When I published a book about honor last year, I was invited by friends and associates of another man who had written on the same subject to join an organization that was called something like the League Against Humiliating Punishments. I decided not to join because I thought I was rather in favor of humiliating punishments, at least for certain kinds of crimes. Street toughs, gang members, and many other varieties of young thugs are very susceptible to anything that has a dishonoring or humiliating effect. In the case of those who belong to gangs, many of the crimes they commit are committed for honor—that is, to distinguish themselves as formidable characters in the eyes of their fellow gang members—and so a correspondingly humiliating punishment for such crimes would seem to be particularly appropriate as well as effectual in deterring them. A day in the stocks being pelted by rotten fruit could only do muggers and other street criminals good, I think—at least if such a thing could ever happen in the twenty-first century.

It couldn’t, of course. Even if, by fiat, some dictator were to decree that gangsters and other criminals should be stocked or pilloried, there wouldn’t be anyone nowadays who would be willing to bring the rotten fruit, an essential part of the humiliation. Without the jeers of the on-lookers, it would be more honorable than shaming to the thugs and more shaming than cathartic for most of those who were expected to cooperate in