loyalty

loyalty, general term that signifies a person’s devotion or sentiment of attachment to a particular object, which may be another person or group of persons, an ideal, a duty, or a cause. It expresses itself in both thought and action and strives for the identification of the interests of the loyal person with those of the object. Loyalty turns into fanaticism when it becomes wild and unreasoning and into resignation when it displays the characteristics of reluctant acceptance. Loyalty has an important social function. Only by an individual’s willingness, in cooperation with others, to invest intellectual and moral resources generously and wholeheartedly in something beyond a narrow personal circle has it been possible for communities of various kinds to emerge and continue to exist.

Political loyalty is devotion to, and identification with, a political cause or a political community, its institutions, basic laws, major political ideas, and general policy objectives. The nature and content of political loyalty has varied greatly through the ages. In Greek political thought the principle of unity in life tended to preclude the possibility that a variety of important loyalties might lay claim to the individual and alienate him from the polis, the city-state. Aristotle’s famous dictum that man is by nature a political animal stated well the conviction that man could realize his aspirations only by active participation in the affairs of the city-state, which was the highest of all communities because it aimed at a more comprehensive good than any other, and at the highest good, the perfection of human development. Individuals were expected to be loyal to the city-state and to no one else.

Occasionally, however, a conflict of loyalties did arise. Loyalty to the vague concept of a Greek commonwealth of nations, standing over and above individual city-states and overriding local loyalties, inspired Athens’s rejection of an alliance with Persia. In Sophocles’ Antigone the heroine counters the ruler’s decree forbidding the burial of her brother with a moving appeal to the moral law of Zeus, which, she believes, has more valid claims to her loyalty than the duly constituted government. Plato’s Republic expressed concern that the enjoyment of family life and private property by the governing guardian class would result in a conflict of loyalties from which the state would emerge second best.

Other people in antiquity also searched for unity through the state. The Romans, extolling the virtue of political duty, professed their loyalty in the proud affirmations civis Romanies sum, “I am a Roman citizen,” and dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, “sweet and fitting is it to die for one’s country” (Horace). In the Hebrew theocratic state, the very essence of life consisted in serving and preserving the state, which was equivalent with obedience to God.

Christianity rejected the classical principle of unity in life through the state. While the state, as a divine institution, exercised powers originating with God and was therefore entitled to loyalty as long as it functioned within its natural limits, man could never hope to fulfill his spiritual destiny within the framework of a political organization. To achieve this end, man had to turn elsewhere. The dualism of loyalty postulated by Christianity is affirmed in Jesus’ famous dictum, “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21). Man was, as St. Augustine put it, a citizen of two cities, the city of man and the city of God. Political theorists have often given support to this concept of dual loyalty by defending, for example, the right to resist arbitrary or tyrannical governments, especially if the right is claimed in consequence of one’s loyalty to God or moral law. The Nürnberg and Adolf Eichmann trials have shown that absolute loyalty to the state may be demanded only if the state is guided by principles of right and justice.

The efforts of the rulers of the slowly emerging nation-states to enlist nationwide loyalties took place within the framework of feudalism. On the continent of Europe the result was often disappointing. In France, for example, vassals would owe loyalty only to their immediate lords rather than to the king; the latter, therefore, had no direct contact with the lesser vassals, who even retained the right to make war against him. In England, William I, determined to be a true sovereign rather than one feudal lord among many, imposed an oath upon all the important landowners. In 1086 at Salisbury they swore that they would be faithful to him against all other men. This oath, repeated under later monarchs and extended to all people—even the peasants, by Henry II (1176)—was a “national act of homage and allegiance.”

Allegiance, later defined by William Blackstone as “the tie or ligamen, which binds the subject to the King, in return for that protection which the King affords the subject,” has become a powerful legal weapon in the hands of governments, especially those of English-speaking peoples, to promote loyalty and to punish disloyalty. Allegiance assisted the integration of the Norman “foreigners” with the English natives, formed the basis of British nationality, and played a part in transforming the British Empire into the Commonwealth of Nations. This last result was foreshadowed by the Balfour Report (1926), according to which Britain and the self-governing dominions were “united by a common allegiance to the Crown.” In deference to the Commonwealth, however, this aspect of allegiance lost its significance. Since 1949, nations have qualified for membership even if they renounced allegiance to the crown by adopting republican (e.g., India) or separate monarchical (e.g., Malaysia) institutions, provided that these nations accept the monarch “as the symbol of the free association of its members and as such as the Head of the Commonwealth.”

