One of the cookies I’ve gotten for doing this is the opportunity to ‘meet’ (and sometimes even meet) some really amazing people. There was a flurry of well-wishing emails among bloggers on New Year’s, and one that I sent to Jeff Cooper started me thinking as I rode in this morning.
I told him what a pleasure it was to have made his acquaintance, and that I was impressed by his intelligence, knowledge, and most of all by the obvious decency that shines through everything he writes.
And I started realizing that decency is another of those undervalued traits; it is not unique to the Left or Right, or much appreciated by either. As Jimmy Carter showed, it alone is not enough for a leader. In fact it may be a value that is absent in most great leaders…Churchill, Roosevelt, Truman…hmmm I need to think about this…but it is a value I cherish in the people I choose to associate with and a value that is somehow demeaned in our culture.
We value honesty, passion, those who hew to absolute values. Simple decency isn’t enough.
That’s too bad. From the dictionary:
decent [di snt]
adj.
1. polite or respectable: a decent family.
2. proper and suitable; fitting: a decent burial.
3. conforming to conventions of sexual behaviour; not indecent.
4. free of oaths, blasphemy, etc.: decent language.
5. good or adequate: a decent wage.
6. Informal. kind; generous: he was pretty decent to me.
7. Informal. sufficiently clothed to be seen by other people: are you decent?
[from Latin decens suitable, from decree to be fitting]
We’re talking bourgeois values here. And one of the things that I’m muddling toward is an articulation and defense of those values.
Damn, even I can’t believe that I’m doing this…
(forgot a clause)