When Loyalty Is Not A Virtue

[Casablanca]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_andrew_b_070316_when_loyalty_is_not_.htm


Although loyalty is always highly valued among our politicians, George W. Bush has shown himself exceptional in placing so high a priority on loyalty in assessing his people.

While in many contexts loyalty is rightly regarded as an important moral virtue, Bush’s excessive valuing of loyalty is less a sign of his appreciating a moral virtue than of his inhabiting a world in which true morality is scarcely relevant.

That’s what underlies Bush’s pronounced penchant for appointing cronies rather than well-qualified people, and of his bestowing honors on people who have stood by him while failing the country.

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The Psychology of the Fortified Castle

History reveals that groups in which loyalty is most highly prized are those embedded in a social system so fragmented that they cannot contain that wholeness (harmony, synergy) we call the Good.

The oaths of fealty in medieval Europe, for example, were important precisely because, in that fragmented feudal system, with no overarching order to hold the various actors in check, a chronic state of war existed among the principalities. The chronic strife of the era is still mirrored in the European landscape, where we see the ruins of castles, surrounded by high walls.

Those highly fortified castles are good metaphors for the mindset in which loyalty is the supreme value. It is a world in which a great price is paid simply for protection against a hostile outside world, a world where Inside and Outside are divided into an Us and Them postured in expectation of war to the death.

The chronic war that was an inescapable objective reality for the masters of medieval fiefdoms is a psychological reality for the Bushites who have degraded the system of American politics into warring elements among whom the possibilities of cooperation are destroyed by their ceaseless strife.

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Like feudal lords, the gangster also dwells in a system in which fragmentation dictates that war is a chronic condition. And thus for the gangster, too, being able to trust the fealty of those within the fortified walls is a matter of life-and-death importance.

The issue of trust is woven throughout The Godfather Saga – whether it is the fatal indiscretion of the hot-headed brother in the first film, or the fatal betrayal by the weak brother in the second.

“Never tell anyone outside the family what you really think,” Don Corleone tells his hot-headed son. (And similarly, this White House has never told us what it really thinks about much of anything.) “Fredo, you broke my heart,” says the new Godfather because his brother has allowed enemies to breach the family’s protective walls.

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Symptom of an Amoral World

A world in which loyalty is so profound a value that it displaces all the others, then, is part of an amoral framework that is all about service to the aggrandizing self. This is a self that never feels it has enough security and thus seeks all the power and wealth it can get. It is a self that knows no larger or greater good for which it might sacrifice some part of its personal empire.

And so America, having handed power to such a self, now watches as that “greater good” is being dismantled.



http://nonesoblind.org/

Andrew Bard Schmookler's website www.nonesoblind.org is devoted to understanding the roots of America's present moral crisis and the means by which the urgent challenge of this dangerous moment can be met. Dr. Schmookler is also the author of such books as The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution (SUNY Press) and Debating the Good Society: A Quest to Bridge America's Moral Divide (M.I.T. Press). He also conducts regular talk-radio conversations in both red and blue states.

[eppur_se_muova]

1. "Loyalty" as used by Bu**sh** means absolute obedience, NOT a moral virtue. nt