DUBROVNIK, Croatia—Twenty-one episodes of the popular HBO series "Game of Thrones" were filmed in this city of 16th-century high walls and complicated history. One of them was shot along a section of St. Dominic Street, known as the walk of shame.
The very concept of shame seems foreign to us today, like the stockades of the American Puritan era which were designed to humiliate those who violated what were then cultural norms and serve as a warning to others not to tread similar paths.
After Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) was recently censured by the Republican House for promoting the Russia collusion fiction in the 2020 election, Democrats chanted "shame, shame, shame." It's nice to know they have some standards besides the double standards they usually display.
At the end of the LGBTQIA+ community's celebration of "Pride Month," it might be worthwhile to consider some of the downsides of pride and its opposite — shame, or humiliation.
Once again, definitions can be helpful in focusing the mind. Dictionary.com defines shame as "the painful feeling arising from the consciousness of something dishonorable, improper." Among shame's antonyms is humiliate: "made to feel a painful loss of pride, self-respect, or dignity, deeply embarrassed or put to shame."
The obvious question becomes what happens to a culture that regards fewer things as dishonorable and improper? Put another way, suppose we all get to define what is honorable and proper? Is shameful also individually defined, or does it still have a universal application? If left to the individual, can anything then be called improper and dishonorable?
Last Friday in New York City during the city's annual Drag March, hundreds of drag performers marched through Manhattan's East Village chanting "We're here, we're queer, we're coming for your children." No reporter I've seen asked them what they meant by "coming for your children." No politician appeared to denounce the statement.
Before arriving in Dubrovnik, I stayed in a hotel in Rome which had a large rainbow flag at the check-in desk and just in case I missed the point, a statement about pride on the wall. That I, and perhaps others, might be offended by this corporate woke-ism and promotion of what Scripture calls an "abomination" apparently is of no concern to virtually every major corporation.
How much more are we willing to tolerate before decadence tightens its grip so strongly that there is no escape, and we are left to the consequences of our own base desires? Other nations that have allowed norms to be violated did not live to see future decades or centuries. What makes America — or Europe, which has seen many countries and cultures rise and fall — think we can escape history's judgment?
Cersei Lannister is recognized as one of the cruelest villains in "Game of Thrones."
One summation of her journey down the walk of shame episode says: "The queen's hair is shaved off, she is exposed before the entire population of King's Landing, her sins are announced and she, naked, has to walk barefoot through the streets, in front of her subjects, while a fair with a bell screams: shame, shame, shame. In less than a few minutes, the population spat, cursed, and threw feces at the Queen."
Perhaps America needs its own walk of shame. If we had one, the traffic would likely be pretty heavy, but the results might be the redemption of our corrupt and tainted souls.
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Cal Thomas, America's most-syndicated columnist, is the author of 10 books.