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What’s Wrong with the World is dedicated to the defense of what remains of Christendom, the civilization made by the men of the Cross of Christ. Athwart two hostile Powers we stand: the Jihad and Liberalism...read more

Loyalty to persons

"All I know is, that Toryism, that is, loyalty to persons, 'springs immortal in the human breast'; that religion is a spiritual loyalty; and that Catholicity is the only divine form of religion. And thus, in centuries to come, there may be found out some way of uniting what is free in the new structure of society with what is authoritative in the old ...'" - Blessed John Henry Newman

Toryism, says Newman, is "loyalty to persons". Conservatism also is "loyalty to persons". That is why, whenever I see a liberal who is fiercely and doggedly attached to his liberal icon as a *person* - Kennedy, Clinton, Obama - I can't help but smile and be a little sympathetic. Such loyalty does indeed spring "immortal in the human breast", even when it is wildly misplaced. We are all monarchists at heart.

A conservatism that forgets this - that ignores this primal longing of men's hearts to serve with fidelity one who is greater - such a "conservatism" is as cold and inhuman as liberalism itself. When conservatives develop a habit of hyper-criticism of personalities, what I call the "politics of teleprompters", they undermine the possibility of an authentic conservatism developing in America which views the flaws of its leaders with sympathy rather than derision, as one would view the idiosyncracies of parents or siblings.

The rise of liberalism means the rise of liberal personalities. Although liberalism constitutes a violent ideological repudiation of "loyalty to persons", liberal personalities cannot survive without the same "loyalty to persons" they profess to loathe.

Granted, loyalty has its limits. But the modern problem is not one of excessive loyalty. Our loyalty, we insist, must be earned - merited. No person has ontological claims to our loyalty. Hence a culture of divorce, broken families, term limits, hyper-mobility, and a performance-based economy in which no job is ever secure. Democracy and capitalism, whatever their advantages, are clearly forces of dissolution when it comes to loyalty to persons - and yet like all systems of human organization they depend upon such loyalty for their very survival. I like to hope that this accidental dependence of liberalism upon personal loyalty may be an accidental means of returning to a truly conservative order.

Comments (112)

I cannot resist the usual Burke citation here:

"To avoid therefore the evils of inconstancy and versatility, ten thousand times worse than those of obstinacy and the blindest prejudice, we have consecrated the State, that no man should approach to look into defects or corruptions but with due caution; that he should never dream of beginning its reformation by its subversion; that he should approach to the faults of the State as to the wounds of a father, with pious awe and trembling solicitude. By this wise prejudice we are taught to look with horror on those children of their country who are prompt rashly to hack that aged parent in pieces, and put him into the kettle of magicians, in hopes that by their poisonous weeds, and wild incantations, they may regenerate the paternal constitution, and renovate their father's life."

I like to hope that this accidental dependence of liberalism upon personal loyalty may be an accidental means of returning to a truly conservative order.

I'm afraid it won't be. Attall. There's such a thing as a perversion. The blind adherence to someone like Barack Obama among his most fanatical followers has the same resemblance to a healthy loyalty to real persons that the artificially fostered personality cults in Communist countries have to such loyalty. Little children are taught to sing near-worshiping praises to the "dear leader" in a brainwashing fashion in school. If conservatives feel this is creepy, that's because it is. It's not something we should foster even for a good leader.

Moreover, politicians in a democracy are not parents or siblings, so the idea that they have to earn our loyalty makes a lot more sense.

The conservative version of loyalty at any price is the blind partisanship that will cheer wildly for a Scott Brown simply because he's running under the Republican banner. If I can say to the Republican candidate that he has to earn my loyalty by representing my values, I can certainly say it to the Democrat candidate or any other candidate. And I think we conservatives _need_ to say it to the Republican candidate. But if we say it there, why is it not legitimate to expect Democrats to do the same? Of course, part of the problem is that Democrats have the wrong values, so the person may indeed represent them and hence, in a backwards kind of way, "earn" the loyalty of his followers who share his wrong values. But where there are ironies or failures in these areas (e.g., where the policies the leader advocates actually harm the poor, for example), it is quite legitimate to seek to undermine his support by pointing this out.

Next point:

This matter of the goodness and, if you will, "merit" of the person is also connected to the symbolic nature of persons. Indeed, it is precisely _because_ of the phenomenon of symbolism and personal loyalty that character and policy positions matter so much. If you had a king who was secretly a traitor to his country or a murderer, these would not be mere foibles to be considered with sympathy. He would be a disgrace to his office and to all those who were innocently loyal to him. He would deserve to be exposed. In the same way, I believe that no black person who saw the evil of Barack Obama's position on, say, the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act (in Illinois) should have been talking sentimentally about the wonderful "symbolism" of his election. The election _especially_ of a person who stands as some sort of symbol or icon of an entire group (as Obama stood as the "first black President") is tarred and marred when that iconic person holds monstrous views. Black conservatives, of all people, should have been the most outraged. I'm afraid that was not always so, however. Somehow we were supposed to believe that his iconic value and the joyous wonderousness of his iconic election were *entirely separable* from who he actually was and what he actually stood for. If anything, it should be the other way around: The more iconic a person is, the more important it is that he be upright and good, and the more horrible it is if he enthusiastically supports heinous evil.

"...We are all monarchists at heart..."

Well, speak for yourself, Jeff C. So far as I'm concerned, conservatism, American style, does not mean instinctive servility. Quite the opposite, in fact. It means independence. It means self-reliance, self-sufficiency - whatever you want to call it. And, above all, it means an instinctive *defiance* of centralized authority.

Do you have a problem with the slogan "don't tread on me?"

The blind adherence to someone like Barack Obama among his most fanatical followers has the same resemblance to a healthy loyalty to real persons that the artificially fostered personality cults in Communist countries have to such loyalty.

Funny you should equate "personal loyalty" (Culbreath's words) to "blind adherence". Was there even the briefest pause in coming up with that equation? Is there no place in your heart for the idea that personal loyalty given freely to another, and let us be frank no man truly knows the hearts of men, is at least a step up from your alternative: NO LOYALTY AT ALL* (*unless a person does or says what I think he should).

Moreover, politicians in a democracy are not parents or siblings, so the idea that they have to earn our loyalty makes a lot more sense.

I've never heard a stronger argument against democracy. It gets at the very heart of the problem: The freedom, nay responsibility, of the common person to judge the worthiness of the king and his policies (and no matter what you say, someone is always king); and in order to do that, the eyes and hearts of common people must constantly be turned to the myriad of concerns, which in a saner world, would be reserved for a (real) king and his ministers; and whilst allowing that this is indeed the proper disposition of the common man under a regime such as ours, we come upon the unassailable, unassimilable fact that 90% (at least!) of common men will not judge prudently, nay are literally incapable of doing so, because 1) many lack the intelligence necessary; 2) nearly all lack the fine training necessary; and (most importantly) 3) it is not their natural station.

Democracy is the bastard that brought us on this horrible date, the evils of which Lydia you very expertly document. But let us not continue to hope that this same bastard will be the one to safely return us home.

Conservatism also is "loyalty to persons".

Quite the opposite, in fact. It means independence. It means self-reliance, self-sufficiency - whatever you want to call it.

Well, gee, that's interesting. Like Steve, I disagree with Jeff on naming conservatism "loyalty to persons". Unlike Steve, I don't think it means self-reliance or independence. Those are natural effects of conservatism, but only within limits.

I think Jeff is right to point in this direction: that the true conserver is one who conserves the original meaning and purpose of our existence, and that is intrinsically a relationship to God.
But in politics, or human relations generally, conservatism is not inherently found in loyalty to any human person, because any human person may reject the common good or may reject the authority of God, and so devotion to the good may require not adhering to any given human person.

The rule of law proposes that the law is above any and every human leader, and therefore adherence to the common good is above adhering to any human ruler. Monarchists point out that every human law must be interpreted or applied to particular situations, and therefore legislators, rulers, and judges - human persons - are the final arbiters of the practical determination of political action. Therefore, in the concrete, there is no way to adhere to "law" without adhering to some person's interpretation of law.

I do not, finally, agree with the monarchists in this: under God, any and every leader may make a grave mistake, and it is in principle appropriate for the ruled humans to have the right to point out his errors to him - in the appropriate time, manner, occasion, and so on. More than that, every human leader may mistake the extent to which his authority to command extends, and blind obedience to a leader beyond his writ of authority isn't truly called for even within perfect loyalty.

Finally, loyalty is a highly appropriate response between two persons who are friends: the friendship enables each to trust the other and rise above foibles and mistakes. Friends can trust each other even when the appearance is that one has made a mistake: loyalty tells us to assume good in the other even when the evidence is insufficient to support it in one detail or other. The friendship has given a wealth of other experience to balance one or two details. Politics and law come into play in the larger social sphere, where friendship is impossible because there is not enough personal contact, personal knowledge, between persons. When friendship does not form the underlying substrate of trust, loyalty beyond the evidence of a leader's actions and speech together is inappropriate: if Clinton says he wants abortion to be "rare", and none of his actions even hint of that intention, then we don't rely on his speech out of loyalty. In the polity, obedience to law takes the place of loyalty between friends. But that obedience is limited more than loyalty between friends is.

With God, we have the comfort of knowing that he is always good-willed, and that he is always ruling for both our own personal good and for the common good. Until God takes over politics _directly_, conservatism does not mean loyalty to persons.

Paul, thank you for that injection of Burkean eloquence. Which puts me in mind of another:

But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded, and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever. Never, never more, shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom! The unbought grace of life, the cheap defense of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone. It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honor, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.

Proud submission? Dignified obedience? Subordination of the heart? Tell me what a man thinks about such ideas, and I'll tell you whether he's on the side of civilization or barbarism.

Until God takes over politics _directly_, conservatism does not mean loyalty to persons.

To the extent that loyalty to persons is natural and good, and to the extent that conservatism is at least a disposition to accept things the way they are (i.e., reality), and certainly one to "conserve" what is good, then conservatism certainly implies loyalty to persons. No one (certainly not Culbreath) is saying loyalty to persons is an unalloyed, unipolar good, one of which one cannot have too much, that is to say not at least balanced by other cardinal virtues (e.g., prudence). Blind fealty is not the only alternative to the principle that a Governor must earn my loyalty by dotting every I and crossing every T I happen to think he should. The latter is largely the system in which we in the West reside. And what has it done to the virtue of loyalty? Nearly drummed it out almost entirely (at least by a back of envelope calculation)... and yet, Culbreath points out, not completely from the human heart. For it lies there naturally, and if you look hard enough you can from time to time see it weakly, cautiously poking her head out from the breast pockets even of her severest enemies.

Too bad that Burke's overreaching eloquence is largely expended upon a thing that didn't exist as widely as he seems to think, and where it did exist was wrenched out of a baser obedience, a baser servility by men standing up to "superiors", by men refusing serve when service was expected by lords and kings. The Magna Carta is justly celebrated for just that.

I am not opposed to generous obedience to those above in authority. To obey him who has authority is to obey God from whom that authority is derived. But to obey a human who holds authority, not on account of his office but on account of his person is to confuse the role of obedience with the role of love. We ought to love men, and obey rulers. When we combine love with obedience we can present a picture of that generous submission and subordination of heart that Burke mentions, but pretending they are the same single virtue inevitably leads to the abuses of power that must lead to degradation and base servility, that must eventually bring upset and revolt. It leads to the nonsense of a Louis XIV thinking that every subject must love him in his person or be against France itself. This is itself a kind of barbarism: it reduces a nation to a set of relationships between subjects and the king, with nothing standing between the subject and the king's whim. You might as well return to tribal rule. Civilization is something larger.

The conservative version of loyalty at any price ...

Lydia, I shouldn't need to explain that I do not advocate "loyalty at any price". The "blind" enthusiasm surrounding candidates for political office like Scott Brown is a good example of party loyalty gone bad, but hardly an example of personal loyalty.

I figured most readers would at least be familiar with the example of St. Thomas More - "the king's good servant but God's first" - unshakably loyal 'till the end, but not at the price of truth.

