I support George W. Bush and the War on Terror!

When we tell a man that he may not challenge another to a duel, we are telling him that he must swallow any insult to his person, family or tribe, that anyone else is free to insult him in any way they wish. This is a shameful affront to human dignity.

People of bad character oppose dueling because it stands for several things that are a threat to the forces of evil.

Dueling allows men to act as chivalrous defenders instead of rapacious despoilers. If men do not prey upon women, how will feminists convince women that they need NOW to protect them and make their decisions for them? Dueling was always a male pursuit. There were a few instances of women dueling after the invention of the pistol, but these were rare. Male aggression needs its outlet; why not channel it constructively, as every period in history before this one has done? This would have the added benefit of holding up to little boys a model of appropriate violence. In an era when teachers actively encourage little boys to beat up their female classmates and nearly all parents - of both girls and boys - blithely permit this, any measure which helps to convey to little boys that there are acceptable targets for violence (other males of comparable station) will benefit society greatly. (Though a great deal more is needed to stop the unremitting school violence against little girls, chiefly the abolition of co-education.)

Dueling implies a consistent standard of conduct. The people intent on destroying civilization do not want that; they want chaos, they want expediency of the moment, they want to change the rules whenever they see fit. People willing to take responsibility for their actions and adhere to a standard of conduct will not join the forces of disorder.

A world in which duels happen is a world in which violence has rules. Only another man, of comparable station in life, may be challenged to a duel. By definition, duels have set procedures and rules, and define appropriate targets for violence. Persons of bad character do not want a gentleman throwing his glove in a scoundrel�s face and meeting him at dawn with pistols; they want males randomly attacking other people, including females, following only those rules they have the whim to impose on themselves.

Dueling has always been an upper-class pursuit. The enemies of civilization deplore the very existence of social classes and pretend, against all evidence, that classes can be abolished. They cannot, nor should they be. Anti-classists deplore anything that reminds them of the class system - good grooming, tasteful clothes, courtesy, restraint, soap, correct grammar. Dueling is only one of these unwelcome reminders that there are standards of behavior and that some people are more honorable - read: better behaved - than others.

Democrats will oppose the return of dueling because their entire stock in trade is mendacious insults. Only think of the long list of people libeled by Michael Moore who will line up to call him out, and even the most inept marksman could handle a target of such proportions. Of course, a gentleman cannot challenge a woman to a duel, but I will be happy to throw my glove in Anita Hill�s face to defend the honor of the good man she slandered. I anticipate that some will protest that freedom of speech might be threatened, forgetting that America had duels until well into the nineteenth century without disturbing the activities of muckrakers. I remind the reader that only a gentleman can be challenged to a duel, which makes journalists immune.

Without dueling, the uncouth may subject others to the most vile and humiliating insults they can think of without consequence. Their victims must swallow the insult and develop ulcers, while observers, at the gut irrational level at which nearly all human decisions are made, believe the victim must be a weakling for not defending himself even though rationally they must know there was no accepted way for the victim to defend himself; or the victims must descend to their attackers� level by responding in kind and subjecting bystanders to the unedifying spectacle of two people hurling progressively nastier remarks at each other until the victory goes, not to the one in the right or the most honorable, but to the most vicious; or the victim must, if physically able, simply assault his attacker, in whatever way the impulse takes him, with whatever weapons are to hand, and with only those rules his own whim and character imposes on him, and with the risk of legal penalties later.

Another major reason that statists oppose dueling is that it creates no opening for the interference of the government in people’s lives. There was a time when a man could defend his wife, sister, sweetheart or daughter from slander or importunance by challenging the blackguard to a duel. Nowadays the most he can do is divorce his wife, allowing the government to take away his children and property if it chooses and enriching the lawyers in the process, or sue his daughter’s despoiler, which has a similar result and can only be done if she is a minor. If the offended woman is not his wife or daughter, he has no recourse at all, not even one which will enrich lawyers. Similarly, a man who has himself been insulted must ask a court to decide for him whether or not he has legitimate grounds to be offended and if so, what penalties the offender should endure, a process which will have the usual effect of enriching lawyers. Opposition to dueling is inevitable in an era which wishes the government to control every aspect of human life. Dueling is for people who wish to stand on their own feet and be self-sufficient.

