Citing Berdyaev, he talks about defending traditional values to ward off moral chaos.
The point may be to ward off moral complacency, and often the effect is startling and funny.
It also set up a moral guide, which was intended to ward off both national and local censorship.
Her dissertation, entitled, "Warding off organizational vampires: Moral cues and social norms as a necklace of garlic," examines the possibility of offering employees a safe way in which they may prevent their superiors from asking them to perform unethical acts.
"There are different ways of having fun," Powell answers, a little self-deprecatingly, as if he's warding off an imputation of moral seriousness and needs his friend's indulgence.
These institutions, at their best, treat people as moral individuals, with responsibilities and duties, not as wards or clients or dependents or numbers".
Lady Edith even found the courage to knock Bertie's mother off her moral high horse with a truth bomb: admitting that ward Marigold is her illegitimate daughter.
Robin Diener, president of the Dupont Circle Citizens Association, in Ward 2, also attended in a show of moral support.
When members of society are disgusted by a criminal, she says, they are warding off thoughts of their own capacity for moral corruption.
He said: "In the criminal underworld there is not only people taken out because of turf wards and disputes... there's also a very strange moral code where people mustn't be offended, you must save face.