It's hard for Americans immersed in a contract society to wrap their brains around traditional ideas of personal loyalty. By personal loyalty I mean something that is familial: loyalty owed because of who a person is rather than what a person does. That is not to deny that the latter has some effect on the former, but it's a matter of emphasis. A father is a father, a priest is a priest, a prince is a prince, a king is a king, etc. - no matter his sins, his incompetence, or his bad ideas. We owe such persons loyalty because of, and in accordance with, their ontological status. It is possible to be loyal even while opposing them on some points. I daresay, it is possible to be loyal even while deposing them in some cases! In the film "Cromwell", even the executioners are seen to defer to their king in the smallest matters before carrying out the awful regicide.

The problem with American-style democracy is that we have lost the sense that our rulers, however they attained their status, have a divine mandate. They "work for us". "We can hire them and we can fire them." "The government takes orders from the people, we don't take orders from the government." We have no loyalty to our rulers as persons because they are merely extensions of our own collective will. Until these attitudes are mitigated, our country will be increasingly ungovernable.

For the record, as there seems to be some confusion, I do not approve of President Barack Obama. But it has nothing to do with his reliance on teleprompters, his background as a community organizer, his perceived arrogance, his being "out of touch with the American people", his vacation activities, his wife's atrocious wardrobe, or any other comparative trivialities. (I have no opinion on his birth certificate.) All of these and more I would gladly suffer out of personal loyalty to a President.

The last time I felt this kind of loyalty was with President Reagan. His enemies called it "blind adherence" and "loyalty at any price", but they were wrong. I will admit that I do not feel this loyalty for President Obama and did not feel it with his predecessors. In truth I feel more alienated than connected with my country - the government, the people, the system, the whole enchilada. That's very likely a character defect on my part, and I try hard to compensate. I was pleasantly surprised last week when one of the boys at our first scout meeting was corrected by the scoutmaster for referring to the president merely as "Obama". No, it's "President Obama", even if you don't like the man. It has to start somewhere. On the other hand, I can't imagine myself serving in the military under this Commander-in-chief. Just can't imagine ...

Was there even the briefest pause in coming up with that equation?

Since Barack Obama was clearly in the context of the original post, Steve N., and since we have numerous videos that are disgusting and creepy of little children singing praises to him, including one that says "red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight" or some variation on those words, from a song about _Jesus Christ_, um, no, there wasn't the briefest pause. Obama _does_ inspire fanatical and semi-religious loyalty, and this is not healthy. Since the main post seems to be encouraging us to hope for good things from the specific type of "loyalty" inspired by Barack O., it seems to me right and proper to point out its actual character.

I've never heard a stronger argument against democracy.

Well, Steve N., like it or not, that's the type of country you live in. If we encourage parental-style loyalty to elected officials, we are, I would maintain, encouraging a confusion of categories. You may hate republican constitutional democracy, but encouraging people to pretend that their rulers within that sort of country are instead kings ruling by divine right, to whom they owe filial piety, is, shall we say, unwise.

Since the main post seems to be encouraging us to hope for good things from the specific type of "loyalty" inspired by Barack O., it seems to me right and proper to point out its actual character.

I would suggest that Obama-worship is not the actual character of personal loyalty, but a distortion of its character, which is otherwise something good and natural and human.

Steve Burton,
Welcome to the Ministry of Truth, your heroic adventure/prison cubicle is in the doublethink section.

P.S. Sorry Jeff, I tease because I care.

But to obey a human who holds authority, not on account of his office but on account of his person is to confuse the role of obedience with the role of love.

You are right to distinguish between these roles, but there ought to be overlap. To obey without love is a defect, is it not? Certainly it is best when those whom we love and obey are one and the same person, even if it isn't always perfectly attained.

This is itself a kind of barbarism: it reduces a nation to a set of relationships between subjects and the king, with nothing standing between the subject and the king's whim.

Tony, I don't see the inevitable reduction here. Certainly a nation is and ought to be a set of familial relationships, among other things. And there are many intermediary relationships - familial and otherwise - between subject and king. So you're going to have to connect the dots for me.

Blind fealty is not the only alternative to the principle that a Governor must earn my loyalty by dotting every I and crossing every T I happen to think he should.

Steve N., I don't know who you think you know who holds this about dotting every I and crossing every T, but I don't know anybody who thinks this. On the contrary, Americans seem _far_ too willing to compromise on very big issues while referring to them dismissively in such terms.

Jeff C. says,

But it has nothing to do with his reliance on teleprompters, his background as a community organizer, his perceived arrogance, his being "out of touch with the American people", his vacation activities, his wife's atrocious wardrobe, or any other comparative trivialities.

These are not all the same. For example, it is legitimate to be concerned that a President has no ability as a speaker. It's a flaw that might be overcome, but it is a problem with statesmanship and maturity in the statesman's role, as well as with being willing to be genuine. The reliance on the teleprompter is a flaw in its own right, and it is notable that it made America look rather ridiculous in India. It's just as well not to have the leader of the free world make his country look ridiculous because he literally cannot speak without a teleprompter. Nonetheless, this flaw could be _overridden_ if he were great in other ways.

Arrogance is a character flaw and should _not_ be dismissed as a mere triviality. It can be very serious indeed, especially in a person in a position of great power. So we have to ask if this arrogance is merely perceived or is real, not just dismiss the concern.

The "background as a community organizer" is relevant if it is a background in advancing bad causes and busy-bodying.

Vacation _activities_ by themselves, if not wrong, are not a problem. Taking vacations when there is a serious national or international crisis may be a problem. A leader is supposed to set aside some of the freedom just to take off and take it easy. Moreover, activities that cost the American people huge sums of money are a legitimate matter of concern.

His wife's "atrocious wardrobe"--again, that could be forgiven but is not entirely irrelevant to the issue of dignity and statesmanship. It would be funny if the same Tories who didn't want Princess Diana to tell anybody about her husband's gross infidelities (I'm not saying you are one of these Jeff, but I don't know) because of royal "dignity" should now tell us that the President's wife can dress like something other than a lady and no one should care. If Tories care about the "dignity of the office," then this should cut both ways.

When Barack Obama was elected President, I put up a post saying that I prayed that he would have sleepless nights to be convicted of the evil of his policy positions. I was chided by a friend for not showing sufficient deference to him as President. To that I say phooey. If that's what all of this "dignity of the office" stuff is leading us to, to a point where we can't use strong language about the evils of the man currently leading us, then I say phooey to that, too. Sorry to sound like such a non-Tory, but probably I am a non-Tory. With Rush Limbaugh, I hope he fails.

The rule of law proposes that the law is above any and every human leader, and therefore adherence to the common good is above adhering to any human ruler.

The two are not mutually exclusive. And I have no problem whatsoever with the primacy of the common good. Loyalty sometimes means correction, after all.

More than that, every human leader may mistake the extent to which his authority to command extends, and blind obedience to a leader beyond his writ of authority isn't truly called for even within perfect loyalty.

OK, one more time: I'm against BLIND OBEDIENCE. From whence comes this false dichotomy, it's either blind obedience or non serviam!? St. Thomas More, ora pro nobis!

Loyalty and obedience are rather different things, and anyway, loyalty to the State is far more post-Reformation than part of the glories of medieval Europe.

Lydia, you and I really are talking past each other. You must be younger than I thought. I remember the left's vicious criticism during the Reagan years, in which every misstep, every flaw, every defect was so magnified that each became a reason for impeachment. I'll never forget it. That kind of behavior doesn't magically become legitimate just because the target is more deserving. It was wrong then, and it's wrong today.

As for Pres. Obama's speaking ability, that's one thing about his presidency that I really appreciate. George Bush should have used a teleprompter himself. That would have saved this country much more embarrassment.

Is Pres. Obama arrogant? Probably. I don't like that, but I'm arrogant too and so are most people. As Ben Franklin noted: "The proud hate pride - in others."

I think that praying for a newly elected president to repent of the evil of his policy positions is a good thing and not at all opposed to the virtue of loyalty.

A father is a father, a priest is a priest, a prince is a prince, a king is a king, etc. - no matter his sins, his incompetence, or his bad ideas.

Certainly a nation is and ought to be a set of familial relationships, among other things.

Well, that's kind of what the Greeks said distinguished them from the barbarians: tribal rule is the system when rule is based on a set of family relationships.

It really is true that a father is a father regardless of his defects, because he has an ontological relationship with the child that the defects are aside from. Generation is an act that produces a fundamental relationship between persons. The defects do not change that fundamental source of relationship.

A priest is a priest not because of his own person, but because of his putting on the mantle of Christ. In personal Christi has to change the situation.

The prince is not the prince because of his person. He is not the generator of his subjects, and so on. He holds an office because of God's choosing. There is nothing about his person that springs out of a distinct ontological reality in relation to the subjects. His birth as the first of certain parents does not do it: It is possible to designate who holds a principality or kingdom other than by birth. Senators in Rome effectively appointed temporary kings for the duration of emergencies: during the term of office, they held authority much like a king. And after certain revolts a people may choose a new king by selection rather than by any familial relationship.

It is precisely when a set of tribes and clans grow beyond the possibility of rule by personal and familial relationships that the community must move into the rule of law, which depends on respect for the authority of office rather than respect for the person of the patriarch. This is what the Greeks supposed, anyway.

When the ruler is God we will combine these, since God our _Father_ will be our ruler. In human society, to expect the same is to aim for failure. No man can know his subjects like a father knows his kids, or even a patriarch knows his extended family. The development of civilization beyond the family demands the development of an order of relationship weaker than of father to son, but still capable of expecting obedience. That is the office of ruler. And it is not owed respect on account of the person of the ruler, but on account of the ruler's relationship to the common good.

So far as I'm concerned, conservatism, American style, does not mean instinctive servility.

Nor does "loyalty to persons" mean instinctive servility.

Quite the opposite, in fact. It means independence. It means self-reliance, self-sufficiency - whatever you want to call it. And, above all, it means an instinctive *defiance* of centralized authority.

Then, Steve, conservatism "American style" is not conservatism at all. There is no such thing as a value-free conservatism devoid of moral, cultural and spiritual content. Independence? Self-reliance? To what ends? Any ends whatsoever? That's not conservatism, that's procedural liberalism through and through. Procedure and process are necessary but not at all sufficient. As for "independence" and "self-reliance" themselves, these ideas have merit only if rescued from the fantasy-world of atomistic individualism in which dependent individuals like to imagine they are doing whatever they do apart from the context of a community and society.

Do you have a problem with the slogan "don't tread on me?"

That depends entirely upon who is threatening to tread on whom.

Jeff C., I didn't say that any of these things were grounds for impeachment. Nor do I hear conservatives saying that we should impeach Barack Obama because he uses a teleprompter or because of his wife's clothing!

But you seem to think that it is totally irrelevant to talk about any of these things, that it is inherently vicious to do so. I certainly agree that we should have an _ordering_ in our criticisms. And I think I agree with you that some conservatives seem to lack that sense of ordering and seem to lash out blindly and without thought. (Perhaps it will surprise you to hear that Lawrence Auster has repeatedly made that very point.) But I don't think we agree about which things are trivialities. I would say that some of the things which are, admittedly, _less_ important than Obama's atrocious policy positions and actions, are nonetheless part of a pattern--a pattern of disregard for the common good, of behaving like a blind ideologue, of contempt for the people he ostensibly serves (and "serves" would be the right word even if he really were a king, which he is not), and the like. I think those attitudes are real in Obama, and I think that some of these "relative trivialities" fit into that pattern.

Moreover, I think you need to ask yourself whether you are giving Obama and other Presidents the unwise benefit of having it both ways: On the one hand, we are not to criticize "relative trivialities" because we are supposed to have "respect for his office." On the other hand, when his wife dresses embarrassingly, he and she are supposed to get a pass on this, despite the fact that it does not fit with the very "dignity of the office" you are invoking. Please remember that in the days when we really had statesmen, they were supposed to behave in a statesmanlike fashion, and their wives were supposed to bear in mind the need to appear dignified and gracious, yea, even feminine, themselves. If all of the degeneration of our society since then is reflected in the behavior of the President and/or his wife, then this is an embarrassment and not a matter to be simply ignored.

