What is honor? According to the Oxford Dictionary on my Mac, it's respect, esteem, or a woman's chastity. I'm only arguing for the first two definitions here. The problem today's young whippersnappers have—this so-called Millennial Generation—is that we're way more focused on feeling good about ourselves and our buddies in the now than we are on being socially proper or respectable over the long haul. In general, we jump from job to job as we get bored, get married when we feel like it instead of when we're "supposed" to, and value instant gratification above reputation and dignity (because that picture of you in high school with a toilet seat around your neck, beer in hand, is WAY too funny to keep off of Facebook).
How can we go about re-instilling honor in the West? It obviously works well for our Asian counterparts. A Japanese third grader vying to protect his family's honor academically could run laps around most English-speaking college freshman. Thanks to a national sense of honor, communist China has its act together well enough to own a quarter of the US debt (though even China crosses the street when it sees European debt coming down the sidewalk). If history has any answers for us, we may find that re-legalizing duels to defend our honor will work wonders in revitalizing us so that we are better people physically, mentally, and socially.
For anyone who favors bringing back the draft, this should make sense: people who tremble for their lives are far more likely to appreciate what they're defending when what they're defending demands it. It's kinda like Stockholm syndrome but cooler. Tell people their honor is at stake whenever someone drops a glove at their feet or builds a mosque in Lower Manhattan, and you'll have a clan of honor-hungry people looking to off anyone and anything that threatens them. After all, that's what made Rome great!
Duels work like this: you offend the honor of some holier-than-thou person with a rod up his backside, he gets his underpants all in a twist, and then he challenges you to defend your own honor with your life. You either accept the challenge, or slink away solemnly to live out your days in shame. If you accept, you get to pick the weapons, be they swords, pistols, or perhaps sausages. You and the Holy One each pick a best mate to try and litigate on your behalf first, and if that doesn't work, then GAME ON! Alternatively, if you're more hands-on you can duel by partaking in "gouging", which is more like wrestling with an aim to gouge out the eye of your opponent or—less preferably all around—mutilate his genitals. This was prevalent in the American south of the plantation era, where it would probably still be favored today by the best trailer trash still vying for Darwin Award nominations.
The constant, giddy excitement one would feel from never knowing when he'd be invited to a duel would lead to some pretty great perks. One, people would stop slagging on their least loved brethren for fear of death or castration. Two, everyone would have a reason to take fencing classes, which would both invigorate the economy and trim down the increasing population of fat people. Three, everyone would have a great new story to tell about themselves or their friends. And four, losers of gouging would have a fabulous opportunity to put on pirate costumes and put their eye patches to good use at Halloween parties.
Sure, there might be some opponents to this, such as the Catholic Church who would call this practice barbaric or ungodly, but they also banned crossbows and contraception so their sense of fun is a bit passé. Politicians might also make an example of the duel between Alexander Hamilton, the original architect of the US economic system, and Aaron Burr who was VP to Thomas Jefferson at the time. But, Jefferson didn't like either guy so most of us don't really care.
The long and the short of it is, duels are a great "Invisible Hand" that would whip us into shape both physically and socially. And given what we've learned about prison reform, being in better physical shape makes us feel better about ourselves. When we feel better about ourselves, we are more likely to get along socially and might even achieve world peace. Then, every Miss World contestant would see her cliché wish come true and fall into a fit of ecstasy, and really, who wouldn't want to see that?
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