Honor is making a comeback in our national political discourse.  A recent Time article proposed honor as the best way to understand what makes John McCain tick, while the Obama campaign criticized a recent McCain television ad in language that produced the eye-catching headline, “Obama aide questions McCain’s honor.” Somewhere a McCain aide is polishing a set of pistols.

The reemergence of honor on the political stage and in the media’s lexicon is directly related to McCain’s candidacy (a semantic analysis of his speeches is fascinating). His family’s military heritage and his own service exposed him to almost the only remaining sphere of modern society in which the old ethic has any life. Honor has always been most closely associated with the military life. The duel, the only historical aspect of honor that people are widely familiar with today, flourished in the officer class of European armies in centuries past, revolving around the “point of honor,” a challenge or insult that could not be overlooked.

 But what the Time article fails to note are the s