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Is Loyalty a Meaningless Word?
Does anyone care about loyalty anymore? Loyalty to principles, country, people and institutions seems to be disappearing, or its meaning has been manipulated to meet a multitude of agendas. And along with all the other cultural disruptions, the state of loyalty is endangered.
We used to believe that loyalty to principles was a significant commitment. It’s not that we couldn’t examine, evaluate or discuss all principles, but we pursued activities to better understand them, to learn how our principles interfaced with the principles of others, or even how we might act to uphold them. We were both proud of and humbled by the principles we held, and looked for opportunities to realize them in our lives. And yet many have embraced a loyalty of convenience—they’ll put their chips where they can get the most power and leverage. There is moral relativism as well, where everyone gets to decide for him or herself what matters and what is sacred.
Then there is the question of loyalty to people. How do we view relationships anymore? I frequently watch Alaska reality shows, and the last couple of evenings I’ve realized that many couples have “partners,” not spouses. Last night in particular, I saw a young man who had split up with his partner of five years, and they have a two-year-old child between them. How is loyalty honored in that situation? Or how about a person who realizes he has made a mistake in joining the transgender community? When he joins up, he is coddled, adored, and admired; when he decides he must leave, he is fully rejected by the very people who embraced him.
And then there is loyalty to the country, which has been in serious jeopardy for years. There was a time when the office of the President was respected, no matter who filled that seat. No more. Former Department of Defense Esper criticized Trump publicly for his statements of how he might use the military. Riots and destruction by the Left are approved; disruption that may have involved the Right is condemned. Our history has been re-written by the radical Left; the Founders have been disparaged unfairly; the Constitution may be in more danger of being ignored or misrepresented than ever before.
Does loyalty exist in any form in the United States? Yes.
People are loyal to their beliefs that are based on feelings and preferences, not principles.
Instead of speaking of loyalty to American institutions, to a Republic, to democracy, people are loyal to the idea of destruction and chaos. They are loyal to organizations that are more than willing to lead those causes, such as Black Lives Matter and Antifa. They are loyal to the tenets of Marxism and socialism. They are loyal to goals that serve their selfish interests, to non-existent travesties such as systemic racism and white supremacism, and whatever it takes to extinguish America and its citizens who continue to remain loyal to the country.
But the Left hasn’t realized that their loyalty to their ideas violates the goodness in human nature. They appeal to some people’s worst characteristics, such as justification of stealing from others, destroying legacies, undermining relationships, and damaging the foundations of this country.
The Left has come a long way in trying to distort the meaning of loyalty. And they’ve tried to intimidate, denigrate and weaken those of us who love this country, with all its flaws and limitations.
The time will arrive when we will have had enough.
We will demonstrate our loyalty and fight for the survival of the United States.
That time is now.
Published in Culture
They have been educated to do that both formally and by the institutions of popular culture.
Much like there being two different understandings of rights, there are two different understanding of loyalty.
In the case of rights, one understanding is that one has the right not to be subjected to unnecessary evils, and the other understanding is that one has the right to receive necessary goods.
In the case of loyalty, one understanding is that a loyal person will always refrain from acting against you, and the other understanding is that a loyal person will always take action to assist you.
Are we doomed to lose our country?
So Mis, a person is not loyal to me if he or she acts against me, right? I wonder if they would not consider themselves disloyal to me because they are loyal to a “higher cause”?
It also seems to me that for people to be loyal to alien causes, they must be disloyal to the United States. I wonder if they realize they’ve made that choice. In fact, I wonder what Liz Cheney would say about her loyalties if she votes to impeach Trump: she says she’s loyal to her principles, but I wonder what that means?
I care about my principles, my countries principles, and my family. Most everything else is transactional loyalty.
Now that is an interesting take, @dong. And it makes sense, because transactional loyalty can change depending on a lot of factors, and it would be appropriate to do so.
It doesn’t really matter what that person thinks, since we can never truly know what’s in another person’s mind. The important question is whether you think that person is being disloyal by intentionally acting against you. You may think the person’s betrayal is justified for some reason, but I cannot fathom how you could think that person is acting loyally by acting against you.
Loyalty requires hypocrisy. Hypocrisy doesn’t require loyalty.
The country is not yours to lose. It never was. They are just letting you know about it now.
When I was young i put my faith, trust, loyalty in to the company I worked for. Only to be let down and exploited.
Later I placed my faith, trust, loyalty in a man. Only to be let down and exploited.
Later I placed my faith, trust, loyalty, love in a woman. Only to be let down, exploited, abused.
The only thing you can place your faith, trust, loyalty in is yourself. And even that person will let you down from time to time.
Loyalty?! OK, Boomer!
The ‘progressives’ reject such old fashioned ideas as loyalty to G-d, family, country.
The new ideal is ‘burn it all down and we can build it the way it is supposed to be’. (with someone else’s time and money, of course!)
Loyalty only lasts as long as the latest woke fad.
That which carries unlimited moral authority today can be shunned and despised next week with no feeling of irony or hypocrisy.
When you reject principles, then expedience towards your immediate ends is all that matters. And that becomes your guiding principle.
I don’t understand how hypocrisy is involved.
What a depraved way to live, @phenry. And an unhappy one.
Personal loyalty is a bit like respect in that its best when earned through repeated evidence that a person is worthy of it. Authenticity plays a big part for me. No one is perfect, but I’ll cut someone alot of slack on a personal basis when I feel they are authentic, thoughtful individuals.
