I just capped my Wimbledon Hooligans fable with a nice, pat moral:

We must never confuse the ethical with the moral.

Ethics are binding within their particular ethos. Morality is universally binding.

My mistake has been moralizing respect.

Respect is an ethical principle, not a moral principle.

I prefer respect, of course, because I flourish only in a respectful ethos. But this is always where the moralizing vice strikes. “What is good for me defines what is good.”

The world as it is right now has very little genuine respect. We have only the remains of respect — vestigial manners. Manners have degraded into behaviors having nothing to do with establishing or maintaining mutual respect. In work settings, manners are instruments of professional depersonalization. In social settings manners are class performances. In corporate-political life manners govern socially-acceptable forms of petty sadism — subjugation, humiliation, recreational coercion, etc.

So be it.

The new program:

• Do not cheapen respect by throwing it on the street like shriner’s candy. Do not run around expressing every admiration you feel. In the market, oversupply cheapens.

• Exchange respect with the precious respectable few, who are capable of receiving, valuing and reciprocating respect in kind. Treat the rest with cheerful dispassion. It is nobody’s fault that they have become whatever they are, but it is also not to their credit.

• Just as liberalism is an ethic at home only in a liberal ethos, respect is an ethic at home only in a respectful ethos. Do not follow the rules of a game nobody else is playing, and then resent them for not playing along. Mutuality is for the mutual.
• The world is what it is. The world is not obligated to conform to your ideal or bow to your judgment.
• Lower daily dose of vitamin B, and start loading up on vitamin N.