Neo-Confederacy promotes a primitive sort of honor that privileges the aristocracy who feel to the manor born and entitled to shape the public reality irrespective of their private failings.
Public reality can be shaped. It is driven hard by the dictates of an honor code the aristocrats feel born to defend. In the case of Southern confederates, that honor was much about a notion of racial superiority; in the case of dying cultures, the honor is about preserving a long past glory. In both cases the public reality is forced and defended fiercely in the face of contravening evidence.
Where the honor must be earned, the adherents to this code must earn it either by heroic deed or by heroic sacrifice.
Honor is what makes the social classes distinct from each other.
The class system entitles the upper class to shape reality by edict. Honor is thus the ultimate instrument of authority. “Why is reality thus and so? Because I said so, and I will kill the first man who gainsays it.”
The first responsibility of honor is leadership. To lead in battle, and then to lead in government are the two prerogatives of the upper classes, and both do so as a matter of honor.
When honor entitles the leader to dictate public reality, it surely allows him to dictate the law. Honor is a mild form of magic; and magic, a primitive version of enchantment. The honor code believes in the public domain, one can say it and it is so.
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