Sunday, July 17, 2005
Loyalty Requires No Oath -- Only a Capacity for Common Decency
Almost everyone hopes and trusts that their partner is "loyal." The same can be said for a variety of social constructs; family members, co-workers, sports team members and, dare I say, fellow citizens?
Genuine loyalty is not something arrived at through compulsion. No one can make another person loyal. Loyalty doesn't mean blind agreement. It doesn't mean subservience; it doesn't even necessarily imply humility. Genuine loyalty demands no relinquishing of free thought or autonomy. It does require a sense of common decency.
One naturally likes knowing that others are "on your side." People don't expect their wives, husbands, or children to rally to the causes of those who would harm them, or to make such forces’ cause easier to carry out. When dealing with larger institutions, like a nation state, loyalty has often been caricatured as blind obedience, nationalistic fervor, or collusion with evil schemes, hardly accurate portrayals of loyalty's essence in a free society.
There are some in the U.S. today whose loyalty can reasonably be called into question (although those very people will be the most outspoken in their denial of such accusations). In academia, journalism, and scattered amongst the general population, there are now some who act as spouses that would turn their gaze away from any act of terror against their own families. Ironically, quite often the same philosophies that so often demand group "solidarity" (and collective obedience), are mysteriously repelled by the simple concept of loyalty. The battle between fascism and communism vs. open/free society in prior eras was pretty clear-cut; not a lot of gray area to the honest and sincere among us. So it is today as we confront the plans and actions of radical Islam, yet this doesn't spare us the indignity of those who see loyalty as a right-wing plot, "anti-intellectual," or a "naive adherence to absolutes."
Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, Michael Moore, a host of Hollywood's spoiled brat's, and some self-absorbed intellectuals from our universities (to name a few examples) are clearly not loyal by any definition.
There are some -- I've met them –- who would send their own mothers to their deaths to maintain their ego's grasp on the "impartial view" that sides with an enemy. Some think that merely saying that, “no one is [their] enemy,” that it is miraculously so (too bad their enemies wouldn’t agree). Such types are not new; they existed throughout the Cold War when they sided with the Soviet police state. Today they still exhibit a fondness and sympathy for virtually any totalitarian scheme so long as it opposes their own nation and its free people.
Loyalty doesn't mean liking George Bush or his policies. It doesn't mean blind obedience to government. It simply means siding, at least in spirit, with your neighbors, family, friends, and country when others are so clearly set on harming them. It's what we'd expect of a spouse or fellow family member. It's not unreasonable to expect it, to some degree, from fellow citizens.
It's one thing to take a side in a disagreement, quite another to favor and defend the values of authoritarian ideology or -- through stealth, distortion, or omission -- to depict evil as simply another view with a valid point.
The clear desire among some citizens and organizations to see America and the Iraqis lose in Iraq, to be threatened by terror, and weakened by those with dubious agendas, is shameful and pathetic. To hope for, and expect, loyalty from fellow citizens in the matter is not the cause of jingoism, or "witch hunts," it's the trust that others will merely possess a spirit of pure intention and a sober mind in dangerous times.
In a free society, Loyalty is okay. Loyalty is good (that's right, I don't think loyalty to Hitler, Stalin, et.al. is the same moral stance). In our own society, loyalty's opposite has produced nothing good or just for anyone. Its opposite is no more than an abode of scoundrels -- to quote Yeats, "…the worst are full of passionate intensity." Fortunately for us, in this time, the best have passions too, and loyalty is among them.
We see daily, stealth expressions of anti-loyalty in such demands that America set a specific date for troop withdrawal from Iraq. Would you tell a crime syndicate the date that half of your police force will be on holiday? Such an issue hardly beckons debate between honest citizens who are on the same side yet, like Vietnam and the larger Cold War, there are some who truly seem to want the -- in this case, Islamo-fascist -- enemy to win! Losing in a war is not like losing points in some game. Losing the global war against Islamo-fascism would result in an unthinkably terrible alteration to our own lives and those of future generations.
Are you a non-Muslim who favors open free society and free choice in your individual dealings? Guess what? Al Qaeda wants you dead, and they're not open to negotiation on the issue. Try siding with that idea, if it ever sinks in.
The fact that we are in one of histories troubled times does not mean we can demand or enforce loyalty from others…but, we can hope that they would at least stand with the interests and safety of fellow citizens out of respect and common decency.