Loyalty has also been crucial in the definition of treason in England, which is a breach of the allegiance owed to the king in person. Under the influence of nationalism, the British populace developed a second loyalty, one to the kingdom itself as distinguished from allegiance to the sovereign as a person. On occasion, such as in 1399, 1689, and 1936, the conflict between the old allegiance and the new loyalty resulted in the victory of the latter over the former and the king’s deposition or abdication. Thus, the new loyalty was certainly an important political factor. Yet, the law, refusing to take comprehensive cognizance of changes affecting the sovereign, continued to recognize allegiance to him rather than the newly discovered loyalty to his realm. Thus, treason in Britain technically has never ceased to be a crime against the monarch, although actually the state rather than the sovereign has been involved.

In Britain, however, as elsewhere, prosecution for treason is only one of the weapons to combat disloyalty. A variety of measures, including loyalty oaths and investigations, have been considered necessary for survival by executive departments and legislatures, in the United States notably by the House Committee on Internal Security (formerly Committee on Un-American Activities) and the Internal Security Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Disloyal organizations may be outlawed by legislation or by judicial determination. At times, prohibitive legislation is restricted to reprehensible practices rather than outlawing the organizations themselves. This approach is found in Britain’s Public Order Act (1986), which makes it an offense to wear, publicly, uniforms signifying association with political parties.

Corrective penal laws directed against disloyal individuals commonly include those dealing with espionage, sabotage, sedition, and trading with the enemy. Furthermore, legislation was enacted to cope with disloyal practices during the Vietnam War. Burning, destroying, or mutilating draft cards was made a federal offense (1965), and so was casting contempt upon the U.S. flag by publicly burning or otherwise desecrating it (1968; in 1989, in its Texas v. Johnson decision, the United States Supreme Court found that flag burning was speech protected by the First Amendment).

In addition to legislative, administrative, and judicial measures intent on regulating loyalty, constitutions contain principles or exhortations to the same end. Furthermore, time-honoured customs and traditions are heavily relied upon by governments as appeals to the loyalty of citizens. General illustrations include playing and singing national anthems, presenting the national colours, reviewing the armed forces, and cultivating the memory of national heroes. In Britain, the coronation of the monarch, the delivery of the speech from the throne, and the changing of the guard elicit responses of loyalty. In the United States, festivities occasioned by the inaugurations of presidents, Fourth of July orations, and commemorations of the birthdays of Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln serve the same purpose.

Thus, the promotion of loyalty by all governments, democratic, authoritarian, and totalitarian alike, is a comprehensive never-ending job. The question of loyalty seems to have taken on a quite distinctive character and, at times, an exaggerated emphasis in the United States. Both history and contemporary developments have contributed to this. Thomas Jefferson’s convictions that America should not be without a rebellion every 20 years and that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants” came into clash with the Sedition Act (1798), which provided punishment for “any false, scandalous and malicious writing…against the government of the United States, or either house of the Congress…or the President.”

In an effort to secure loyalty, totalitarian systems have accepted Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s recommendations that there should be no independent associations within the state, because they are formed at its expense. By contrast, in democracies a wide variety of such groups is not only tolerated but also encouraged because they all, subversives excepted, contribute to the formation of national loyalty. Loyalties to non-national groups, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, even may be permitted to take precedence over the highest symbol of national loyalty, as evidenced by the U.S. Supreme Court’s opposition to compulsory flag salutes in public schools (West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 1943). These phenomena, however, did not trouble those who, like historian Arnold Toynbee, took a dim view of nationalism and proposed that national loyalties must be ultimately transferred to mankind as a whole. Only then would it be possible to realize what American philosopher Josiah Royce called “the hope of the great community.”