a couple things from the Atlantic wire

[intertribal]

First, a study finding that "almost twice as many Americans would prefer to have a son rather than a daughter."  If you actually look at Gallup's report, though, this has been pretty typical since 1941.  Basically, it's because of men - 49% of men prefer a boy while 22% prefer a girl, and 31% of women prefer a boy while 33% prefer a girl.  For some people (not all) I think there's a little bit of "I want someone like me" involved in this kind of thing, both for psychological reasons and because you "know" how to raise someone of your own gender.  Like when my mother was pregnant, she wanted a girl and my dad wanted a boy - or rather, he "expected" a boy because he "could not believe" that he would not have a boy.  But women seem to have less of this than men.

This, however, is interesting - "both male and female Republicans are more likely to want a boy than are their gender counterparts who identify as Democrats."  Education level is also interesting - among respondents with a high school diploma or less, 44% prefer boys and 25% prefer girls; among postgraduate respondents, it's 32% for boys and 33% for girls. 

Anyway, the Atlantic suggests that while Americans may - like other cultures/societies - prefer boys to girls, they don't actually do anything to try to get more boys.

Second, Texas is trying to decide whether or not to allow the Sons of Confederate Veterans to have a confederate flag license plate.  The vote is delayed because the ninth member of the DMV board died and they have to pick a replacement.  Nine other states already have allowed the group such a license plate, and they sued Florida when Florida said no, leading a federal judge to decide that Florida was engaging in "viewpoint discrimination."  (My mother said "In that case I'm going to get a license plate that says the Tea Party are fuckers and if they say I can't have it then I'll sue Nebraska for viewpoint discrimination)  Jerry Patterson, a son of a confederate veteran, spoke in favor of the license plate by arguing that confederate veterans served honorably in the Civil War, just as he did in Vietnam:

"Not all things in Vietnam were done in a manner that I'm proud of. I served in Vietnam but I'm not proud of what happened. This is history and any time you commemorate history and those who served honorably, be they... the Sons of Confederate Veterans, I think they should be honored.”

Beyond the license plate thing: this is why I hate the word "honor."  Proud of what happened and yet still have served honorably.  Actions you can't be proud of, but done in an honorable way.  I think "honorable" and all its variants should be replaced in that sentence with "obedient," or some word that signifies "did what I was told to do by people with more power than I."  Then again, pretty much every military group in the world seems to call themselves honorable no matter what they're doing, so I'm not sure ethics has anything to do with "honor" now anyway.

Comments

[barry-king.livejournal.com]

Honour is such a loaded word, isn't it? There are two meanings here, one sort of like "sanctify" where the soldiers are "honoured". Then there's a second, where you honour your committments—not a bad thing, all told. It's definitely up there on the species survival traits to have a trustworthy bulwark of defenders who won't renege at the last moment. We honour their sense of honour.

But there's a third that's missing, and that's something more along of the lines of "standing up for what's right," as in "acting in an honourable way." There are shades of fair play and respect for one's enemy in that one. When I think of the word "honour", that's the one I think of.

Granted, the Sturmabteilung version of what this means is probably a far cry from what I think it does, but the important point is that it's the individual's choice of behaviour. Naturally, it can be harnessed by the unethical in authority, but there's still something important about having a strong moral identity and acting in accordance with same.

But in war, things get messy; unclear. And here's an interesting conundrum that I've never been able to unravel: Is it more honourable to take out a platoon of the enemy with a suicide vest, or to do the same from a chair in Stuttgart using a remote-controlled drone?

Does the word "honour" even apply in either instance? Is war inherently dishonourable?

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Is war inherently dishonourable?

My instinct is to say yes.

I agree with you that your third definition is the one I think of too, and yet it also seems to me that when most people talk about "serving honorably" it's not so much about a strong moral identity as it is about doing what your country tells you to do without hesitation, which is more like the second definition but not quite. After all, "just following orders" isn't supposed to be a positive thing anymore.