—a war in which the majority of Highland Southerners joined—had begun fully ten years before the Civil War. It had been a guerrilla conflict in Kansas and Missouri. Abolitionists as well as pro-slavery men killed each other and their families in cold blood over the issue for a full decade before the formal start of the war. Agitators did more than tease: John Brown’s attempt to spark a general slave revolt in the South did more to incite Lowland Southerners than Lincoln. As for Lincoln himself, the immediate cause of Southern secession was his attempt to disarm the Southern militias by seizing the armouries of their state militias. The grandees of the Lowland South realized they had to fight at that point if they were going to fight at all, and they decided that they ought to do so. Allowing their state militias to be disarmed of their small arms and artillery would have been casting away the option of self-defence. Second, that fact means that the actions of the Southern states were not responses to insults, but to threats: and not threatening words, but the immediate threat of force. They could either allow the United States Army, under command of Lincoln, to march in, seize their weapons, and occupy their fortifications; or they could fight. It was a choice to be made at once, and it was irrevocable either way.

It is true that Southerners are disproportionately enlisted in the military. That has always been true. It is likewise true that Southerners of all stripes have more traditional, martial cultures—cultures more directly in touch with their Medieval and Classical roots, that is to say—than other Americans. But there are other things Southerners do disproportionately. One of them is this: even adjusted for their higher likelihood to join the military, Southerners have won by far more Congressional Medals of Honour per capita than anyone else. The rates are especially high for Highlanders.

If you’re of a romantic bent, that says it all. Southern culture produces heroes. If you’re not a romantic, you’re still left with this: a liberal society needs defenders if it is to survive the perils of a dangerous world. The more liberal, and the more prosperous, the more and the better defenders it needs. Among Americans, the South produces the most and the best. If you are freer today in part due to the efforts of the US military, it is “disproportionately” due to Southerners. Mr. Robinson can consult his copy of Churchill’s history of the Second World War to determine if this applies to him.

Southerners are not shy about their devotion to honour. If honour was what we meant, honour is what we would say. If “credibility” is said instead, then a different point is on offer. What does it mean to say that the credibility of the UN was at stake over Iraq? Well, one thing it might mean is that the UN had cheerily passed a dozen and a half binding resolutions in the Security Council that Saddam was flaunting. Was the UN Security Council to be taken seriously, or not? That’s credibility. Honour is something else again. As far as I can tell, the Security Council has none.

Honour, you see, pertains to persons or to families or—at most—to things you can think of as being like a family. The Marine Corps has an honour that has to be defended—I will wager that is as true for the Royal Marine Corps as it is for the United States Marine Corps. The Security Council? It’s not even an alliance. It’s just a debating house for diplomats. What we wanted to know was, did they actually intend to be taken seriously or not?

As for Saddam being a living insult to American honour, I can only laugh. If the existence of crackpot dictators who hated us was an insult to our honour, why is Castro still around? The moment Castro ceased to be an actual threat to the United States, we stopped trying to kill him. Same with Gaddafi. Even if honour entered into American foreign policy, Mr. Robinson has forgotten a central point of the code duello: a gentleman only duels with equals, as only an equal can insult him. The United States has very few equals.

The invocation of Achilles and the Trojans makes me think that Mr. Robinson is confused as to his Greek literature. It was not hubris that lead to Achilles’ destructive passions, but menis. Menis is a kind of wrath, invoked in the opening lines of the Iliad: “Let wrath be now your song, Goddess!” But menis is a special kind of wrath. Except for Achilles, it belongs only to gods. No mortal but Achilles is ever said to have it.

