Character can be variously interpreted, but among American men, it’s traditionally been held to comprise an interlocking set of personal virtues:
- Honesty,
- Responsibility,
- Justice,
- Courage.
Those virtues are at the heart of the American mythos: our notions about what we are as a nation and our pre-eminence in the world. Our convictions about ourselves propelled us into several wars in which, strictly speaking, there was no American interest at stake. We’ve upheld the mythos in all but a very few occasions.
Well, actually, we didn’t. Our men at arms have upheld it for us. The rest of us mostly watched it on TV.
An informal, popular definition of the “manly man” is “the man who runs toward the sound of the guns.” This might overemphasize the martial mindset, but it is nevertheless striking in its penetration. He who exhibits personal courage – who willingly moves toward strife and violence, on the chance that he can contribute usefully to the resolution thereof – is more likely than not to possess the other critical virtues that make up character. He who hangs back, hoping that others will do what’s necessary, is more likely than not to be weak in the other virtues as well.