Maybe one lesson is to be careful where/when we give our loyalty because misplaced loyalty cuts. As far as country, I’ve learned these past 4 yrs that my loyalty is very specifically to the US Constitution. It is not to any political party or politician. One of, if not the most, important things for America to be the Constitutional democratic republic it was intended is for a majority of Americans to have confidence elections are free from significant fraud.
Republican leaders did bupkus for 2 months to get answers to address voter concerns. It is now blatantly obvious they have come to bury a POTUS, not to address the fraudulent election concerns of millions. Liz Cheney and Mitch McConnell’s principle is party and power.
When we say that a person is loyal (as a binary quality, not a quality of greater or lesser degree) to another or to a principle, we commonly mean that he is committed to coming to the aid of the other unconditionally.
I was curious what the common definition of transactional loyalty is.
I ran across this definition on the web.
In other words, a defining characteristic of transactional loyalty is that it is conditional. Its unconditional but with a minor variation: it’s the opposite. The loyal person will come to the aid of the other, but only under the condition that it favors the first person.
I wish that whoever was trying to invent a new term for the absence of loyalty had thought a little bit longer. A different term would have been less confusing to simple people like me.
[EDIT: I used irony to gently poke fun at this term and its definition, and I’m afraid my meaning was lost. I meant that the term is self-contradictory, so if you attempt to use it in an attempt to have an intelligent discussion about loyalty, you will only create confusion, not clarity. We shouldn’t use it, unless someone can find a non-absurd and useful definition for it.]
Life Sucks, then you die.
Too true. (sigh)
People are loyal to all sorts of things. However, like rules, there are times when loyalty is meant to be broken. I believe Trump’s ascension to power caused some conservatives to become never-Trumpers based on loyalty to their principles, which blinded them to the fact they were getting the agenda they craved.
“The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally – not a 20 percent traitor.”— Ronald Reagan
Cannot the same be said for an agenda you agree with 80%? 60%? Why can’t never-Trumpers see he was an ally? I guess blind loyalty to conservative “principles” trumps Reagan’s quote . . . (pun intended)
Loyalty to the Constitution, yes. To the Republicans, in serious jeopardy. Thanks, Mim.
Thanks, @markcamp. I had a sense of that definition, but you make it so much clearer. My hope is that most people would not have a transactional loyalty to the U.S. –that they will stay loyal if they get more stuff, benefits, etc. I guess that’s not likely, is it?
Maybe we’ve been brainwashed by the Left–that unless we get exactly or as much as we want, we’re out of here. Nobody wants to compromise, not just because they don’t want to give up anything, but because they don’t know how to prioritize what is important and what’s not. So both sides just point fingers at each other and nobody wins. And loyalty goes out the door. Thanks, @stad.
You’ve made me think about my loyalty to this country mostly. Three things came to my mind regarding this.
First, I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day saints. We are taught and I believe that the Constitution is a divine document, that those men were inspired by God to write it to establish this country. We are taught and I believe that this is a promised land, a blessed land as long as we remember God and strive to serve Him. When we turn away from Him, we lose His blessing and favor. (Sorry for the religion)
Second, I grew up in Hawaii. A place, we are taught, that the US government stole, overthrowing the queen and making Hawaii part of the US without the permission or consent of a lot of people. There are still sovereignty movements alive and well there. Yet, I can remember in elementary school, saying the pledge of allegiance every morning and, in the morning before school started, when they raised the flag in the schoolyard, I remember everyone standing still and paying attention until the flag was fully raised. It made me glad to be a part of the United States and not under a monarchy.
Third, I spent over a year as a missionary outside of the US in the Dominican Republic. We didn’t always have running water and we counted ourselves lucky if we had electricity for 12 hours. A few months before I came home, we were hit by Hurricane Georges. It wasn’t totally devastating but we did get a lot of damage, flooding and we didn’t have any electricity for a whole month, I even had to hauled water from cistern. I remember towards the end of that long month without electricity, we were walking around and we saw people working on the telephone poles. A Dominican told us, “The Americans are here, it’s ok.”
I know that this country is far from perfect but I am grateful for what I have for being a citizen.
That’s beautiful, Lillyvee. The way your faith and love of country support each other is a beautiful relationship to behold. Thank you for sharing your experience and understanding with us.
Whenever someone tells me there’s always room for compromise, I ask them, “If your teenage daughter’s boyfriend wants to take her away for a weekend at the beach, do you compromise and tell him he can only spend one night with her? No. You tell him no %$#@$ing way in Hell will you allow that to happen.
It’s the same way with many of the positions on the left. We keep compromising a little bit here and there, getting nothing in return. Pretty soon we find we’ve compromised ourselves almost all the way toward where they wanted to be in the first place. Enough is enough!
I have a Leftish friend that is enlightened about her dislike of Israel. She keeps telling me that Israel needs to compromise with Palestine. As I asked her one day, you are talking about a group that wants every Jew on the planet dead. What is your compromise? Should we just kill half of them? or just kick the ever loving sh1t out of them all?
The problem with compromise is the other side is hip to that so ask for way past what they can get so you compromise just to ask again after they get the compromise.
Loved that sentence, @fakejohnjanegalt. Couldn’t have said it better myself.
If you describe the presidential election last November as a “Constitutional process,” then you should be fine with this. If you think that it was not, then you might have a problem with it.
USMC veteran Aesop does. He’s so outraged that, in To My Brothers And Sisters In The Military, instead of the foul mouthed rants he writes on trivial subjects like lethal pandemics, he reviews the Nuremberg Trials and “I was just following orders,” and then writes:
I’m not a veteran, so I’m asking for input from readers who are.
In her particular case, she’s loyal to the Chamber of Commerce/Never Trump crowd.