This point was perhaps even more relevant w.r.t. William Jefferson Clinton, who was in every possible sense a disgrace to the office of President. Yet it was often implied that we should turn a blind eye to his utterly disgraceful behavior and should not feel the contempt that any man of spirit should, indeed, have felt. And why? Because of the "dignity of the office."

I'm sorry, but Presidents really cannot have it both ways like that. If they want us to respect their dignity, they need to have some actual dignity, not just "imputed" dignity from the "office." And traditionally, something similar has applied to the wives.

By the way, I called Ronald Reagan "Reagan," without the title, repeatedly during and after his Presidency, intending no derogation. I'm always proud to say that he was the first President I voted for.

I worry that continual insistence on small and, dare I say it, _relatively trivial_ matters like never referring to Obama as Obama, untitled, may have an effect a good deal worse than relatively trivial--namely, to communicate, perhaps unintentionally, that serious and impassioned opposition to his dreadful policies is merely a subjective matter of "what you think of him."

The prince is not the prince because of his person. He is not the generator of his subjects, and so on. He holds an office because of God's choosing.

But God chose a specific person for the office, not just anyone. Whether it results from birth, appointment, or election, a person of God's choosing fills the office. Strictly speaking, loyalty is due to the office alone, but in reality the office alone can never inspire loyalty. Men don't go to war to defend an office; they go to war to defend their king and countrymen, in obedience to men who have authority over them - for persons. If they don't know the man himself, they want to know as much about him as possible, his family, his city, his experiences, because loyalty by nature demands this personal knowledge.

No man can know his subjects like a father knows his kids, or even a patriarch knows his extended family. The development of civilization beyond the family demands the development of an order of relationship weaker than of father to son, but still capable of expecting obedience. That is the office of ruler. And it is not owed respect on account of the person of the ruler, but on account of the ruler's relationship to the common good.

Tony, that's the strongest argument I've seen for your position thus far. And it has the distinct advantage of being true. My only complaint: I think excluding the person of the ruler as a factor of loyalty is a mistake, for reasons given above. Furthermore I do not believe that Newman intended for Toryism's "loyalty to persons" to apply only to monarchs, but to the whole system of relationships in traditional society at all levels.

Jeff, you are right that loyalty is not blind adherence. We should not be comparing blind obedience to loyalty, and I accept the correction.

But what distinguishes loyalty to a ruler other than mere obedience seems to be 2 things: (1) love which make the obedience easy to render and a joy to give; and (2) a willingness to obey even when you have reason to believe the ruler may be error - giving him the benefit of the doubt, and accepting the onerous burden of obedience to a potentially stupid or defective command.

It is true that Americans and generally those raised in societies that partly rule themselves have a tendency toward pride: I will not serve unless you prove to me, to my own satisfaction, that the order is for the common good. By placing my own judgment in the driver's seat, I usurp the very office of its authority and pridefully insert my own will. This is opposed to virtue. But it is not loyalty that opposes this defect, it is the virtue of obedience. We do not say that Adam and Eve were _disloyal_ out of pride, we say they were disobedient.

Regarding (1) and (2) above: (1) is possible when you personally know the ruler. When you are at 6 or 7 levels away, it no longer works that way. What you tend to get, then, is personal loyalty to the local lord, and then civil war if the local lord finds it necessary to resist the duke, or the duke resist the king, because all the local knights and soldiers are loyal to the local lord.

(2) belongs rightly to certain human societies, but the polity is not one of them: A religious brother takes a vow of obedience to his superiors in an order. He is expected to shut up and give willing obedience even when he thinks - nay, even when he is POSITIVE - the order is stupid. But even there, the superior is temporary, and is chosen by the members of the order, and thus the burden is limited. This level of obedience pertains to the evangelical counsels. It is not to be expected of all men as a matter of course.

I do not say that we should withhold from our rulers any portion of benefit of doubt in matters of policy. We should give them that. We ought not criticize them harshly for debatable matters where no man can know with certainty. And we ought to overlook small failings. But that respect is due to the very nature of the office that commands obedience. It pertains to him on account of his holding an office that is necessary for the common good, not on account of his person. When the ruler passes his authority on to the next person, we transfer that very respect to the next ruler - which means it pertains to the office.

Loyalty is the right attitude within strong personal relationships. Which is why it exceeds what is expected in the polity.

Tony, I was agreeing with your every word until I got to this:

I do not say that we should withhold from our rulers any portion of benefit of doubt in matters of policy. We should give them that.

What if a particular ruler, on matters where there one justifiably has no doubt, has repeatedly shown _execrable_ judgment, a passionate commitment to _truly disastrous_ policies, and _completely wrong_ moral values? Surely this should influence whether we give him the benefit of the doubt, should it not? Are there not cases where the fact that person N. advocates a policy is, per se, a reason to think that policy probably a bad one? There are indeed many such cases. Moreover, most things in American society are not black boxes where we mere citizens can know nothing about them. We can investigate ourselves. And where we may be unsure about a highly specific policy, it will almost always fall into a family (economic, social, foreign, etc.) where we will have clear knowledge about the ruler's judgement on other policies that also fall within that same policy family.

Can you think of a single issue where you are uninformed and where, if you were told that Barack Obama, specifically, favors X policy, you would "give him the benefit of the doubt" and assume that he knows what he is doing _rather than_ at least checking things out more for yourself and withholding judgment in the meanwhile? And that's putting the matter mildly.

One thing to think about Jeff: Isn't there something a bit problematic if you are implying that people who "feel loyalty" for Barack Obama are morally superior to those of us who do not?

That seems to me a huge problem. The reason I feel no loyalty for Barack Obama is because I disagree with him on every possible level. I think he is a very bad ruler. I can imagine being a doctor and trying to save his life if he were gravely ill, but that cannot be a matter of "loyalty," particularly, because if I were a doctor that would be my job for someone who was not the President as well.

When I hear people talking as though Barack Obama is a wonderful person, a wonderful man, as though they are just so proud of him, I consider them _terribly misguided_. He is not a wonderful person, not a wonderful man, and not someone to be proud of. There are many, many reasons why this is true, many or most of which I imagine you and I would agree about.

There is a problem if, instead of thinking, "Those poor people, pouring out all that affectionate loyalty on someone who is leading them and our country so far astray and doing so much harm," I think, "Oh, would that I could be like them. What a hard-hearted, individualistic, disloyal person am I that I do not have those same feelings for our President."

Sorry for the serial posts, but I've had another thought: I think there _was_ some blindness in the support we conservatives had for Reagan. I myself was only beginning to be politically aware during his administration and had very little knowledge, so I was in no position to engage in punditry. But here's a thought experiment: Suppose (I really don't know) that it was possible to tell that Sandra Day O'Connor was going to be a disaster as a Supreme Court appointment. Would conservatives have had a chance to tell President Reagan that she was a no-go? And if so, would they have suppressed such criticism so as not to seem to be siding with his vicious enemies (and he certainly did have vicious enemies--I remember that much)? If so, then there was blindness in their loyalty, and that was a problem with serious practical consequences.

So sometimes even when the bad guys tell us that we're blindly loyal, they're right.

Isn't there something a bit problematic if you are implying that people who "feel loyalty" for Barack Obama are morally superior to those of us who do not?

Yes, that would be more than a bit problematic.

I obviously don't communicate well.

Either that, or you have not considered the possibility that people can be wrong about some things and right about others, and the mix is different with every person and group.

It's entirely possible that people who are wrong about religion, politics, abortion, marriage and so forth are right about something else I am wrong about. It's not only possible, it happens all the time. And people who are right about all these things can be wrong, too, about other important things.

I don't think that conservatives ought to be feeling warm and fuzzy about Obama (I take your point about the Pres. thing, just trying to be a good Boy Scout.). However, every American ought to feel some personal loyalty toward their president. The fact that I don't might be a character defect, or it might be the fact that every president since Reagan has done more harm than good to this country and I have all but given up. So, for the time being, I cling to loyalty to the office alone with the knowledge that it isn't enough.

My remark about liberals and their loyalties was intended to point out a happy contradiction, that sometimes they are conservative in spite of themselves. When conservatives exhibit personal loyalty, they are just being consistent and for that reason it's unremarkable. That even liberals retain an impetus toward personal loyalty, against everything their ideology holds, defies all expectations and is for me a good sign. Of course it can be abused and distorted as it has been and will be again. But the instinct hasn't been completely extinguished in them, so we may hope that one day it might be rightly ordered.

Then, Steve, conservatism "American style" is not conservatism at all. There is no such thing as a value-free conservatism devoid of moral, cultural and spiritual content. Independence? Self-reliance? To what ends? Any ends whatsoever? That's not conservatism, that's procedural liberalism through and through.

Steve was associating conservatism with an affinity to self-reliance, self-sufficiency, and a tendency to defy centralized authority. I agree with him, but whether or not these character traits do have an affinity with conservatism, it is a mistake to treat character qualities as if they were legal or political rights.

Qualities of character cannot be value-free. Those without the ability to act with independence and self-reliance are morally defective. Independence and self-reliance are moral character qualities, not enumerated political or legal rights. If they were the latter, your questions would make sense. Since they aren't, it doesn't.

Unlike Steve, I don't think it means self-reliance or independence. Those are natural effects of conservatism, but only within limits.

Conservatism, or any political associations or systems, are neither necessary nor sufficient to develop these character qualities. You may argue that conservatism is less antagonistic to self-reliance and independence, and thus sustains them better and has less a tendency to degrade them, and I'd agree. But you still need self-reliant and independent people to get a conservative political system off the ground so it wouldn't be correct to say that character qualities are the effects of conservatism.

Suppose (I really don't know) that it was possible to tell that Sandra Day O'Connor was going to be a disaster as a Supreme Court appointment. Would conservatives have had a chance to tell President Reagan that she was a no-go? And if so, would they have suppressed such criticism so as not to seem to be siding with his vicious enemies (and he certainly did have vicious enemies--I remember that much)?

Of course it would be possible. I am sure that many did so. Loyalty does not mean its object can do no wrong!

Lydia, if I may be so bold, I really think you and Steve Burton have a very distorted idea of what loyalty means - I would even call it a blind prejudice - derived from the liberal and egalitarian origins of what passes for conservatism in America today.

However, every American ought to feel some personal loyalty toward their president. The fact that I don't might be a character defect, or it might be the fact that every president since Reagan has done more harm than good to this country and I have all but given up. So, for the time being, I cling to loyalty to the office alone with the knowledge that it isn't enough.

Well, I'm really not trying to be uncharitable, Jeff, believe it or not, but I can't give this any content that makes any sense to me. What does it mean to say that every American ought to feel some personal loyalty to the President of the U.S.? The nearest I can get to it, even when I really try, is obviously not an explication of the concept. I get to imagining emergency situations where people are helping or defending the President--a guard or something jumping in the way of an assassin's bullet. But that can't be what it means, because that has to do with simply doing one's professional duty with integrity. It isn't a matter of feeling personal loyalty to the President.

To tell you the truth, I'm not _sure_ what it even means to "cling to loyalty to the office," though I get a little farther with that. I think I can give that content in terms of being completely and unequivocally opposed to any sedition, having no truck with spies or those in any way plotting to harm the President or bring down the government, because it's still my country, my government, my President, and I'm a loyal citizen.

I'm not sure if that's what you would mean by clinging to the office, but as I say, at least I can put in _some_ content there.

But as for saying that even that is "not enough" and that the liberals who feel personal loyalty to President Obama are right about something that I'm wrong about (namely, that they feel personal loyalty to him and I don't), I just cannot for the life of me see that that is true in any sense at all.

How can you separate their feelings of personal loyalty from severe errors of judgment on their part about his rightness and nobleness? Surely you'll acknowledge that if they _believed_ the things you (I think correctly) _believe_ about him, they would not have those feelings of personal loyalty anymore. And presumably you would prefer that they believed true things rather than false things. I just don't see how you can say that you, seeing and believing what you do see and believe, _ought_ to feel personal loyalty to Barack Obama.

