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Honor

Honor is a hard concept. It used be thrown around a lot more casually, now not so much except perhaps in school honor codes and in military society.

I don't know that I have a good definition of honor. It permits lying such as when particularly good people hid Jews from the Nazis during the Holocaust. It permits killing in self-defense and in the defense of others. Honor is distinct from a strict list of things not to do and is (as most things are) dependent on context.

For me in my day-to-day life it comes up particularly in the context of power, namely how dangerous it is to give power to people without a sense of honor. This happens routinely; voters enjoy being lied to about easy solutions to long-term problems and we elect folk who lie not to save others but to gain power for themselves. This seems to be a clear-cut example of dishonor.

In my very small part of the world, academia, I run across (rarely, thank God) administrators who have gotten their rank through some form of deceitful behavior. Not surprisingly this deceit does not cease with the promotion.

These thoughts were prompted by the hiring by CBS of Mick Mulvaney, Trump's former acting Chief of Staff, as a political commentator. I should write elsewhere about the charade of hiring people who shade the truth from two sides to argue and pretending that this is journalism. (I'm looking at you CNN.)

To my knowledge Mulvaney was present when Trump enriched himself off of the taxpayers and fought hard to keep anyone from having access to the details. Trump went on after Mulvaney was fired to attempt to overthrow the US government after losing a presidential election. 

I believe that it is possible to recover honor, I guess because of a religious background that prioritizes forgiveness and grace. I also firmly believe that there is no forgiveness without repentance; were Mulvaney to be honorable I believe that he would still have years of repentance (decades?) to go before playing a role in public life. Not surprisingly the salary and access at CBS won out over any consideration of such repentance.

So, again, giving power to dishonorable people always ends badly. Not below average, actively badly. It's not that I held CBS to be a paragon but I am greatly disturbed that someone somewhere in their management thought that this was a good idea.


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