The Real Meaning of Honor

Honor is a much abused word.

Mostly it is abused by people who say: How dare you question my honor?

Honor, according to James Bowman in Honor: A History, is bravery in men and chastity in women. If you think that’s all baloney, then try telling a man he’s a wimp and a woman she’s a whore and see where it gets you.

The point is this. Honor in men is the absolute commitment not to break and run when standing shoulder to shoulder with his fellow soldiers in the face of certain death.

It was honor, writes W. Thomas Smith, that made John McCain refuse the Vietnamese offer of a ticket home.

Wracked with dysentery, having been tortured as a POW for nearly eight months (he would be imprisoned for another five years), at times suicidal... and beaten and bayoneted during his capture; McCain simply said “no.”

McCain’s honor saved him from the dishonor of providing the North Vietnamese with a stunning propaganda stunt, to

Show the world a “merciful” North Vietnamese government, while simultaneously creating a sense among other American prisoners that the “blue bloods” among the POW ranks would easily accept preferential treatment.

John McCain’s father was an admiral, at that time commander of naval forces in the Pacific. Imagine what the anti-war folks could have done with that.

However politics or business may work, an armed service needs people of honor. It is not a noble thing, but a practical thing.

Putting others ahead of oneself, being honest, and – to borrow an oft-uttered phrase – “being a Boy Scout” is a part of the mix which drill instructors have always tried to whip into raw recruits. Moral men simply make better, more-disciplined fighters who will put the unit above themselves. So as a consequence, former fighters are, more often than not, going to be good, moral people.

Of course, our liberal masters don’t really like this. They understand that the spirit of honor that permeates the armed forces is a culture that could one day be turned upon them.

That is why they work so hard to attack the US Armed Forces whenever they are accused of wrongdoing.