Kathleen Parker has the right idea but fails to deliver.
She tries to add some much needed historical context to Joe Wilson’s exclamation. The problem is that Parker seems to have ignored the vast historical scholarship about the use and abuse of the honor code in the 19th century South.
The classic is Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South by Bertram Wyatt-Brown. I highly recommend Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic by Joanne B. Freeman. I also like Scandal at Bizarre: Rumor and Reputation in Jefferson’s America by Cynthia A. Kierner. And let me plug by dissertation advisor, Jennings Wagoner, who wrote “Honor and Dishonor at Mister Jefferson’s University: The Ante-Bellum Years,” History of Education Quarterly 26:155-175.
