Honor for good or bad

I vegging in front of the tv as i do far to often. Watching two what have so far been lackluster shows on Fox (entertainment not news). Honor enters into the second show, so a brief rundown. Serial rapist and murder kills nun. Detectives find one surviver and she doesn't want testify. they convince her to and promise to protect her. In flash backs to the 16th,17th century?, throughout the lead detective's girlfriend is raped buy the lord of the house?. He makes an insensitive comment then decides to duel the lord. Kills him and leaves town because it wasn't his place to challenge. Flash forward the witness leaves protection and is found died. Turns out she lost a sister back in India to an honor killing. Her other sister called her to meet and her father killed her.

early on our detective friend( 400 yrs old to explain the 2-300 yr flashback, it is tv) laments that honor doesn't exist in America. I am with him. Later after killing the lord he ponders whether it was honorable to kill him of if it was just revenge and if thats all honor really was, well something like that. i should have written this while it was still fresh. At the time i thought it was a little odd. At the end there are the comments about "how is it honorable the kill someone for being raped" and "she deserved better than that". True, but looking at it now, are they taking the extremes and bash honor in general? Not where i was going.

The thought i was having which is the more palatable version today is the only thing evil needs to win is for good men to do nothing. To extend that one does they think is right despite the legal and social consequences as well as ignoring personal hardship. In short honor. The problem is when it goes to far,no. When the good man thinks he is one but is not. Killing an unapologetic rapist i have no problem with. I likely couldn't do it myself but i would not be able to send someone else to jail for it. Of course i am not sure that they would even let the fact that the "victim" was a rapist. However killing your daughter for not being "pure" anymore is inexcusable. In that case i think it is more a selfish move to protect his own honor. Is disowning her not enough?

In the end i am saying that as much as i like to encourage honorable actions that means encouraging actions of those who think they are honorable. I think i can live with that. I do wish the law was more flexible. Should i face jail for hitting someone once after they untruthfully slurring members of my family repeatedly to put it nicely?