Posted by
Nikko on Tuesday, March 06, 2007 6:51:23 PM
The recent CPAC
event has left me with some conclusions that may not do much for my
reputation once I set them to paper. I have grown weary with the fact
that we have allowed ourselves (conservative Christians)
to be overwhelmed by the rhetoric of pusillanimous politicians who have
no honor and show their contempt for the "bauble popularity." Their
attitude is that they say what ever they feel the present crowd would
want to hear. They are pro choice for one crowd and pro life for
another crowd. Where is the honor among these people.
Ann Coulter is the only one who tells it like it is and does not apologize
for it. What she said about John Edwards needed to be said. I
personally may have used a different choice of words, but if you listen
to his speeches and some of the language he uses to put forth his
positions, especially when he talks about America being a Christian
nation, he is pandering to a specific group of people who resent
Christianity. Her word was just what she said, a school yard taunt said
in a humorous manner.
Then we have to listen to Alan Colmes,
who serves only as a supercilious gadfly and is devoid of a useful
purpose in life, berate Ann on the H&C show, I wish, like Zell
Miller recently and Charles Gibson more than a century ago, that
dueling was still legal. The reasons are listed below, and the account
is taken from Doris Kearns Goodwin in the book "Team of Rivals."
Ann Coulter
is my kind of woman. She is kind of woman, who in a bar fight, would
stand back to back with you and take on all comers, and you would win.
We
need some means of holding people to account when they attack our
honor. It is not that I actually approve of dueling, but like Charles
Gibson, the feeling is, that something is missing in our public
behavior. What is missing is Honor.
Edward Bates was a Congressman from Missouri when he got into a heated argument with fellow Congressmen George McDuffie of South Carolina on the floor of the House. McDuffie ridiculed him personally and Bates, in an impulsive moment, challenged the South Carolinian to a duel. McDuffie,
for reasons of his own, wisely declined the challenge and agreed to
apologize for his offensive language. Some years later, reflecting on
the Southern practice of the “Code” of dueling, a friend of Edward
Bates, Charles Gibson, maintained that as wicked as the code was, the
vulgar public behavior following the demise of the practice was worse
still. “The code preserved a dignity, justice and decorum that have
since been lost,” he argued,”to the great detriment of the professions,
the public and the government. The present generation will think me
barbarous but I believe that some lives lost in protecting the tone of
the bar and the press, on which the Republic itself so largely depends,
are well spent.”
The “Code Duello”
was a long standing practice for settling disputes among Southern
Gentlemen. The most infamous was the Hamilton-Burr duel which resulted
in Hamilton’s death and Burr’s political fall. However, in the end it
served the purpose of maintaining Honor.