Dueling as a defense of or proof of Honor

[cthulu2016]

Thinking about Rand Paul's desire to kill Rachel Maddow for noting his rampant plagerism... is the idea that if Rachel Maddow was a good enough shot she could slander whoever she wanted and, as a bonus, murder them too?

The proposition that a person's honor is in direct proportion to their marksmanship with a pistol is one of the more repellent things we humans have come up with.

And this gets to the broader problem of thinking that might makes right, and also the equation of emotional intensity and legitimacy.

Every time any person, anywhere, for any purpose has done the, "Do you want to step outside" thing they are saying that big, dangerous people are right.

Whenever right is asserted through violence we are saying that if there is somebody out there who is even stronger or more violent then their position is superior to ours.

There is always somebody, somewhere who can beat you up. (Except for the top guy, who probably isn't reading this because he is beating somebody up)

Thus you beating someone up is bullying. Always. You are only beating them up because you are able to beat them up. If you were not able to beat them up then you couldn't be beating them up. QED.

And beating up someone you can beat up is like beating a woman or a child or a kitten... does it really matter whether the being you can beat up is in some protected category?


They are automatically in the category, "Beings you can beat up," which includes kittens, children, most women, smaller men, bigger men who are not proficient fighters, etc..


It is seen as cool, by some, when a neighborhood beats up a child molester, but not when a neighborhood beats up a minority passer-by. But c'mon... a neighborhood can beat up anybody and the category of mob violence should never be something to get too excited about.

Though it does make the heart race to see mob violence in support of ones own values. We are human beings, and human beings like that stuff.

But really... if Max Schmeling had thrashed Joe Louis like a rented mule would that have meant Nazis were right? Would it have argued for ongoing racial discrimination in the USA?

So how can the alternative be something to take pride in?

Trial by combat/ordeal involves the notion that God choses who wins fights. And it is childish, in the extreme. Almost all fights are won by good fighters, not by the most morally admirable person.

Beating somebody up can never (in the real world) be taken as proof of anything other than an ability to beat someone up.

You know how we won WWII? Was it our superior national character? Of course not! We may well have had superior character, but playing that game suggests that Poland and France and were really lousy places... hell, they had even lower national character than nazis!