First, I'd question what you think "honor" means. There are people who think stoning their daughter over dating someone outside their social group is the honora

First, I'd question what you think "honor" means. There are people who think stoning their daughter over dating someone outside their social group is the honorable thing to do. So concepts of "honor" are wishy-washy at best. Your second sentence sounds like it's suggesting that Rockefeller and Carnegie knew what honor meant & that this is somehow a good thing. They probably had a concept of their image & perhaps even moral crisis later in life which made them turn philanthropic. Just because one has a concept of honor doesn't really do society any good because it doesn't mean they're actually honorable people. Keeping up the image of honor isn't the same thing as being honorable. It seems almost as though you're excusing them because they had to work hard to keep the image of being honorable going. One would also think that if everyone acted "honorably" we wouldn't need a legal system in the first place, because no one would ever be dishonest or do dishonorable things. There are legal systems in the world which are far from honorable & are basically an invisible hand of the politicians or theocracy which rules the land. Not all war-profiteers have been hung for treason. Heck the US even cooperated with Nazis after World War II[1] or how about the persecution of Alan Turing? Good ol' days indeed. I am not sure if I would say that lynching someone over fraud is the honorable thing to do. I get your anger, but the annals of history are filled with "dishonorable actions", this isn't apologizing for those who have done misdeeds, it's just stating facts. Painting a rosy picture of the "good ol' days" does no one any favors. [1]http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/us/14nazis.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/us/14nazis.html