Qualities of character cannot be value-free. Those without the ability to act with independence and self-reliance are morally defective. Independence and self-reliance are moral character qualities, not enumerated political or legal rights.

They are neither character qualities nor are they political or legal rights. They are morally neutral ways of doing things, sometimes rightly and sometimes wrongly. That's what I meant by procedure and process.

I just don't see how you can say that you, seeing and believing what you do see and believe, _ought_ to feel personal loyalty to Barack Obama.

That's fine. It's a minor, peripheral point anyway. I'm not glad that liberals feel personal loyalty toward Obama, I'm glad that liberals feel personal loyalty toward anyone, good or bad.

I tend myself to think that personal loyalty is such a good and lovely thing that it's a terrible shame for it to be poured out upon an unworthy object. It's precisely because I value it that I can't agree that it's good for people to feel it towards someone, good or bad.

I know myself that I felt personal loyalty towards Ronald Reagan because of who I believed him to be. Not perfect (and I've realized since that there were more imperfections even than I knew in his decisions), but a worthy and great man. A man worthy of respect. If I had not believed that, I would not have felt personal loyalty toward him. That seems to me to be right, and I imagine it's what people would say, now, who feel personal loyalty towards Barack Obama.

One can't feel personal loyalty towards someone in the abstract. If one discovers that a person one has previously felt that loyalty towards has been hiding some terrible secret (for example), one is disillusioned. Things can never be the same. I think that's the nature of personal loyalty and is the way that it _should_ be.

Think about Edward VIII of England. I imagine there were good Tories (to the extent there were good Tories left in England by then) who, if they realized his Nazi sympathies and his profligacy, were at least secretly relieved at his abdication. Because they could not respect him and preferred for a better man to be king. That's certainly what I would expect. It's how I think they _should_ have thought, and that precisely because of the loyalty they understandably wished to feel for their king.

When I make statements, I try to control certain variables. For example:

"Every American ought to feel some personal loyalty toward their president."

It's a general statement that applies to any president. The statement attempts to set a standard rather than exclude the possibility of exceptions.

Edmund Burke, whom Paul Cella and myself quoted at the beginning of this thread in defense of "loyalty to persons", also said "For a man to love his country, his country ought to be lovely." (or something to that effect).

He would probably also agree with the idea that loyalty works best when the object of loyalty is worthy. I think Americans ought feel some personal loyalty toward their president, and that Americans ought to have a president who inspires that loyalty. But there is no guarantee that will always be the case. Where it gets tricky (and I get out of my league) is in discussing the extent to which personal loyalty is owed to those who are not worthy. Clearly, loyalty is not strictly dependent on merit - the primary motive for personal loyalty is the person, not the qualities. But at some point, it is certainly possible that the defects of the person (or people) might overwhelm the obligation to loyalty. This is true within families as well. One might be loyal to a badly straying parent, but sometimes a line is crossed and that loyalty must be suspended.

Drawing the line is difficult and I wasn't trying to do that in the original post. That's an argument to be had among those who agree on the basic premise that "loyalty to persons" is essential to any well-ordered society, at all levels, over and against the ideological abstractions that dominate our politics today.

Surely this should influence whether we give him the benefit of the doubt, should it not? Are there not cases where the fact that person N. advocates a policy is, per se, a reason to think that policy probably a bad one?

Lydia, you have a point here. I was envisioning just a "generic" ruler who is neither right about all the gravest matters nor wrong about all the gravest matters, perhaps, but kind of a mixed bag.

Suppose, per the extreme, a person is known to harbor truly wrong-headed notions on so many of the fundamental, basic matters of politics that it becomes a virtual impossibility that he has any sort of neutral relationship to important truths (i.e. where he is just as likely to be right as wrong). In such a case I suppose it is, also, highly unlikely that he might harbor the right opinion for the right reason on a matter of policy where the right thing is a matter of degree. Nevertheless, in the complex world of politics and ordering of public life, it is NOT all that unlikely that he might harbor the right opinion for something less than the right reasons - even to a scoundrel, for example, it sometimes suits his needs to do the right thing. Your question is whether we should doubt this person's approach, simply on account of his being so wrong in so many _other_ areas. I would say that we are justified in doubting it if we can find any reasonably strong thread of probable reasoning that leads from his erroneous principles to his current proposal, even if we can't prove that the current proposal is, itself, a bad idea.

So, yes, a leader can lose what should be the ordinary benefit of doubt granted to someone in authority. But I would say that he does so only by persistent, severe, grave disorders in his public reasoning and in his explaining the nature of his thinking about the public weal. Or in perfectly dastardly self-serving, of course.

I once wrote a letter to an editor (Catholic newspaper) suggesting that if a so-called Catholic who 20 years after the infamous Cuomo gambit tried to pan off support for abortion under the tired "personally opposed but" theory, he was unfit for high office by that very fact alone. I suppose that may have been a bit rhetorical, but if a person's political theories truly DO make him unfit for public office, then ipso facto it makes his public decisions worthy of doubt.

Jeff, in a polity organized around life-long fealty to the local ruler, lack of readiness to consider, and then consider again, the leader's capacity to rule may be necessary to comfortable and pleasant agreeableness in living within that order. In a political order organized around a larger group selecting the smaller group that rules, such a lack of readiness (in that larger selecting group) cannot but be a political defect. This would obtain whether the most fit 5% of the population were the electorate, or the general 50% that votes these days. What you are objecting to seems to me, then, is a political order wherein a larger group selects the set of rulers. But THAT is a different discussion than the loss of loyalty. Loyalty ought to mean something different when we exchange rulers every 2, 4, or 6 years by common consent. I cannot be personally loyal to the congressman I helped elect 20 years ago the way I must be loyal to the current one - that wouldn't support the common good.

I cannot prove by historical certainty (which would not admit of mathematical proof anyway) that given man's defects a political order of changing rulers every few years by selection must of necessity be a more wholesome human order than an order where a person remains a ruler once seated in office. I doubt anyone can. But we know that the defects in the latter type of system seemed to get worse and worse as nations got larger and larger. Unless we want to dissolve back into 400,000 different city-states, then, we better think hard before proposing that we return to states where _personal_ loyalty drives authority and obedience.

I think that one place where we probably fundamentally disagree, Jeff, is in thinking that there is _any_ good point of analogy between a President and a parent. I think that analogy just fails at every point.

A child is hardwired by God to love his parents. I'm not even sure that "loyalty" is the right word to begin with, with a tiny, tiny child. Need, love, clinging, yearning towards, desiring attention and love from, these all describe a very young child. As the child grows a bit older these grow into loyalty to the parents. I think that grows naturally out of sheer, instinctive attachment. That is all in the natural order and precedes any actual evaluation of the parent's character, though insofar as trust strengthens loyalty, it is in turn strengthened even by basic things like providing for the child's needs, giving affection, telling the child what he needs to know in daily life, and so forth.

That familial relationship is a primal and primary thing. It precedes the time when the child is in any position to make an informed, global judgment of his father's character.

There is nothing similarly primal and primary about the relationship between me and some given President of the United States, just because he is President. God has not hardwired me to feel love and affection toward him, to need him, to cling to him. (And God hasn't hardwired him to protect and love me!) There is no automatic and pre-political relationship between us. The relationship is precisely and entirely a political relationship.

That, by the way, is why the Stuarts and others made such a big deal about the Divine Right of Kings. _They knew_ that republicanism was an _entirely different_ conception of the relationship between ruled and ruler. _They knew_ that in their conception the relationship _was_ primal and primary, and that this was very closely connected to the idea that it was _hereditary_.

You _cannot_ just say that because, biblically, God in some sense "sets up" all rulers that therefore what are (I'm sorry, but essentially) "Divine right of kings" ideas according to which the king stands in something like a father's position to his people can be ported over to a non-monarchical, non-hereditary, essentially political form of government.

It's only if you truly believe that the ruler is literally in something like a familial or even mystically sacramental relationship to his people--as Charles I believed, for example--that you are going to be able to say these things. A President just isn't in that position, and you can't as it were "baptize" him into being in it by fiat. I think Charles I would have been the first to agree with me here and to say that that sort of primal and familial relationship between ruler and people is dead in America, at least at the federal level, and has been from the beginning. It does not exist, as an ontological matter.

In a sense, I think this is what Tony has been getting at all through.

They are neither character qualities nor are they political or legal rights. They are morally neutral ways of doing things, sometimes rightly and sometimes wrongly. That's what I meant by procedure and process
.

Independence and self-reliance are not ways of doing things, but rather ways of being, and I think it self-evident they are not morally neutral, and certainly they've not historically been considered so.

I can't help but wonder if these extremely condemnatory posts (and comments in threads such as "The Vanguard of the Revolution") aren't part of an outlook that might characterized as a combination of right-leaning and Christianized bourgeoisophobia, where then country looks like a bunch of Last Men living merely for their own comfort who have denied God.

Has anyone read "The Idea of Decline in Western History"? Or "Occidentalism"? Or for that matter any number of classic American anti-bourgeois novels? In a review of the latter I squirreled away for later use, I read of the characteristic hates of these folks:

-They hate cities since they stand for commerce, mixed populations, artistic freedom, and sexual license.

-They hate mass media: advertising, television, pop music, and videos.

-They hate science and technology: technical progress, mechanical efficiency, and know-how.

-They hate liberty, the freedom extended even to mediocre people.

-They hate the emancipation of women. "Female emancipation leads to bourgeois decadence."

No offense to anyone, but I can't be the only one to wonder. Outlooks like these don't rise out of nowhere, so it is reasonable to speculate on its roots.

"Christianized bourgeoisophobia"

Christian aversion to liberalism.

That familial relationship is a primal and primary thing. It precedes the time when the child is in any position to make an informed, global judgment of his father's character.

There is nothing similarly primal and primary about the relationship between me and some given President of the United States, just because he is President ... There is no automatic and pre-political relationship between us. The relationship is precisely and entirely a political relationship.

That has to be the most depressing thing I have read in a long time. Man is not meant to be ruled by aliens. We have a government and that government springs from the people. Do you really imagine that the earliest Americans had no pre-political loyalty to George Washington? Or Adams, or Jefferson? I would argue that in our Republic it is by design that the President come from the people, as a reaction against the old world in which nations sometimes endured foreign monarchs with no "pre-political relationships". As a guarantee the Constitution even provides that the President not be foreign-born.

A nation, if it is truly a nation, is an extended family - perhaps a complicated family, with intermarriages and adoptions and naturalizations and so forth - but a real family nonetheless. If our relationship with our rulers is "precisely and entirely a political relationship", then we are the outposts of an empire, not the citizens of a nation.

It could be that such is our true condition. That's what makes loyalty to persons so difficult, even unthinkable for many. But it's nothing to celebrate. God speed the day when it comes to an end!

A question: Should a President exhibit loyalty to the people of the United States? - not merely to the Constitution, but to the people? I expect you will answer in the affirmative. Doesn't it then follow that the American people should reciprocate with their personal loyalty?

Independence and self-reliance are not ways of doing things, but rather ways of being ...

If you insist. These aren't bad things and in many situations they are useful. Americans can be grateful for this unique element of their character. But these are not virtues in themselves, without regard to their ends. An "independent" and "self-reliant" people can still be a thoroughly wicked people. There is nothing in sacred Scripture or the teaching of the Church that exalts independence and self-reliance as virtues in themselves. (Yes, I know all about the Proverbs, 2 Thes 3:10, etc. Context.) My argument stands.

Jeff, the fact that the President has to be a natural-born citizen does not automatically make him "as a father" to the whole nation. Even the family analogy is pretty weak, especially in a nation the size of ours and as diverse as ours (weaker, indeed, than it was in the early days of the Republic). But *at most*, the President's being a natural-born citizen would make him one of a billion "brothers," or a very distant "cousin." And his being elected President wouldn't turn him into a father! Your original analogy was to the great initial loyalty we naturally feel for a parent (a parent that we actually know, I might add), which quite understandably can be overcome only by some sort of terrible and perhaps even personally directed wrong action by the parent. (I imagine the children of mafiosos feel loyalty to their parents for a long time and struggle later to put together the fact that their fathers ordered the murder of others with the kindness their fathers have shown to them.)