In a very real way, opposition to dueling represents a desire to decree how others may and may not die. Children who have not even begun puberty are taking their own lives these days because they cannot endure the years they are forced to spend in brainwashing camp, but the thousands of underage suicides every year are dismissed as an acceptable price to pay for the benefit of indoctrinating the nation into cultural Marxism. The thousands of people murdered every year by violent criminals released by a liberal justice system are also blithely sacrificed to the notion that hardened criminals deserve more compassion than law-abiding citizens. More than a million unborn babies are murdered at whim every year, but this is supposed to be the price we pay to protect the hypothetical 11-year-old raped by her uncle who is dragged out every time someone suggests the slightest limit on abortion.

But the thought of a small handful of men dying honorably and by their own choice for something they believe in is supposed to be a horrific waste of life!

With dueling, those inclined to be offensive will hesitate when they have the impulse to insult someone, knowing they may have to back up their words over rapiers at dawn. The victims of insults are able to keep their self-respect and that of others by defending themselves. Those who are courteous to others (the usual victims of such boors) do not have to feel that their courtesy makes them a victim of anyone inclined to insult them; they have the recourse of calling out someone who does not return their courtesy, which makes them free to be as courteous as they like instead of making periodic displays of nastiness as a pre-emptive strike. If someone gives sufficient offense to be slapped in the face with a pair of gloves, any onlookers observe the display of an honorable conflict carried out according to set rules, hopefully with dignity, far more edifying than today�s duel of escalating slurs, a form of combat suitable only to girls in junior high.

When challenged, the offender has the option of apologizing and accepting that he was in the wrong, if he does not wish to fight. Or he may not show up at the appointed time, thus keeping his life but losing his own honor and reputation, quite deservedly; with the option of dueling, the man who slinks away is remembered by all as the party in the wrong, rather than the victim who manfully endured the verbal attack of a person of bad character. The challenged - that is to say, the offender - has the right to choose weapons. In the era of dueling, men who believed that a challenge was inappropriate would sometimes display this by choosing absurd weapons, including tennis rackets or buckets of pig droppings, calling to mind when Alvin the Chipmunk challenged Dave to a duel and Dave chose water balloons as the weapon. The challenged might lose some status by choosing nonlethal combat, but the entire point of dueling is deter people from being rude enough to get themselves challenged to duels in the first place. Often duels were fought only to first blood, so the first little scratch meant that the duel was over and honor satisfied. In the case of pistols, it was not unusual for both combatants to deliberately miss. What mattered is that they both showed up, at dawn, with seconds, and pointed firearms or waved blades at each other for a few minutes, not really who won or if anybody died.

Finally, certainly sometimes people died in duels, and not always the deserving party. I confess I find myself bemused at this objection. But the risk that a small percentage of people will die does not in itself mean a measure should not be undertaken. One of the leading causes of death in America is car accidents, but only the sort of cranks who live on soybeans are suggesting that we give up cars. The Virginia Tech shootings inspired many of the half-baked to propose that guns be banned, but so far as I know, I was the only one who proposed that college should be banned. The teen suicide rate has skyrocketed since high school became compulsory and college became commonplace, but few people other than myself have considered that perhaps tossing our young people into these high-risk institutions is not such a good idea, since doing so guarantees that thousands of them will die by their own hand each year. We live in an era when the unborn are murdered at whim and liberals are making rapid strides towards having the disabled euthanized, as the Nazis did, yet able-bodied men must not be allowed to take an honorable risk. Finally, one can scarcely read a newspaper without learning of at least one child murdered by his parents - just this morning I read about a woman who ran over her daughter with a car - but even I do not suggest that we should therefore abolish parenthood. There is an acceptable risk when the net gain to society is high. In the case of dueling, I contend that the improvement in public behavior, self-respect and serenity far outweighs the small number of people who will die defending their honor.

A mafiaso once famously pointed out, �We only kill each other.� (During most periods, this has been true.) I confess that this argument carried a great deal of weight with me. No one was forced to join the cosa nostra. Anyone unwilling to run the inherent risks had the option of instead being a dentist or something. Why should we care if this handful of people mutually agree to subject each other to the death penalty?

Similarly, dueling would only put at risk a small segment of society. It is an upper-class pursuit. I expect that if dueling were made legal in America tomorrow the class lines between duelers would not be so sharply drawn as they once were, but nonetheless, probably it would remain something chiefly engaged in by the privileged. Does anyone really care if rich jerks kill each other?

People today are constantly complaining about the lack of civility in today�s world. Of course, some of those who complain are themselves ardent practitioners of said incivility. Nonetheless, in an era when civility is so rare that when it is practiced no one notices, it seems that one of civility�s most time-honored safeguards is badly needed.

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