Shame is an interesting and difficult topic. I touch on it at the outset of my Impromptus today. Earlier this week, four Japanese basketball players apologized for bringing “disgrace” on their country. What had they done? While at the Asian Games in Jakarta, they solicited prostitutes.
One of the players said, “I deeply apologize for our careless act that has brought disgrace not only on basketball fans but also on all of the Japanese people.” The head of the delegation said, “I just feel a sense of shame.”
That is very Japanese. It is not very American. I would not trade our culture for theirs. Nonetheless, I think they have a point.
I’ll give you a memory from 1995 — late in the year. Colin Powell announced that he was not going to run for president. He used the occasion to make some general remarks about America. He said that we lacked a sense of shame. Shame needed to be brought back to our society.
This thrilled a lot of us conservatives (though few of us were so pro-Powell as to want him to be president). Hardly anyone talked that way.
Bill Clinton was reelected and a couple of years later the Lewinsky scandal broke. There was a lot of lawbreaking in that drama: perjury, subornation of perjury, witness tampering, etc. But a lot of us conservatives said: What about the “underlying facts”? (That was a phrase of the time.) What about the use of an intern for sex in the Oval Office?
Where was shame, where was honor?
Which brings us to today. Many people are speaking of lawbreaking, including the violation of campaign-finance law. Fine. Obedience to the law is important. But what about the other law, if I may? What about the paying off of porn stars and Playboy bunnies? And lie after lie? These things matter too, don’t they? Is that hopelessly square?
For some years, I was not a great fan of John McCain (I am now). My admiration grew during the 2008 campaign. He was the GOP nominee that year, as you remember. In August, there was a forum at Saddleback Church in California. McCain and the Democratic nominee, Barack Obama, appeared. One of the things that McCain said — less than three months before the election — was this: “My greatest moral failing — and I have been a very imperfect person — is the failure of my first marriage. It’s my greatest moral failure.”
I thought that was pretty stand-up.
When I write this way, I often hear from people on the right who say, “Moral behavior is a luxury we can’t afford these days. We have a war to win: a war against the Left.” I understand the sentiment. I have been warring against the Left virtually all my life. But I don’t count moral behavior to be a luxury but a sine qua non of success. If a party or a movement or a people gives up on moral behavior — we give up on a lot. More than is wise.
Anyway, I’m in a mood to give two cheers, if not the full three, to shame.