One doesn't, shouldn't, and couldn't, have anything remotely like the same tie of instinctive love and loyalty to one of a billion brothers or one of a billion distant cousins that one has to an actual parent one has known. Nor would the other have that to you.

Do I think the President owes loyalty to the American people? Only in the sense that a) every citizen ought to be a patriotic citizen and b) his job, his role, means that on a daily basis he serves the common good of the people the best that he knows how. My role as non-President citizen does not mean that on a daily basis I serve the President the best that I know how! If that seems asymmetrical, it's because it is asymmetrical. Being an elected official is like that. I, as a citizen, have to obey the laws that he helps to put in place, even if I think they are foolish (as I often do). He has to obey the laws already in place (for he's a citizen, too) and also, because he isn't just an ordinary citizen, he has to work for the benefit of the people by trying not to pass foolish laws and trying to pass good ones instead. This requires special attention to the good of the people, whereas obeying the laws does not similarly require that special attention to the good of the ruler.

"No offense to anyone, but I can't be the only one to wonder. Outlooks like these don't rise out of nowhere, so it is reasonable to speculate on its roots"

It does not appear to be particularly helpful to look for patterns and/or roots of outlooks based on what people "hate," since people can have very different reasons for "hating" the same things.

Also, the list you produce seems to me far too broad and generalized. I do, in fact, hate some of the things you list. Of others I am merely skeptical, and with still others I have no problem at all.

I certainly think the natural-born citizen rule in the Constitution is a good rule. I just think it's a terrible non sequitur from that to our having or needing to have some sort of deep, pre-merit, personal loyalty to the President qua President. It's a prudential rule, a rule that is supposed to make it much more likely that the President is a person with patriotic loyalty to the country (though it certainly doesn't guarantee that) and with a personal knowledge of and ties to American mores, values, laws, and problems (though it doesn't guarantee that either). That is, it's supposed to make him a good citizen. Even if the rule succeeded in that goal, which it needn't, you can't translate "a good citizen who has been elected President" to "our father who dwells in Washington, D.C., and toward whom we feel filial love and loyalty." He'd just be another good citizen, as each of us presumably thinks himself to be a good citizen, who had been elected President. That's it. And if he appears not to have those qualities of patriotism and knowledge and affection for American laws, problems, and values, then I quite rightly do not even feel the personal ties and affection for him that I would feel for a fellow good citizen! I might even think that, in point of fact, there are people who aren't natural-born citizens who would make a better President than he does (as no doubt there are), though that doesn't make me seek to overturn the prudent natural-born citizen rule.

"Christianized bourgeoisophobia" = Christian aversion to liberalism.

No. Classical liberalism is nothing at all like liberalism in the modern American usage of the term.

If you don't make distinctions in the term "liberalism," then you could throw Al-Queda and Christians together in the same anti-liberal group.

Jeff, we MUST be talking past each other here.

First of all, everyone here in this thread agrees that we all ought to be patriots. Patriotism certainly includes a love, respect, and loyalty to our country.

Secondly, everyone here agrees that we ought to obey duly appointed authority. To clarify that, I think that most or all of us agree that true obedience implies a readiness that is not grudging, carping, complaining and seditious.

Finally, I think that most of us have agreed that we ought to grant trust and reliance and respect to the decisions of our rulers, except to the extent that trust and reliance and respect has been forfeited by those rulers because of something they have done. That is, the default position is to respect their authoritative decisions.

You seem to want us to provide still more, a loyalty to the person of him who is in authority, that obtains without regard to his ideas or his actions, just because he inhabits the position of authority. But you have not articulated from whence this duty of ours to be loyal to his person springs. If it springs from his very office, then why is the loyalty that we owe personal rather than official? If personal, why should it the loyalty come into existence when they take office and then pass away when they leave office? Their person doesn't change ontologically when they come into office, and then change again when they leave office.

Do you really imagine that the earliest Americans had no pre-political loyalty to George Washington?

We have every reason to believe that people had a pre-political loyalty to GW, based on his actions before he was President. He earned that loyalty by his self-less integrity. Should the people have been loyal to him even if he had not earned it? On what basis?

I feel like you are supposing that "personal" loyalty to the man who is in the office given on account of his office is fundamentally different than loyalty formally to "he who is in office". You need to establish what the difference is between those 2 loyalties, and why you call the first one personal loyalty but not the second.

It does not appear to be particularly helpful to look for patterns and/or roots of outlooks based on what people "hate," since people can have very different reasons for "hating" the same things.

You have to try to classify to know anything. Even if two different people disliking similar things for different reasons, it would still be significant in any case.

So if there is an overlap between what bourgeoisophobes despise and what Al-Queda despises, but the latter merely rejects violence, that would be a significant fact and worthy of thought and discussion it is very clear.

Jeff C.,

I'm just getting around to this post and its comments now, as I got sidetracked by foreign policy here at W4. I don't really have anything profound to say, other than I think this is one of the most interesting post ever at W4 and while I found myself intellectually agreeing with Steve Burton and Lydia my heart is with you.

"if there is an overlap between what bourgeoisophobes despise and what Al-Queda despises, but the latter merely rejects violence, that would be a significant fact"

Well, yeah, but that's a bit of a stretch. I'm thinking more along the lines of conservatives vs. liberals. Both may despise things bourgeoisophobes despise, but they are likely to have quite different reasons for it. For instance, there are anti-Walmart liberals and anti-Walmart conservatives, but they tend to have different reasons for being anti-Walmart, none of which are necessarily bourgeoisophobe.

Well, yeah, but that's a bit of a stretch. I'm thinking more along the lines of conservatives vs. liberals. Both may despise things bourgeoisophobes despise, but they are likely to have quite different reasons for it. For instance, there are anti-Walmart liberals and anti-Walmart conservatives, but they tend to have different reasons for being anti-Walmart, none of which are necessarily bourgeoisophobe.

Well I'm a particularist on matters like this, if not all, so I like examples very much. I'm not familiar with the anti-Wal-mart conservative position. Can you list a few reasons for it? I don't have too much patience for abstract denials of similarity. "This isn't that" needs to add *why* this isn't that before anything meaningful has been said.

I just think the fuzzy conservative/liberal left/right distinctions made here recently have turned farcical. How can one not notice the rough correspondence between the view of the muslim street that Western culture is inherently corrupt and immoral and the view of those like Jeff C. given the anti-Jihad expressions on the mission statement of this blog?

Jeff Singer: Thank you for the kind words. Wish I had more time for this today.

Jeff, we MUST be talking past each other here. . . . You seem to want us to provide still more, a loyalty to the person of him who is in authority, that obtains without regard to his ideas or his actions, just because he inhabits the position of authority.

I think "talking past" others usually comes about from emphasizing different aspects of the necessarily opposing qualities inherent in good things. But other times it really isn't "talking past" at all, but rather it happens when one cannot accept or even rejects something that another thinks is good.

I stand beside the bourgeoisophobia thesis as the most plausible explanation. For all the critiques any of us no doubt have to offer of American and Western culture based on our religion and all manner of other things, it does seem Jeff has a special hatred for mass media, commercialism, female suffrage, equality and most of the things that bourgeoisophobes have hated from the 19th century, and exudes a similar self-righteous despair. Babbit, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, Death of a Salesman, etc.

It seems to me he and a few others who commented in the "The Vanguard of the Revolution" thread would agree with those Frenchman (certainly not all) who despises Americans just because one can become an American in a day, whereas a non-Frenchman can never really become French. I just don't see where the mystery is in this viewpoint.

How can one not notice the rough correspondence between the view of the muslim street that Western culture is inherently corrupt and immoral and the view of those like Jeff C. given the anti-Jihad expressions on the mission statement of this blog?

Um, huh?

You lost me there, Mark. Are you saying that...I won't even try. It's too confusing.

Let me put it this way: Jeff C. and I disagree about a number of things. He's much more of what one might call a "trad-con" than I am, and this thread is an example of that difference. But we _agree_ about the Muslim threat to America. That's one of the places where we are strong allies. We don't have all the same proposals for what to do about that problem, but that there is a problem and something should be done, for sure, we agree. In no way is the recognition of the danger of the Islam threat somehow the special province of the trad-cons like Jeff who write sort of monarchy-friendly posts like this. To the contrary, in fact. Some prominent traditionalists (of the more "paleo" stripe) have been much more friendly (too friendly, in my opinion) to Islam, for complicated religious and foreign political reasons. So I can't figure out what you're suggesting, but if it's some sort of heavy symbiotic relationship between being anti-Islam, anti-sharia, etc., and being a trad-con, then I think you're wrong as far as the way things actually play out in American conservative political categories.

"No. Classical liberalism is nothing at all like liberalism in the modern American usage of the term.

If you don't make distinctions in the term "liberalism," then you could throw Al-Queda and Christians together in the same anti-liberal group."

For the sake of argument, so what if I do?

"...that ignores this primal longing of men's hearts to serve with fidelity one who is greater..."

Well, that's one set of genes I'm glad I'm missing. I find the very concept repulsively servile. Like everyone else, elected officials should be judged - and supported - based on their performance towards the common good. The sort of loyalty Jeff describes seems like a cult of personality which as such a cult is right deviationist, sort of fits.

Um, huh? Are you saying that...I won't even try. It's too confusing. . . . But we _agree_ about the Muslim threat to America. . . . Some prominent traditionalists (of the more "paleo" stripe) have been much more friendly (too friendly, in my opinion) to Islam . . .

I didn't at all say, nor do I think, what you're implying, and my last comment made that pretty clear by avoiding any reference whatever to Islam to be perfectly clear to try to avoid any misunderstanding.

"I'm not familiar with the anti-Wal-mart conservative position. Can you list a few reasons for it?"

One is that WalMart is not truly competitive in that it often has the skids greased for it by local governments. Another is that it uses unfair practices to stifle smaller competitors -- volume-buying, dictating of wholesale prices, etc. A third is that WalMart is destructive of local communities in the sense that its monopsonic practices tend to hurt smaller community-based businesses.

"How can one not notice the rough correspondence between the view of the muslim street that Western culture is inherently corrupt and immoral and the view of those like Jeff C. given the anti-Jihad expressions on the mission statement of this blog?"

I don't get this. Would you restate it?

"Well, that's one set of genes I'm glad I'm missing. I find the very concept repulsively servile."

That repulsion is called "original sin." Better to reign in hell, etc.

I don't get this. Would you restate it?

I already did. Beyond that I don't think any more restatements will help, and I listed two books if anyone were truly interested (not the novels).

Jeff, let me put it in succinct terms: what sort of actions does personal loyalty to the ruler entail that is beyond the love of persons that is a Christian obligation toward every person (whether ruler or not) and the respect and protection of _office_ that springs out of a love for the common good, and protects the office in order to protect the common good?

"I already did. Beyond that I don't think any more restatements will help"

Well, I guess that's true given that your "already did" didn't.

Isn't Loyalty to Persons another way of saying one prefers the flesh and blood friend to abstract principles, institutional organizations, political programs,and all the other structures that can crush the human person?

Newman is rightly giving the heart preeminence over the mind's tendency to reduce the real to manageable, impersonal concepts. Christian Personalism is the antidote to the modern sickness of making one's natural affections subdordinate to a series of mental formulas and partisan proclivities.

I hope Jeff Culbreath gives us more of Newman's thought on these matters.

Don, is the love owed to the Person of the ruler different on account of his being the ruler? We ought to love every person, and love is not reducing the real to manageable, impersonal concepts. If it is a different love, is it owed to to this ruler only while he is the ruler, and then owed instead to the next ruler when he takes over from the prior ruler? If so, then you are describing a loyalty to the office rather than to the person, seems to me.

Let me see - Lewis's four loves: eros, philos, stoige, and agape, where they not (sorry for the poor spelling of the terms)?
The love of a ruler is a branch of the love of one's country and a branch of brotherly love. There is not one love, but at least two different loves that attach to the ruler. The can run parallel or opposing courses.

