"What is left when honor is lost?"...Pubilius Syrus





"Have you ever known a time when there was so much talk about ethics--or so little practice of it?"...Thomas Sowell





I have been much preoccupied with honor lately. People are changing, and not for the better. Even here, where an hour's drive outside the city limits will put you squarely in the land of Green Acres...a sea of amber fields dotted sparely with modern-day versions of Pixley and Hooterville. In this once-genteel world, Eb and Bobby Jo are now likely to throw a fit and threaten legal action if the char crust on their bone-in sirloin isn't just the way they specified.

When I was in college and still planning to lead a normal professional life I read a great deal of ancient history, as it was my degree minor. My attention was always captured by the fall of great civilizations, specifically the greatest of them all--the Roman Empire. The fact that a society so driven and industrious as Rome could be withered and washed away was truly troubling to me. How could they build structures that survive mostly intact to this very day, but not maintain the civic fortitude to remain viable as a government longer than they did?

Those who see history as clinical study rather than cyclical practice will tend to make the argument that geopolitical change, breaking lines of supply and communication, internal strife, and power struggles caused the Empire to become vulnerable to barbarian invasion. True, these factors were the main technical causes for Rome's subjugation--but why did they occur?

Rome failed because of sloth and greed. The Roman people and the body of the government became lazy and self-serving. Middle and upper-class families paid mercenaries to fulfill their children's statutory military requirements, thus robbing generations of the discipline and wider understanding of the "real world"they would need to govern. A bloated, corrupt bureaucracy and legislature slowed progress on all things to a crawl and steadily drained the vitality of the most dynamic enterprise in the history of the world. The Roman people grew fat and cynical, comfortable in the erroneous belief that they were still as great and formidable as once they actually were. I'm positive that at the very moment the barabrian horde crested the seventh hill, a bunch of Roman waiters were standing around somewhere wondering when and why all the guests had gone "douchebag" on them, or whatever the Roman equivalent to "douchebag" was at the time.

The loss of honor, individually or collectively, is an insidious thing. While the greater concerns facing our society are a treatise for another day, my focus on this challenging evening is my own little Rome and the barbarians constantly assaulting our walls.

Simple common courtesy is the first casualty. "Please" and "thank you" are routinely replaced by military-style orders and dismissive waves. The request, that delicate creature, has been nearly driven extinct by its ugly and often ineffective cousin the demand.

Courtesy is quickly followed to the grave by simple honesty. The number of people who will thoughtlessly surrender their integrity over a reservation time, a misunderstanding of the dress policy, an improperly ordered meal, or some other insignificant bauble of personal prestige has gone from a deviant minority to an obnoxious mob similar to the "infected" in "28 Days Later".

An apparent side effect to this dishonesty is stupidity, because many of these doomed souls end up arguing with me about prior phone conversations that were had, unbeknownst to them, with me. I sometimes play a cruel little game--I silently count how many times they tell me that "I" promised them something over the phone before admitting that "I" am "me".

To live as a human being is to live. To live as a carrion beast, preying on the weaker, kinder, and more fatigued is simply despicable--but apparently all the rage.

A woman leaves our valet one evening and calls the next day to say the driver broke her power window. While our valet, like every other valet in the world, maintains a policy requiring that any claims for damage be made before departure, we try to be courteous and ask for estimates on a possible repair. This industrious woman shows up the next day with three estimates for our perusal--all over two months old. I don't know if she ever got her window fixed.

Our location in a large, old office building is problematic in many ways--but not for those in wheelchairs. My employer has two extended family members who rely on wheelchairs, and we have made certain that access is easy and legal. Nevertheless, we were the subject of an ADA violation lawsuit filed by a private citizen several months ago--the suit was framed so that it would be cheaper to settle than to fight--a little investigation revealed that the plaintiff has filed over 100 of these suits locally using the same attorney, and it seems that these lawsuits are this attorney's sole business. We will see them in court for the ADA claim, as well as for our counter-suit and for the attorney's hearing before the State Bar.


An elderly couple walk in early one Saturday evening and ask to have dinner. Once seated, the gentleman indicates his disinterest in the specials by telling his server to, "stop that shit and just get me my fucking drink. This is followed by, "take our fucking order", and "it'd better be fucking medium rare or I'm gonna take it back there and throw it at the fucking cook". All the while Mrs. F-Bomb is silent. When this server who is truly mild mannered, a complete professional, and nearly my size finally counseled the gentleman--sternly--to refrain from further profanity the guest was shocked to silence, another paper tiger. Mrs. F however made a bee-line to the front desk to voice her displeasure with, and I swear to God this is an exact quote, "their uppity waiter". I don't know if Fred and Ethel ever did have dinner that night, but I know they didn't have it in our restaurant.


I'm tired of bad people, and I am furious that the bad ones are starting to eclipse the good ones. The wonderful regular guest of ours who brought me a gift this evening just because she appreciates what little bit I do for her should be first in my thoughts as I write this, but instead it is the guy, with his gram of cocaine, that I had to escort off the property about thirty minutes ago.


Is every one, every thing, and every place just a bridge to be burned?



I need a day off...and a retirement party.