Sacred Honor

Many American citizens today spew-out quotes, phrases or paraphrases of men and women of both the past and the present mainly because we lack the capacity of original knowledge surrounding either the past or the present, in simpler terms we lack understanding of objects and events that others had or have, yet we are aware enough to recognize what others understood and think that by regurgitating their words or actions will place us on a higher intellectual plain than we rightly stand. We repeat these things until they become habitual, without understanding our own words, deeds or actions let alone those of others.
The reality of much we say or do is lost in this fog; ask a young person, why are we taught, that when meeting someone, we greet them by shaking hands? The understanding behind this is no different than the original purpose yet we will infer a hundred things not related of or with honest purpose which we created while forgetting why we did it in the first place.
I don’t want to get caught up in explanation of the particulars, so I will express this by an overall concept that we Americans today not only don’t understand but many have turned their backs on its in the very concept that used to be called “personal honor”
At the time of Americas founding most all true Americans had what they said was their sacred honor to wit it took precedence over wealth and life itself. Most Americans of my youth still held their sacred honor in higher regard than wealth and their personal life. But during my life little by little we have lost “personal honor”. Even as a young teenager most young men would protect with their very lives the female companion they were with. Not out a macho kind of reaction but out of respect for her femininity and perceived virtue. The girl may not have been safe from the young man she was with, but it was a certainty she was safe from all others.
Today way too many young men have no personal sacred honor to defend because this honor can only be found in personal responsibility and too many have none. This is true of many but not all it is a broad net I cast but is not the majority yet and I do see encouraging signs among the young.
The nineteen sixties and seventies were the worst of times in this regard and most of that generation, are pulling the strings in DC and academia and have wasted themselves in the field of personal honor.
GAP