The Chicken

Perhaps I am in agreement with Jeff Singer above. I like Jeff C.'s thoughts, but can't exactly explain why. A man thinking these thoughts just might write a good poem. Lydia's thoughts are very sensible, but don't seem likely to inspire poetry.

We ought to love every person, and love is not reducing the real to manageable, impersonal concepts.

Tony -
It isn't love if it is free of suffering. Let's start out loving our near and knowable neighbor before we start loving a ruler or public celebrity. Otherwise, we practice a warped inversion common to an age afflicted by loneliness and conditioned by mass comunications.

Don, is the love owed to the Person of the ruler different on account of his being the ruler?

I was not thinking in an explicitly political context, but our current obsession with those who hold office is a form of wide-spread neurosis. If our affections are in right order, we will view the distant and ephemeral ruler with healthy detachment and avoid reducing him to a symbol of our ideological projections.

But since you raise it; the ruler has a limited claim to our loyalty and it is subordinate to the higher claims made by God, family and community. This old Tory-Anglican sensibilty has vanished under (capital L) Liberalism's withering Bellum omnium contra omnes.

Let me put it this way: Jeff C. and I disagree about a number of things. He's much more of what one might call a "trad-con" than I am, and this thread is an example of that difference. But we _agree_ about the Muslim threat to America. That's one of the places where we are strong allies. We don't have all the same proposals for what to do about that problem, but that there is a problem and something should be done, for sure, we agree.

Thanks, Lydia. I don't think Mark has been reading W4 very long. And he is also not much acquainted with the various strains of western conservative thought - especially not the older strains, or their recent revivals. I'm not quite sure, but I think he was trying to make a parallel with Islamic criticism of American society and my own criticism. The implication being ... I don't know ... that we trad-cons are as dangerous as the Taliban? Or something like that. Wish he would clear that up for us.

Lots of good comments and questions here. Right now I'm just too tired to respond. Another long day of musical heaven. Maybe later. Good night!

Why does Loyalty to Persons immediately invoke responses regarding the proper posture one should have towards The Ruler? Are we all so thoughtlessly submerged in Liberalism's Left & Right-wing variants that our natural default position is to respond in terms of Power relationships? Has the modern spectacle of politics and the dense fog produced by abstractions and technological imagery so clouded our minds that the notion of loyalty to another human being sets-off a defensive reaction of threat? Some of the comments here read like slaves revolting against the very thought of liberation; "this is where I stand - abjectly ensconsed in ideology - I can do no other."

Not sure if America ever had a "conservative order", but its restoration doesn't look so appealing if it just another set of propositions, ideas and doctrines designed to obscure the human being and alter reality.

Why does Loyalty to Persons immediately invoke responses regarding the proper posture one should have towards The Ruler?

Because we have already accepted that we ought to have loyalty to _other_ persons: our parents, for example. The particular sort of loyalty that started this was a loyalty that implies "fidelity one who is greater", and dignified obedience, and of course one of the prime meanings of greater is the greater we find in authority, which is just where we ought to respond with dignified obedience. A specific form of loyalty, then. The greater we find in, say, moral greatness, for example, is not in the discussion. The greatness that pertains to the forms of "superior birth," to title in an aristocracy, don't obtain here in the US, because our form of society does not contain this sort of superiority. You cannot charge us with failure to respect superior birth where there is no superior birth.

Is Jeff suggesting that to have a form of society that has no place for the formal superiority of title that one is born to is, ipso facto, a defective form of society?

"Isn't Loyalty to Persons another way of saying one prefers the flesh and blood friend to abstract principles, institutional organizations, political programs,and all the other structures that can crush the human person?"

When adherence to ideas trumps loyalty to persons, nine times out of ten you're dealing with an ideology. In some ways it is a corollary to the 'progress' vs. 'tradition' argument.

Burke understood the gradations of loyalty, tradition, and change extremely well. He stood in Parliament to support the American Revolution, and wrote the book against the French Revolution as it was happening. This is the man who said that "we must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature, and the means perhaps of its conservation. (A) gradual course...will prevent men, long under depression, from being intoxicated with a large draught of new power, which they always abuse with a licentious insolence."

De Tocqueville judged the compelling forces to be just as we are experiencing them today--
"I am of the opinion that, in the democratic ages which are opening upon us...that centralization will be the natural government. The pleasure it procures them of interfering with everyone and holding everything in their hands atones to them for its dangers.
Not only is a democratic people led by its own taste to centralize its government, but the passions of all the men by whom it is governed constantly urge it in the same direction. It may easily be foreseen that almost all the able and ambitious members of a democratic community will labor unceasingly to extend the powers of government, because they all hope at some time or other to wield those powers themselves. It would be a waste of time to attempt to prove to them that extreme centralization may be injurious to the state, since they are centralizing it for their own benefit.

Princes had turned violence into a physical thing but our democratic republics have made it into something as intellectual as the human will it intends to restrict. (The democratic despostism) reduces daily the value and frequency of the exercise of free choice; it restricts the activity of free will within a narrower range and gradually removes autonomy itself from each citizen. Equality has prepared men for all this, inclining them to tolerate all these things and often even to see them as a blessing.
They derive consolation from being supervised by thinking that they have chosen their supervisors."

As Menchen observed, the American people, North and South, went into the (Civil) War as citizens of their respective states; they came out as subjects of one.

When adherence to ideas trumps loyalty to persons, nine times out of ten you're dealing with an ideology.

Rob, I would be inclined to agree with you. Except that _in practice_ the adherence "to persons" is frequently at the cost of moral principles, and thus results in immoral behavior. For example, many people who like to think of themselves as pro-life support the right to abortion in the case of rape and incest, because they think (or rather, feel) the need to support and adhere to the victim girl who is pregnant against her will: loyalty of a sort. That this form of loyalty to a person cannot be true loyalty because a prior, higher principle of moral right stands in the way does not appear to cross their minds or hearts. Thus what constitutes true loyalty in the concrete (in difficult cases) cannot be resolved without recourse to principles. Saying one prefers the flesh and blood friend to abstract principles appears practically speaking to be a step on the road to immorality that ignores moral principles.

Because we have already accepted that we ought to have loyalty to _other_ persons: our parents, for example. The particular sort of loyalty that started this was a loyalty that implies "fidelity one who is greater", and dignified obedience...

I hope we can expand the number of people deserving of our loyalty beyond just our parents. However, if Jeff Culbreath is more interested in the "fidelity to authority" angle, I'll wait until the discussion centers on Newman's personalism and the Tory tradition of protecting men and women from the ravages of procedural liberalism and market dynamics.

Except that _in practice_ the adherence "to persons" is frequently at the cost of moral principles, and thus results in immoral behavior.

First, the evil of abortion is predicated on making the human being subordinate to a principle, in this case; "freedom of choice." Its practice is sustained by our culture's flight into such abstractions. A "prior, higher principle of moral right" doesn't not "stand in the way" as much as a real flesh and blood baby does.

Newman would say our personal influence (the witness of a life faithfully lived) rather than well articulated appeals to dogma would be more decisive in securing a just and moral outcome;[Truth] has been upheld in the world not as a system, not by books, not by argument, nor by temporal power, but by the personal influence of [those] who are at once the teachers and the patterns of it.

Loyalty to persons means communion and solidarity and recognizing Christ in those around us.


Because we have already accepted that we ought to have loyalty to _other_ persons: our parents, for example. The particular sort of loyalty that started this was a loyalty that implies "fidelity one who is greater", and dignified obedience...

I hope we can expand the number of people deserving of our loyalty beyond just our parents. However, if Jeff Culbreath is more interested in the "fidelity to authority" angle, I'll wait until the discussion centers on Newman's personalism and the Tory tradition of protecting men and women from the ravages of procedural liberalism and market dynamics.

Except that _in practice_ the adherence "to persons" is frequently at the cost of moral principles, and thus results in immoral behavior.

First, the evil of abortion is predicated on making the human being subordinate to a principle, in this case; "freedom of choice." Its practice is sustained by our culture's flight into such abstractions. A "prior, higher principle of moral right" doesn't not "stand in the way" as much as a real flesh and blood baby does.

Newman would say our personal influence (the witness of a life faithfully lived) rather than well articulated appeals to dogma would be more decisive in securing a just and moral outcome;[Truth] has been upheld in the world not as a system, not by books, not by argument, nor by temporal power, but by the personal influence of [those] who are at once the teachers and the patterns of it.

Loyalty to persons means communion and solidarity and recognizing Christ in those around us.


Tony, you wrote:

Jeff, let me put it in succinct terms: what sort of actions does personal loyalty to the ruler entail that is beyond the love of persons that is a Christian obligation toward every person (whether ruler or not) and the respect and protection of _office_ that springs out of a love for the common good, and protects the office in order to protect the common good?

Oh, there are lots of things. It's more of an attitude than anything else, but an attitude that permeates everything. First let me just say that relating this loyalty exclusively to rulers is a bit lopsided, since we're talking about a way of life here. One might exhibit this loyalty towards an employer, for example. If better paying jobs are available, and perhaps better job offers extended, your loyalty to your present employer due to his need for your services, your remembrance of past favors, your long association with his family, etc., trumps other considerations. One might also exhibit this loyalty towards a local merchant, who is not a friend or relative but still is a member of your community who depends on your business. When a new WalMart opens a few blocks away with lower prices and larger selections, your personal loyalty to this merchant, just because of who he is and what he represents, takes precedence over economic considerations.

Anyway - it's personal loyalty toward rulers that liberalism has the biggest problem with conceptually, so I understand the emphasis.

What sort of actions might personal loyalty to a ruler entail? A few little examples off the top of my head: 1) Making an effort to identify with and further his goals and and policies. 2) Mourning when he dies, or when he suffers some kind of loss. 3) Rejoicing when he is blessed with some kind of personal triumph. 4) Heeding his wishes when he asks you to serve or sacrifice in some way. 5) Preserving his good name and defending him against malicious attacks, even though you might have political differences. 6) Praying for him, for his family, for his temporal and eternal welfare. 7) Being slow to criticize, quick to forgive, and predisposed to give him benefit of the doubt. 8) Giving him a warm and rousing welcome when he visits your city. Etc. One could go on and on.

And this is all very normal. Though I agree with most of Don Colacho's comments, I would not say that a desire to have some personal connection or relationship with one's leaders - an emotional investment, if you will - is to exhibit a "form of neurosis". It's part of being human. We instinctively revolt against the idea of being ruled by strangers. If we are ruled by strangers, we try to close the gap as quickly as we can, to discover everything we can about their lives, and to use whatever "bridges" we can find - religion, regional and family background, education, hobbies, experiences, etc. - in order to create some kind of a relationship beyond what is merely "official".

It is true that in the modern West, having abandoned the established hierarchical patterns of the old world, we find exaggerated and misdirected cults of celebrity as a sort of psychological compensation. In my opinion this is far more dangerous than what we have left behind.

Is Jeff suggesting that to have a form of society that has no place for the formal superiority of title that one is born to is, ipso facto, a defective form of society?

Yes - although I haven't given up on the idea that a republican version of traditional society might fully develop over time. Jefferson touted a "natural aristocracy" among men, and I know many humble people who recognize this reality and act upon it. Even some who are staunch egalitarians find themselves searching for appropriate manners in the presence of their betters. Our lack of customs in this area is immensely frustrating.

Though I agree with most of Don Colacho's comments, I would not say that a desire to have some personal connection or relationship with one's leaders - - an emotional investment, if you will - is to exhibit a "form of neurosis". It's part of being human.

Except the investment comes as a poor substitute for communion.

We rather be spectators at the circus maximus and join the exaggerated and misdirected cults of celebrity as a sort of psychological compensation for the lack of community.

We don't "humanize" rulers by reducing them to avatars, as much we de-humanize ourselves by focusing on distant personalities and programs.

The love of a ruler is a branch of the love of one's country and a branch of brotherly love. There is not one love, but at least two different loves that attach to the ruler. The can run parallel or opposing courses.

