Written by
I often find myself, like Zell Miller, longing for a certain outmoded form of settling disputes. In case you’ve forgotten, or simply missed it, Miller, on a March 2007 episode of Chris Matthew’s Hardball, responded to a typical Matthews flippancy with an angry “I wish we lived in the days when you could challenge a person to a duel.”
A fit of anger, perhaps—but he had a point.
Male responsibility/rites-of-passage groups, like Promise Keepers and Robert Bly’s “Iron John” movement, have acted over the years to revive certain male maturity rituals, the lack of which they consider the root of many of our society’s ills. No one has argued (seriously) to revive the duel as a means for men to settle points of honor.
Time was, in this fading republic, when a man was personally answerable for his insults, mockery, or abuse. The practice of dueling was once a widely popular—if discouraged—way of settling most questions of honor. Unsurprisingly, dueling was especially popular throughout the American south: a region where Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, a tale of medieval chivalry, outsold all books but the Bible. Andrew Jackson reportedly fought 14 duels before becoming president; statesman, Speaker-of-the-House, and “Great Compromiser” Henry Clay couldn’t negotiate his way out of two duels; Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain were both challenged, but managed to avoid their own gunfights.
The "Code Duello," developed in Ireland at the end of the 18th century, formalized a code of conduct for duelists and their seconds. “Imputations of cheating” in games of chance, insult to a lady, a blow (“strictly prohibited under any circumstances among gentlemen”): all were resolved by duel, either gun play or sword (the challenged’s choice).
I mention of all this because congressman’s Joe Wilson’s comment, “You lie”, would be sufficient, even today, to instigate a fist fight, depending on the setting. That he chose to utter it on the House floor, during a presidential address, is an abuse not merely of the office’s dignity, but of a much older convention.
If the duel has gone the way of the flintlock and the penknife, what of the code of gentlemanly conduct that was upheld by anachronisms like the duel?
There is a segment within the current opposition that brooks no reasonable rein on its emotions: that feels that only their grievances and anger are legitimate, and that acting out on that anger is the highest expression of patriotism. And without direct, immediate accountability for those expressions, they ask much of our indulgence. They feel free to act recklessly, to abuse their peers in a public forum—courage is high in a large crowd. In a decently-run democracy, the media would call into account these elements—instead of dutifully airing every public indecency as righteous outburst. Restraint and self-control are demonstrations worthy of our attention and support.
YouTube video is a scene from the Stanley Kubrick period film Barry Lyndon.