Dear Friends,
It seems to me, we all have loyalties, to our family, God, our friends, the human race, and lastly, the State. We have uncountable sub loyalties as well. These loyalties exist in a hierarchy of value. Like everything else. As long as a loyalty stays in its lane it is legitimate. If a loyalty demands we betray a higher loyalty, then it has gone too far, and is no longer worthy of loyalty. With this scheme we can measure if what someone is asking of us is just or not. If we are asked to betray a higher loyalty to advantage a lesser one it is patently unjust. To betray one’s family to the benefit of the State, is not an unselfish act, it is pathological. It is betraying those who would stand with you in dire times… for someone who would throw you out like the trash, if it benefited them.
On the other hand, if loss of the State means the death of your entire family, then patriotism becomes the highest loyalty. Because it protects a higher loyalty on that hierarchy of values. This is a subtle distinction. Loyalty then must be pragmatic. What use is there of being perfectly peaceful as your family, city, state and nation are slaughtered to a child? That philosophy of peace dies with you. Loyalty to ideals like peace are great but must be measured against circumstances pragmatically. Should the good stand aside so that evil can advance, because evil is pushy, obviously not. If that were the case, and it is today, evil will be ascendant while good will decline. In the name of loyalty to the good. In this way, by confusing loyalties, do the sinister convince the good, it is virtuous to stand idle.
Everyone has a self idealized hierarchy of values of personal loyalties. This individual hierarchy of values usually follows the general trend. To self, immediate family, God, blood, species, city, state, nation, club, etc… As discussed above, those loyalties are subject to movement in that hierarchy, if they affect others higher in value. Some place loyalty to self at the bottom, while others pretend to put it there, to leverage others to submit their loyalty to them. Clearly, an orphan has only limited loyalty to family, depending on their involvement in the orphan’s upbringing. Our personal loyalties, at their core, are selfish. We are loyal to the family because it is through the family that we get temporal immortality, to God for the soul’s immortality, the nation because it protects the family, and so on…
The one loyalty we always involuntarily serve, even when acting “unselfishly,” is to ourselves. Some argue, people throw themselves on a hand grenade in a war, to save their friends or to honorably commit suicide. I might rather offer such unselfish acts as acceding to a higher loyalty. Those who accept that the martyr acts out of loyalty to an ideal, their friends, or the nation, are still arguing for a higher loyalty. We individuals are the only ones authorized, by God, to decide what loyalty we personally place as the highest in our hierarchy of loyalties. No one would laud the man who orders another to fall on a grenade, that is a selfish act, while the martyr who willingly gives up his or her life for another, is demonstrating the highest loyalty… hopefully.
Loyalty to the nation is often confused with loyalty to the government. The nation is an analogue for the people, culture, heritage, founding principles and Constitution. Separate any of those and what you have left is not the nation but something else. Something less. The government is not the nation, claiming it is, is like calling the steering wheel a car, a keyboard a computer or a clown an expert. The more corrupt, unpatriotic and actively malevolent a government is, the more it will demand out of place loyalty. Arrogantly replacing, by edict, our hierarchy of loyalties with theirs. Which in and of itself, is a violation of our human rights, and is the opposite of reciprocal. That someone with zero loyalty to us, demands total loyalty from us, proves they deserve our animus.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