Ah, I've been out-articulated by a Chicken! I do know that chickens are smarter than they generally let on. They are impossible to run over with a motor vehicle, for example, always escaping by a feather at the last micro-second.

Well said, MC. That's precisely it.

To return to something Tony said about principles having priority over personal loyalty -- yes, that's definitely true. But when it comes to politics and statecraft, principles are never enough. The reason God put loyalty into our blood is that it is an indispensable virtue in the midst of conflict and hardship. "Sophists, economists and calculators" with their political ambitions masked as high-minded "principles" can depose rulers much too easily without the virtues of personal loyalty holding things together. In America we think we have institutionalized a system of perpetual revolution where loyalty to persons is not even relevant. We think we have outsmarted human nature. Besides the manifest falsity of this idea, the sad result has been an erosion of the virtue of loyalty across the board.

Except the investment comes as a poor substitute for communion.

Communion is not what I'm getting at. Communion speaks to a spiritual equality. Loyalty to persons, often enough, is an hierarchical loyalty flowing in both directions. The context of Newman's quote is definitely hierarchical.

As for Newman's alleged personalism, this is not a topic I have explored in any depth. Seeing how modernists have totally mangled Newman's theories of development of doctrine and the primacy of conscience, I'm not particularly anxious to delve into the literature!

Communion is not what I'm getting at. Communion speaks to a spiritual equality.

Without the spiritual context and foundation the attempt to assert a love for one's rulers is a simply an eccentric execrcise in nostalgia without any chance of taking root in America. All you will be left with is the status quo; celebrity cults based on ideology and manipulation by the media.

As for Newman's alleged personalism, this is not a topic I have explored in any depth.

Given his impact on the thought of Ratzinger, and the direction both JPII and BXVI have been taking the Church, you might want to do so when time allows.

Making an effort to identify with and further his goals and and policies.

No. I absolutely will not. I cannot imagine why in the world this should be considered a virtue in the abstract. It absolutely and entirely depends on what the goals and policies are and depends not one tiniest whit on some sort of personal feeling towards the ruler. Indeed, it is _exactly_ the combining of this with other things like "not making malicious criticisms" that seems to me, if I may say so, dangerous in this entire attempt to apply "personal loyalty" to the President of the United States *apart from* who that President is and what he is actually trying to do.

Not to mention the fact that it makes one too quick to consider criticisms malicious when they have a point to them. One could go on and on.

And I wish my local nice conservative mechanics hadn't printed out the fake-homemade "Welcome, President Obama" sign provided (of course) by the local newspaper and put it in their business window when the President came to our town. Because he doesn't deserve it.

Jeff, I agree with you entirely about the employer comments. But that's because you have an _actual_ personal connection to the employer which has given you actual reasons to be loyal to him. Reality makes a difference.

The reason that this comment thread is focusing on rulers, Jeff, is because you brought up as supposedly a thing to smile at, a thing to hope from, a thing to wish one could feel oneself, people's loyalty _specifically_ to Obama and (perhaps even worse) Clinton in the main post. I expect that almost everybody in this thread who has disagreed with you on that point would have an entirely different take on the meaning and possibility of loyalty to people one actually _knows_ or with whom one has had some actual, personal connection.

I worry that you are using the term "political" as in "political differences" in a way that fails to recognize the importance of the differences a good Christian should, indeed must, have with a ruler such as Barack Obama. These are grave moral matters. My opposition to Obama's overturning of, say, the Mexico City policy or his advancing of the homosexual agenda is not "political" in some bare or mere sense that can or should be set aside, particularly when considering him _as President_. It's not as though he is my golf buddy or someone I work with. In genuine personal contacts, one can and does develop a personal friendship apart even from serious moral disagreements and differences (and they are _moral_ differences). To pretend that we have such a separate-from-politics friendship with a person with whom we have no such friendship and of whom we would *never have heard* aside from his political office is exceedingly confused and potentially confusing.

And I wish my local nice conservative mechanics hadn't printed out the fake-homemade "Welcome, President Obama" sign provided (of course) by the local newspaper and put it in their business window when the President came to our town. Because he doesn't deserve it.

I wouldn't have put it up either. The man is odious.

Perhaps we differ in this respect. I say that the conundrum in which we find ourselves, forced by reality to *personally* hold our rulers in contempt, is lamentable, even disastrous. You, on the other hand, seem perfectly content with the situation.

The evil of an evil ruler extends to the habits of contempt and suspicion he establishes in his people. That's what is so horrifying about the betrayal of a parent (I realize that you don't agree with the analogy). The evil goes beyond the betrayal itself, but extends to the contempt and disloyalty it inspires in the child - a perverse and unnatural attitude, even if necessary for survival.

That you continue to insist on missing my point speaks to a deeper problem, I think. There's a fundamental premise of human nature that we do not share. Maybe it's this:

http://www.thesumma.info/reality/reality47.php

The morality of a human act derives primarily from its specific object, secondarily from its end and circumstances. [1028] Thus an act may have a double goodness or a double malice. An act, good in its object, can be bad by its end, almsgiving, for example, done for vainglory. Hence, although there are acts which in their object are indifferent, as for example, walking, there is nevertheless no deliberate concrete act which is indifferent in its end, because, unless it is done at least virtually for a good end, it is morally bad. [1029] All the good acts of a just man, therefore, are supernaturally meritorious, by reason of their relation to the last end, which is God.

Note the almsgiving example. Every moral act has an object and an end. An act of personal loyalty toward a ruler is good in its object. However, if done for a bad end - showing support for evil policies - the act as a whole is morally bad.

The good instinct of personal loyalty can be effaced or extinguished in a person - by the ideology of liberalism, which holds personal loyalty to be childish and reactionary, and by habits of contempt such as those developed in democratic countries. That there still exist liberals and democrats who exhibit habits of personal loyalty, however corrupted, demonstrates the failure of liberalism to eradicate human nature and is something I'm pleased to observe.

Thanks, Lydia. I don't think Mark has been reading W4 very long. And he is also not much acquainted with the various strains of western conservative thought - especially not the older strains, or their recent revivals. I'm not quite sure, but I think he was trying to make a parallel with Islamic criticism of American society and my own criticism.

This is silly. Jeff, I know you aren't dangerous. I'm a traditional conservative. If no one will acknowledge they understand the existence of the term "bourgeoisophobe," or the anti-bourgeois ideology of the 19th century, then there isn't much I can do to communicate.

The implication being ... I don't know ... that we trad-cons are as dangerous as the Taliban? Or something like that. Wish he would clear that up for us.

I'm getting a kick out of the responses of you and pb: "Hmmn . . . what would the problem be if one did share the dislikes of the Islamicists?" It has long been noted there is a group of folks who do have certain ideas in common with Islamicists. And they aren't trad-cons.

Mark, I'm sorry but I've never heard of the term "bourgeoisophobe" until now. Sounds interesting.

Yes, I admit that I have certain ideas in common with Islamists. I also have certain ideas in common with other groups. Such as the Hare Krishnas, for example. Also the Trotskyites and the Transcendentalists. If that's all there was to your point, then I guess we're done. But if you ascribe some greater significance to the similarities of my views with those of radical Islamists - similarities which I hold to be superficial and purely accidental - then I'd sure like to hear it.

"It has long been noted there is a group of folks who do have certain ideas in common with Islamicists. And they aren't trad-cons."

Distributists? Nazis? Multi-level marketers? Come on, Mark. Cut to the chase here.

It's the bourgeoisophobes, Rob. The nefarious bourgeoisophobes. Hey, that would make a great name for a folk band.

Wait a tick. I think I've got it.

Jeff C., I think Mark thinks you're a fascist.

Oh? Say it isn't so, Mark!

I wouldn't have put it up either. The man is odious.

Wow, Jeff, if you can say that, then I _must_ have been misunderstanding you. The only way I can think of that I've _not_ been misunderstanding you is if you feel guilty for typing that line, like it makes you unpatriotic or lacking in a virtue to have said that (obviously, I agree with it wholeheartedly). Do you? :-)

The only way I can think of that I've _not_ been misunderstanding you is if you feel guilty for typing that line, like it makes you unpatriotic or lacking in a virtue to have said that (obviously, I agree with it wholeheartedly). Do you? :-)

Not guilty, Lydia, because it accords with reality. But I don't like doing it. It's the expression of an unnatural, unhealthy relationship that I don't want to get used to. Furthermore the habitual denunciations tend to obscure that fact that there is more to the man than his odious policies.

It was inevitable; from Persons to ideological constructs and classifications. We are all Liberals now.

1) Making an effort to identify with and further his goals and and policies. 2) Mourning when he dies, or when he suffers some kind of loss. 3) Rejoicing when he is blessed with some kind of personal triumph. 4) Heeding his wishes when he asks you to serve or sacrifice in some way. 5) Preserving his good name and defending him against malicious attacks, even though you might have political differences. 6) Praying for him, for his family, for his temporal and eternal welfare. 7) Being slow to criticize, quick to forgive, and predisposed to give him benefit of the doubt. 8) Giving him a warm and rousing welcome when he visits your city.

Jeff, I agree that some of these are indeed worthy and wholesome responses of the healthy human heart. And I will concede that there is a kind of loyalty that these spring from, to an extent. To that extent I retract my former position.

But let me pick away at some of these types of loyal behavior (toward a public official like the president - I don't have any bones to pick about the personal types of loyalty toward people that you actually know): If I think that the president's policies are extremely damaging to the country, and I think that the VP will reverse at least a few of those evil policies, then I don't grieve on behalf of the country if the president dies of, say, a natural illness. I will certainly _pray_ for him, as I would for any public figure who meets death: we all need help at crunch time. Preserving his good name is a duty owed to all persons, and especially to those who hold office, again on account of the common good. But if a prez. besmirches his own name with infamous behavior, protecting the office may mean not protecting the prez. personally. (Cf: Canon Law provides that a bishop may remove a pastor from his office if that pastor has lost the respect of good and worthy parishioners - presumably by actions which rightly upset or outrage good and worthy (and therefore not those given to rash judgment) parishioners).

A warm welcome when he comes to visit: a round of applause is natural sign of appreciation and satisfaction. It is due as a matter of course when an amateur performs at a private function because someone has asked him to - even if he performs without distinction, you appreciate his willingness to try, and his courage when unsure of himself. A _warm_ round of applause for a professional is due when you find his performance excels, when it is a high level of achievement, but not for a mediocre or even unsuitable achievement. If someone first seeks, and then attains a high office that is appropriate only to extremely high ability, and then performs far below that self-acclaimed level, then you are right to withhold _warm_ signs of appreciation. A perfunctory welcome of brief applause is exactly and precisely what is called for: you acknowledge his office and his right to your attention, but you convey the lack of your _warm_ appreciation because he hasn't earned it.

Maybe, if public officials were clearly making considerable personal sacrifices in order to be in office, we would have a duty to respect them for that sacrifice whatever their politics. But neither of the 2 most recent Dem presidents had any personal matters that had to be set into the background in order to take office.

Jeff, I think then that what you are saying is that you wish we had a body politic that was such that you could, reasonably, respect the President while disagreeing with him.

I think to get that the whole world would have to be changed. For one thing, it would have to cease to be the case that one of our two major parties is constituted by and utterly committed to odious policies. In fact, you'd have to go to a world in which all policy disagreements are across a much narrower ideological distance, so that you would not be forced in honesty to say that a President from the other party is attempting to advance heinous policies.

Then, further, we would have to be talking about Presidents who do not have scandalous personal lives. If William Jefferson Clinton had, per impossible, been trying to advance my policies, I still could not have respected him once his truly, deeply, unrepentantly, ongoingly odious personal life came to public knowledge.

In other words, I would say that if we are not to be forced into what you consider an "unnatural" and what I certainly consider an undesirable situation, something like "merit" has to come into play. I could respect a President who disagreed with me on, oh, I dunno, bimetallism :-) or some other such boring 19th century issue, or even on whether we should enter into the Spanish-American War. I can't respect a President who proudly advances perversion and child-murder or a President (Clinton) who makes no attempt to live like a grownup.

