santa and honour

[SF & P Webb]

If my parents don't believe in Santa Claus, why have they tried so hard to get me to believe in him? Indeed, why have they saved money all year long -- or, as so often nowadays, maxed their credit card to the limit -- in order that I would continue to remain under such a costly illusion? Why do my own parents so empathically insist that I go on giving the tribute that is theirs to someone else instead -- especially when that someone else doesn't happen to exist, and with whom it is not even possible to score transcendental brownies points, as with God? Does this -- does any of this -- make sense? If Christmas is just an elaborate hoax, it would appear to be a hoax perpetuated at the expense of the hoaxer ...

... You do not have an army if every soldier must be dragged screaming and kicking to do his duty, nor a church if its members need guns pointed at their heads before they put their money in the offering bowl, nor a state where all must serve long prison terms before they are willing to pay their taxes. If the vast majority of your citizens are no longer willing to do their duties freely and spontaneously, then either these duties will not be done, or else force must be used to see that anything is done at all.

 

Thus no society that hopes to preserve its liberty can afford to lose its sense of honor -- a truth that libertarians are all too apt to overlook. The invisible hand can achieve nothing if men refuse to behave honorably, as Adam Smith, author of The Theory of the Moral Sentiments, was keenly aware.

 

But there is a problem with honor: it cannot defend itself intellectually. A person who feels honor-bound to undertake an obligation is not doing it for a reason, and, if pressed to give one, often comes up with the most absurd nonsense imaginable. He is doing it because his code of honor makes him do it, because he could not hold his head up if he didn't, because he would die of shame if he did otherwise.

 

Let this always be a warning sign that you are trifling with a person's code of honor: when you see that the person with whom you are dealing continues to hold passionately to a conviction that he is completely unable to defend logically or, even, articulate rationally. When he feels strongly, but can't explain why -- then tread carefully.

 

Upholding Illusions

 

In our time, tragically, it is all too often the case that intellectuals, both liberal and conservative, refuse to take these warning signs seriously. By their training, they are accustomed to analyzing logical arguments and evaluating empirical evidence, and when neither is forthcoming, they are accustomed to suspect that they are dealing merely with a superstition or an irrational prejudice. Or, even more unfortunately, they apply their own dialectical skills to the pathetic attempts at self-justification offered by their less sophisticated opponents -- a move that only sharpens the sense of anguished humiliation of those whom feel they are right, but simply cannot explain why ...

... Nine times out of ten, those who profit least from our society are the ones who feel themselves most honor-bound to support it; and to uphold, by their own cheerful doing of their duty, those institutions on which we all depend. They are the ones who cling irrationally to traditional Christmas, to traditional marriage, to traditional families, to traditional religion, to traditional patriotism. They are the ones who never insist on their rights, because they are too preoccupied carrying out their duties.

 

We may think they are dupes, but they do not. Indeed, they cannot even comprehend how anyone could possibly think this of them. For they know a secret that their more enlightened fellow citizens do not: they know that without their own irrational sense of honor, our entire society would come crashing to the ground.

http://www.techcentralstation.com/122403C.html