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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 25, 2024

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Quite to the contrary: an honorable man treats all people with honor, even those who are dishonorable. If you do anything less then you aren't honorable, you're just nicer to people you like.

Honor demands the dishonorable be dishonored. A oathbreaker's word should not be trusted, for instance. There are disadvantages to acting with honor; these can be outweighed by the advantages of being treated as if one is honorable, but only if those advantages exist. If honor requires the dishonorable be treated with honor, honor is self-defeating.

Would you like to look at some real-world examples? Because I think there's no shortage of people modifying their interactions on the basis or absence of honor in their counterparties. One easy example would be the concept of "Magdeburg Quarter", and its analogues throughout the history of warfare.

You don't have to like someone to consider them honorable. In fact, the entire point of honor is to separate personal feelings from behavior.

I'm sure you can find lots of examples of people who claimed to be honorable and did that. But those people were not, in fact, honorable. They showed it by not acting honorable.

Honor is like principles: if you only uphold it when it's convenient for you, then you don't actually have it. It's the times when it bites one in the ass where you see who is actually honorable/principled versus who merely claims to be.

They showed it by not acting honorable.

Whether they acted honorably or not is the dispute we are currently engaging in. Denying quarter to those who have denied it to others is not reducible to a "convenience"; there are no shortage of situations where simply letting the dishonorable behavior of others slide would absolutely be more convinient.

Honor is like principles: if you only uphold it when it's convenient for you, then you don't actually have it.

Certainly. Nevertheless, there remains a distinction between treating others with honor, and treating the dishonorable as though they were honorable. Honor is not a synonym of "nice". It can in fact be extremely convinient to pretend that people are honorable when they are obviously not, but doing so remains dishonorable.

Principles and Honor are about rules, and rules require enforcement. There must be an answer to the question "what follows?"