Nor was hubris a question of particular interest to Homer or his contemporaries. Consider Oedipus, the poster child of hubris. When Homer wrote—sometime before 700 B.C.—there were also tales of Oedipus, and some literature about Oedipus survives from the early period. In it, Oedipus is a successful king who dies heroically. It is only with the dramas of Classical Athens—about four hundred years later—that hubris becomes so tied up with the Oedipal story. The tale is an invention of a different age, an age suffering the ravages of an unsuccessful war with Sparta. Odysseus, Ajax, and others also endured similar downfalls in Athenian drama. They reconceived their heroes in misery like their own: this is known, in logic, as the Sympathetic fallacy. It may be at work in the writings of a man who, because he feels America to be hubristic, writes our history to make us so.

In doing so, as I feel I have shown, he misunderstands American history, Greek literature, Southern culture, and codes of honour, this last both generally, and particularly concerning women and corporate bodies. I wish to thank Mr. Robinson for his interest in the American South, but also kindly to suggest that his research for his forthcoming book may not be complete. Brad Patty Mr. Robinson, a former British military intelligence officer, is apparently bothered by the possibility that American policy is in some way a function of Southern notions of honour. In his assertions, though, Mr. Robinson is mistaken as to American history, Greek literature, what precisely honour is and how it functioned both historically and presently. I will reply to him in the fashion the ancients preferred, “point by point.”

George HW Bush came to Texas as a grown-up and has never quite got the Texan thing down, but his son is a different critter altogether.
He grew up in Midland, and returned there after graduating from Harvard. He was about 14 when he went to prep school and evidentally he felt more at home in Texas than in the East. One reason that the Eastern elite hates him so much is because he has so deliberately rejected much of what they hold dear, including their agnosticism. Compare their disdain toward him with their adulation of William Jefferson Clinton, now a resident of New York. I once knew, casually, Wille Morris, a Missippian who came to work for the Texas Observer, a famously liberal Texas magazine. Willie evetually became, for a short time, the editor of "Harpers" or "Atlantic Monthly," (never can tell the difference between these two rags). He wrote a memoir called"North Toward Home." George W. Bush will never write such a book. When his memoir is finally published, it probably will tell how a boy from Texas found himself in an alien environment and made the best of it ,before returning to Texas to live his life. Of course the ranch and hat are all imposture; he is not and never was a cattleman. Wsanht to understand himself, however, and you had better think independent Texas oilman."That is a type one doesn't find in New England and is as antithetical to the Ivy league view of the world as the Virginian Lees were to their Yale classmates.

Of course what you say is true. I know this about President Bush also.

One point that you make is particularly pertinent: The reason "Liberals" (or, in Europe, "left wing radicals") hate him so viciously is because he has all their most prized credentials including formidable education and intelligence, could be one of them, and knows them thoroughly and yet has only contempt for all that they stand for, thus exposing their mendacity, their corruption, their fundamental immorality, and their decadence.

George Bush was born with the credentials that the "Liberals" and the "left wing radicals"--and their darlings, the Kennedys and the Clintons--only dreamed of having, including aristocracy, political contacts, wealth, social position, et al.--and furthermore is truthful, honorable, moral, and ascendant.

For a man of his stature to repudiate them and the ignominy that they represent is the ultimate denunciation.

He represents the truth that threatens the falsity of their paradigm. People will do anything to protect a cherished paradigm, no matter how absurd it may be.

It's no wonder that they constantly seek to discredit him. They cannot rise to his level; so they seek to drag him down to theirs, if not in fact (which they cannot do) then in public perception, which is yet one further expression of their depravity.

I think he's collected his research from genuine sources. The psychology study he cites is real, for example, insofar as any psychology can be said to be real. Unfortunately he does not cite his sources, this being an article in a popular magazine, but I suspect he's done proper research.

The problem is that he comes from a culture in which traditional honor has died. He is in possession of a lot of facts, but he doesn't understand the context. As a result, he misunderstands what honor is, and how it applies.

Thanks for the ping!

I tried to read Robinson's article, but just couldn't get through it. However, I enjoyed this one very much.

" Women did not fight duels: but they certainly did not entertain insults."

The men fight the duels, and kill the bugs...

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