On the day of Donald Trump’s inauguration as president, a well-known neo-Nazi named Richard Spencer gave an interview to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. He was on a street corner in Washington, near an anti-Trump protest. During the interview, one of the protesters punched Spencer in the head, without warning, and ran away.
There’s no better way to give a neo-Nazi the moral high ground than punching him when he isn’t looking. No matter what you think of Spencer, no one has cause to sucker-punch him. Indeed, no one has cause to sucker-punch anyone. Punching a man whose back is turned is a cowardly and dishonorable act. Someone should point out to the “anti-fascism” protester who punched Spencer that sneak attacks and undeclared wars are taught in Nazism 101.
Previously Spencer had paid homage to Donald Trump with a Nazi salute; the televised punch turned him into a man with a legitimate grievance. You might, however, argue that the man who punched Spencer has a legitimate grievance, too. Yet the American government has made it very difficult to resolve points of honor honorably. Because dueling is illegal.
Though variously tolerated until the end of the 19th century, dueling has been illegal in the United States from the beginning. When Aaron Burr shot Alexander Hamilton, he was charged with murder. But why should he have been? Hamilton consented to the duel and willingly took his life in his hands. Suicide may have been illegal at the time, but it isn’t now. In modern America, not only does the law protect the right to kill one’s self, it also—in accordance with Roe v. Wade—guarantees a right to privacy and a right to body-decisions. The many statutes and lawsuits that gradually undid the criminalization of homosexuality also guarantee the right of consenting adults to do what they like with one another.
So by what right, then, does the government keep dueling illegal?
One cogent argument against legal dueling is the inherent unfairness of fights between physically ill-matched opponents. This is the reason boxing is divided into weight classes. Fortuitous in the discussion of punching a neo-Nazi, it is also the reason that when the elderly member of Parliament Daniel O’Connell insulted the future prime minister Benjamin Disraeli for (among other things) being a Jew, Disraeli called out not O’Connell but his much more able-bodied son. The Iron Duke himself, the Duke of Wellington, called Disraeli’s challenge “damned gentleman-like.”
We’re fortunate that American ingenuity has already provided a solution to this problem, summed up in a rhyme I learned as a kid at my local gun range: God made some men big and he made some men small / Sam Colt came along and he evened them all. Pistols are a great leveler. Contrary to the impression given by Hollywood, shooting a gun accurately is not a particularly exotic skill, and there is no class of supermen who can hit any target at any distance. In the absence of quick-draw contests, pistol duels are simply a good way to prove how seriously you take something, by risking your life on even ground and footing.
Opponents of legal dueling—who will probably come from the religious right and the moralizing left—may fear a bloodbath. But they would be wrong, for three reasons.
First, American dueling culture (such as it was) is long dead. Legalizing duels would no more cause a mass resurgence of dueling than legalizing polygamy would cause an epidemic of harems. Those uninterested in dueling would simply refuse challenges, and public opinion wouldn’t judge them very harshly. It’s only the blowhards who would be embarrassed. Second, inasmuch as a form of dueling culture does still exist—reciprocal gang murder, for instance—organized, code-duello duels might make the process safer: less collateral damage, more chances for seconds to negotiate a settlement. Think of it like needle exchange. And third, dueling is no doubt cathartic in the extreme and would reduce the rate of stress-induced heart disease among survivors.
An ideal society would have neither neo-Nazis nor sucker-punching. Each in its own way is a threat to civilization. Duels might deter both—and Make America Polite Again.
Joshua Gelernter is a writer in Connecticut.
