William, It’s the old, archaic definition. From the dictionary. I enjoy going back to a word’s etymological roots. It seems to still hold: a certain reserve underlies dignity. Weighing a matter before diving in. However I put a caveat on dignity. Gravitas… I’ll leave that to DICK Cheney. But I think he’s just trying to recover from the stigma of his first name. Also, I really agree with everything you say. Dr somebody, forgive me, is this rude? I can’t take the time to go back, in the post on winning an argument, I really appreciate his remarks, says that we should be sure that we really agree and are not just disagreeing on details. But get a load of this: I think that a lot of Americans would somewhat sympathize, with obvious reservations, with Muslim far right views. Can we deny that we have outgrown dignity and the East has retained it—even to an evil flaw with stoic suicides? While we ponder which brand of shampoo! Maybe what we need is a conservative movement in the country which conserves the environment, personal choice, equality, all the while conserving what present day conservatives lay to waste—dignity, pride, a certain implied personal limit—we can NOT be so large that we forget our real size—who was it, Wendell Berry, who said something like… to know who we are we must know where we are. And personal space is always as small as the circle of your real friends. And THAT is dignity. The whole masications of commerce, as it operates today, is so childish. Not to mention the HUGE comb-over fools leaning on the levers of opinion--who are ironic followers of it, opinion. Simply childish. A generation ago we would have given out Cracker Jacks. Right, Linda? Which is not to say that our youth won't see through it all. And become the most dignified generation, saving America... maybe the world, the planet, maybe a single little fishey with legs crawling out of the salty womb, the sea of regeneration.
