Quote:

---

...it underlies every single thing that Reynolds does. Honor is his roadmap in life, his way of finding his way through the wilderness. It says to him at every turn: This thing I can do and live with myself; this thing I can't. It is in the end what makes him a "good" man, in the conventional sense, and an American, and, ultimately, a Southerner.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by spikeandjezebel:
"I like smackin' 'em!" - Jayne Cobb

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by zoid:
Browncoats:

Having read the Texas Mercury article, I have to say I agreed with most of the analysis of Firefly, though with very little of the racial analysis. As a southerner, and a native Texan to boot, I too have argued that Mal is a man of honor, and that he has a code of chivalry.

Quote:

---

...it underlies every single thing that Reynolds does. Honor is his roadmap in life, his way of finding his way through the wilderness. It says to him at every turn: This thing I can do and live with myself; this thing I can't. It is in the end what makes him a "good" man, in the conventional sense, and an American, and, ultimately, a Southerner.

---

Others have disagreed. Their points of view have value to me, but I am ruled by my own sensibilities. As the author of the article's point of view and my own coincide, while others do not, perhaps the ideals of honor and chivalry are somehow uniquely Texican. I certainly hope not...

---

Quote:

---

But I disagree with his other analyses in substantial ways. Certainly, it's true that the Civil War was primarily about states' rights, and that the abolition of slavery was a rider, an afterthought on the part of Union politicians. But that does not mean that abolition was not a worthy goal. How that cause was forwarded is not important, that it was forwarded is the only thing matters. That's the kind of justice honor demands: that no human being be held in bondage by another. From that standpoint, the Mercury reviewer's a shithead (pardon my French, but some ideas deserve to be called what they are).

While I don't believe in feeling guilty for what my forebears wrought, I also don't believe in defending or denying what they did.

---