In Winona Lake, Wisconsin, it is illegal to eat ice cream at a counter on Sunday. And don't expect to order a slice of cherry pie a la mode in Kansas on the Lord's Day. No restaurant is allowed to serve it unless they're willing to run afoul of local police. Marbles, Dominoes, and yo-yos are also banned on Sundays in a handful of states.
Fluke's strategy may have made reference obliquely to an older sense of honor that many still feel in their bones, but more than that it had to do with modern-day political correctness. There are actually some similarities between traditional ideas of honor and contemporary group touchiness, as both have to do with reputation or recognition and the harm that insults can do. Fluke's blast at Rush Limbaugh was effective because it played on this connection.
Unlike the Northern code of honor, which emphasized emotional restraint, moral piety, and economic success, the Southern honor code in many ways paralleled the medieval honor code of Europe — combining the reflexive, violent honor of primitive man with the public virtue and chivalry of knights.
Sounds like that's not entirely to the North's disadvantage.
The southern code of honor was closer to shame-based than true honor-based. It addressed more the public perception of the person than his actual moral worth. Which is why the article references “public virtue.”
The northern concept, at least in theory, was more about the person’s actual character than the public perception of it.
It is certain that over the course of the 19th century the northern version evolved away from the notion of raw violence as the primary way of maintaining one’s honor, while the southern version retained it. The concept of dueling to maintain one’s honor, whether formalized or not, is the classic example. A man accused of a dishonorable act could maintain his honor by killing his accuser in a duel. This pointedly ignores the issue of whether he actually committed the dishonorable act and makes maintenance of honor the result of more efficient violence.
Today southern whites have much higher rates of homicide and violence than northern whites, and it is likely some of the reason ties back into these different ideas of honor.