The End of the Duel Marked the Death of Politeness Have you noticed how rude...

The End of the Duel Marked the Death of Politeness

Have you noticed how rude people have become? It is not just the influx of individuals from cultures that never internalized Western manners, it is the heritage Americans themselves. Politeness is decaying from within. As the cultural fabric that once demanded civility erodes, even those raised in the Western tradition grow coarser. The constant exposure to cultures where manners are irrelevant has accelerated the collapse. But there is a deeper reason: the elimination of consequence.

In the West, we once lived under a high-trust, high-responsibility order: where politeness was not optional, it was survival. You did not mouth off, insult a man’s wife, or lie in public because you would be called out, corrected, or cut down.

Politeness was not just etiquette, it was the visible surface of a deep system of enforced responsibility. Every word spoken carried weight, because failure to speak with care could result in social correction or physical consequence. The duel, or its lesser forms,public shaming, ostracism, loss of face, was not arbitrary violence; it was a mechanism by which men took responsibility for their words and actions.

That system died the moment the duel was outlawed.

This shift marked more than the end of a tradition, it signaled a civilizational change. The tools by which honor and accountability were maintained in the public sphere were deliberately dismantled.

Today, such mechanisms, including public challenge and personal confrontation, are not only absent; they are explicitly prohibited by legal codes and institutional norms. Conflict resolution has been outsourced to disinterested bureaucracies, denying individuals the right to enforce reputation or demand redress. As a result, no one is responsible for what they say, and no one is responsible for the reputation they earn. We have become an anti-reputational, anti-honor culture. Such a culture is repugnant to any man who values honor and accountability.

The outlawing of the duel was the institutional signal that male reciprocity, and the right to enforce it, was no longer tolerable in a feminizing, centralizing, pacifying order. In its place came what I call “Nanny Culture”: a culture in which all risk, conflict, and responsibility are outsourced to authority figures acting as moral babysitters. A culture of bureaucratic arbitration, of safety-first infantilization, of institutional monopolization of consequence.

We replaced face-to-face correction with “due process.” We replaced public honor with institutionalized humiliation rituals. We replaced earned respect with compulsory tolerance.

The result? Rudeness without consequence. Disrespect without penalty. Impoliteness as a low-cost, high-payoff strategy. The polite society collapses when impolite actors can operate with impunity.

When no man fears the duel, no man needs to mind his tongue.

Restore reciprocity. Reinstate consequence. Reclaim order.

Bring back the duel.