Two things I have noticed in the last few days on the Left: the reaction to Rep. Wilson, and a continual repetition of this picture. It occurs to me, as a Southerner, that someone ought to explain to our coastal, urban friends what is going on. Ms. Maureen Dowd asserts that Rep. Wilson left out a disdainful word, "...boy," in his accusation that the President was a liar. In this, she expresses what she has understood of the South, which is that it hates blacks. There is rather a lot more to understand to get a clear picture. I'll try to put it in the briefest of terms, since this matter has filled several books. In short, the South is still -- outside of its larger cities, which are now just like everywhere else -- an honor culture.

This phrasing ["You Lie!"] is not a "breach of protocol," as the NYT would have it, but part of another protocol. Kenneth R. Greenberg, scholar of dueling (and baseball, oddly enough; he had some interesting things to say on the intersection of those two things in the post-war American South), noted:

Only certain kinds of insulting language and behavior led to duels. The central insult that could turn a disagreement into a duel involved a direct or indirect attack on someone's word -- the accusation that a man was a liar. To "give someone the lie," as it was called, had always been of great consequence among men of honor. As one early-seventeenth-century English writer noted, "It is reputed so great a shame to be accounted a lyer, that any other injury is canceled by giving the lie, and he that receiveth it standeth so charged in his honor and reputation, that he cannot disburden himself of that imputation, but by the striking of him that hath given it, or by chalenging him to the combat."

Now, another scholar named Greenberg -- I don't know if they are related -- wrote a piece on the Jews of Savannah, Georgia. I believe this is the piece, although you can't see the relevant part if you don't have access to an academic library. If memory serves, it recounts the story of how Jews in Savannah were accepted into the community early compared to the rest of the country, as proved by the fact that they were challenged to duels and fought them; for, as Kenneth Greenberg describes at length, gentlemen dueled only with equals. If they were challenged in the terms of honor, and allowed to fight as honorable men, then they were equals in fact.

Three breaths before Rep. Wilson shouted out that President Obama was a liar, President Obama had said that "prominent politicians" who spoke to concerns about potential end-of-life issues were spreading "a lie." Every Congressman present understood themselves to be a prominent politician; those who had expressed concerns about that issue, then, stood accused to their faces of lying. Rep. Wilson, of South Carolina, responded in anger and in kind.

It may be hard to understand if you aren't from the South, or a similar culture: but "giving the lie" in this case is the furthest thing from a mark of racial disrespect. It is a mark of accepted equality.

If a Southerner accepts you as an equal, and you call him a liar to his face, you will have to fight him. That is courtesy, not discourtesy: he wouldn't bother to fight you if he didn't respect you. He would snort at you, or strike you, but he would not respond to you in the language of honor.

Of course, these days we do not duel, and the only way such an encounter can terminate is with an apology. One was offered, and accepted -- the wager of battle, such as it is today, has been fulfilled according to the ancient forms. It may look strange to places that have not known such wagers in their lifetimes, but this sort of exchange was once the lifeblood of American politics. The South, as always, sustains.