Two things might help us back to that situation: A drastic reduction in federal power, which would mean that fewer issues would even lie within the President's scope, and a much healthier and more competitive election situation, so that a party so irremediably evil in its policy goals--the Democratic Party--no longer had so high a probability of having a President elected.

Oh? Say it isn't so, Mark!

No, of course not. I just think a better title for your "Loyalty to persons" post would have been "He was liked, but not well liked."

In fact, you'd have to go to a world in which all policy disagreements are across a much narrower ideological distance, so that you would not be forced in honesty to say that a President from the other party is attempting to advance heinous policies.

Yes, Lydia, precisely!

We should be able to handle all manner of political disagreements with a President while retaining loyalty to his person - economy, environment, health care, crime, immigration, defense, even war to some extent. On many of these issues most people are not even competent critics. But a commitment to the bloody abortion regime, to policies that attack marriage and family and the innocence of children, to the secularization of everything, etc. that's just too much.

Then, further, we would have to be talking about Presidents who do not have scandalous personal lives.

Scandal being the key word, here, in which the immorality of a ruler's personal life leads his people astray or causes them to stumble. Even scandal should not be a deal-breaker necessarily (e.g., a ruler's infidelities) if it can be reasonably ignored or its bad effects controlled. Scandal was much less of a problem before the mass media came along.

Two things might help us back to that situation: A drastic reduction in federal power, which would mean that fewer issues would even lie within the President's scope, and a much healthier and more competitive election situation, so that a party so irremediably evil in its policy goals--the Democratic Party--no longer had so high a probability of having a President elected.

Both good ideas.

Tony, I really can't argue with anything you've said in your last comment. Your remarks about distinctions in types of applause were particularly helpful.

Even scandal should not be a deal-breaker necessarily (e.g., a ruler's infidelities) if it can be reasonably ignored or its bad effects controlled.

Well, no, sorry, I'm not British enough for that one, Jeff. I don't agree that the President can keep a mistress in an apartment somewhere so long as that nasty media doesn't exist so that everybody finds out about it. If _I_ know about it, I'm _not_ going to give him a warm welcome, respect him, clap heartily for him, continue to feel loyal to him, etc.

If _I_ know about it, I'm _not_ going to give him a warm welcome, respect him, clap heartily for him, continue to feel loyal to him, etc.

I understand. But I think the commonwealth could survive it.

Still waiting for Mark to I.D. which group he was referring to...

Lydia, you're absolutely right. We could all breathe a little easier giving our federal officials some extra room for the benefit of doubt if there simply was less riding on their pernicious mistakes. And we would be FAR more likely to elect wholesome, non-despicable people if we had more than 2 choices for office. I remain convinced that for most offices (all except the top executives - governor and president), there should be elections where we don't get the single highest vote-getter, instead we seat the 3 highest vote-getters. 3 seated winners would result in at least 6 viable national parties, and a number of state-wide parties in addition that would (by ponying up support in temporary alliances) enable them to have a real effect on a given state's impact at the national level.

From Madison Jones's novel A Cry of Absence:

"I'm afraid I'm being insulting about your mother. I don't mean her in particular. You've all been victims of the social system."

"It's all right," he murmured...

"Are you still on good terms with her?" Libby presently asked.

"No. Not anymore."

"It's too bad," Libby said. "But I don't see how you could keep being friends with her. If you really mean what you think. I would find it impossible."


The novel is set in 1957 Tennessee. The first speaker, Libby Delmore, is a liberal, anti-segregationist college student who's moved there from up North because of her father's job. The other speaker, Ames Glenn, is a native Tennesseean struggling with desegregation, which he knows is right, but also with loyalty to his place and family, his mother especially, who believes that there's more to these Yankee newcomers than a simple goodhearted concern for the plight of the Negro.

Libby, knowing that Ames is leaning towards her more liberal views, finds it impossible to see how he could remain friends with his own mother while she continued to hold anti-progressive ideas. Personal loyalty, even that between a mother and son, must be sacrificed to make room for loyalty to the idea. This, I'd say, is what Jeff C. is talking about when he comments above that modern liberals dismiss personal loyalty as silly and old-fashioned. If your mom's ideas are wrong, throw her under the bus. Loyalty to the idea is what matters.

Rob G., I think we all agree with this about some relationships and some people--specifically, those with whom we have a genuine personal relationship to begin with. Where I still suspect we part company is in applying this to the President of the United States, who *at most* is another citizen of my country out of millions who happens to have been elected to a powerful national office. Indeed, it seems to me to play along with the liberal inversion of local, personal values and ideological values to try to apply to such a remote person, a person who is known to me only because of his political office, the feelings and categories that properly belong to family, friends, and local community. It isn't "throwing the President under the bus" not to be friends with him. I'm not friends with him anyway and never was. Obviously, one is prima facie and to begin with friends with one's mother, except in the unusual situation where one never knew one's mother, as in infant adoption. In that case, of course, one will (hopefully) have an adopted mother to whom the point you are making will apply.

No, Lydia, I agree with you. My point was simply that to the liberal ideological loyalty trumps personal loyalty. My personal loyalty to the POTUS is loyalty to him as POTUS, not as a man. I don't think the same kind of loyalty extended to family and friends need be extended to him simply by virtue of the fact that he is president. Then again, I don't really think that's what Jeff is saying.

Rob: I was not thinking of an individual group. Please stop trying to insinuate that I was calling Jeff a fascist or something similar. I had never heard of any trad-cons who would admit any similarity of ideas with an Islamicist, and when I said ". . . and they aren't trad-cons" that was the point. I'm still puzzled by it, but I've dropped it because no one wishes to discuss it, including you.

Mark, my mistake for misunderstanding you. If I hadn't thought I might be doing that I wouldn't have asked for clarification.

I'm not exactly a trad-con, but I'm perfectly happy to admit some similarity of ideas with Islamicists. But I find nothing telling in that. "Even a stopped clock..." etc. etc.

Mark, my mistake for misunderstanding you. If I hadn't thought I might be doing that I wouldn't have asked for clarification
.

I understand. No worries.

I'm not exactly a trad-con, but I'm perfectly happy to admit some similarity of ideas with Islamicists

When I'm "perfectly happy to admit" something I am willing to volunteer about everything I think might mattter to the discussion just to help the other person understand my position. You are only "happy to admit" what you know to be abstract, and anything interesting about this subject to me isn't abstract. I see no evidence that you desire to discuss anything I would find interesting about this topic, and it is not some sort of gotcha game for me either. So I'm dropping it for the same reason I have said.

You might enjoy this, Mark. Despite some quibbles in the details, I'm in agreement with Mr. Peters in the vast majority of his observations. I've printed this entry out and I reread it often. It's a Desiderata of sorts for me.

http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2010/09/despair-hope-and-the-built-world/

I see why some would appreciate it, but I'm a particularist. As such, I generally disdain such speculation not based on some real content. I'll speculate based on some real events and ideas all day long, but you have to start with something and vague angst doesn't do it for me. Who needs a show about nothing, when we can all blog about nothing? I have no particular problem with anything he says at all, just that it seems to me the same sort of thing that he decries. If he'd have put it in some poetic form I guess it might be different, though I'm not sure of that. I think the odds are very strong that somewhere he made a choice in deciding to dream this up not to study some key works in American history, philosophy (the point of which, btw, is action), or literature that would inform his decisions or interactions today. As such I think he made a poor choice.

No offense, but though I can see why it might be seen as insightful in a certain way, I think it's drivel. The odds are that in the time he wrote that he could have read a couple of chapters on a real topic that matters in a book that gave the type of insight into the present that was exhilarating and insightful, and he could share with us instead of what he did. I know . . . taking it all too seriously.

Well, he's edited a book on the life and work of Wendell Berry, and is currently writing a book on Owen Barfield. As an author and English prof, I imagine he reads more "chapters on a real topic that matters in a book that gave the type of insight into the present" than the two of us put together. But that's just like my opinion, man.

Fair enough. I guess I was wrong about him not reading literature, huh? I consider myself one of "those who have managed to fend off the despair and the ennui" too.

Well, no, sorry, I'm not British enough for that one, Jeff. I don't agree that the President can keep a mistress in an apartment somewhere so long as that nasty media doesn't exist so that everybody finds out about it. If _I_ know about it, I'm _not_ going to give him a warm welcome, respect him, clap heartily for him, continue to feel loyal to him, etc.

Lydia, I guess I'm wondering why mistresses are a problem for you but second marriages seem not to be. Adultery is adultery, no?

I don't believe we've ever discussed the subject of divorce and remarriage, have we, Jeff? Not that I recall. But let me put it this way: If a man knows that he is still married to woman A and is fooling around with woman B, he is knowingly breaking his vows to woman A. If he believes that divorce is possible and that he and woman A are divorced and that he is now genuinely married to woman B, then even if the Catholic view is correct and divorce is strictly impossible, and his first marriage was valid (a separate question), he is not knowingly being unfaithful and dishonorable. That should be evident. Some things are unmistakably adultery, and everyone knows that they are, including the person committing them. That's why he keeps the mistress a secret, after all.

I'm a little surprised that you would recur to that comment and try in some way to play some sort of "gotcha" game or to goad me on the assumption that I hold Protestant rather than Catholic views on divorce. This seems rather to me like people who imply, with Andrew Sullivan (!), that anyone who rejects the teaching of the Catholic Church on birth control is obliged in logic to approve of homosexual "marriage," a position that Bill Luse and I have both disagreed with quite soundly here at W4 before. (Along with other Catholic commentators.)

I certainly hope you are not implying that the rightful contempt that a morally conservative Protestant would have for a man presently cheating on his wife is somehow "disallowable" and that the Protestant should just say that anything goes and that there is no such thing as marital unfaithfulness, nothing for which to judge such a man, if the Protestant does not happen to hold the Catholic view on divorce. As it happens, you do not know my views on divorce (as far as I recall) and might find them stricter than you expect. But I think it a bad idea for Catholics to tell Protestants that they might as well chuck the sexual moral standards they do have out the window if they don't happen to agree with the Church on all moral questions in the vicinity.

I must say that your going back to this, combined with your earlier comments, does make me rather wonder if you are a bit easy on infidelity, even the long-term and deliberate dishonorableness represented by keeping a mistress--so long, of course, as it is discreet. If that's Toryism, I want nothing to do with it.

I must say that your going back to this, combined with your earlier comments, does make me rather wonder if you are a bit easy on infidelity, even the long-term and deliberate dishonorableness represented by keeping a mistress--so long, of course, as it is discreet. If that's Toryism, I want nothing to do with it.

I had actually assumed, as an ACC Anglican, that you held the same view of marriage and divorce as that of the APCK I was once so familiar with: i.e., the Catholic view. But I know you have also described yourself as "low church", so perhaps that assumption was unwarranted.

If I'm "a bit easy on infidelity", which may be true, it's a matter of having to get along in a society of serial adulterers. The long-term and deliberate dishonorableness of keeping a mistress is no more dishonorable than abandoning one's wife and taking up with another woman, sometimes known as "re-marriage". In countries where divorce is the norm, keeping a mistress is shocking and scandalous. In countries where divorce is censured, mistresses are regrettably more common although not in the least respectable. My preference, of course, is for the latter, which at least does not attempt to make mistress-taking look like something it isn't.

Since you told me that "second marriages seem not to be" a problem for me, I don't quite understand how you also at the same time assumed that I agreed with you concerning divorce. But never mind.

By the way, I think abandoning one's wife is wrong even if one doesn't take up with another woman.

My original comment stands. I don't think any moral traditionalist, including you, should feel all that warmth and loyalty to a man who keeps a mistress. It should not be necessary to defend that statement via an argument about divorce. I find it troubling that evidently you think it is, and that you evidently think you have to make some kind of oddly defensive comments about the relative merits of keeping mistresses on the one hand and divorce and remarriage on the other in response to my comment about a maritally unfaithful President. By all means, if you will, withhold your warm welcome and personal loyalty from a man who left his wife years ago to take up with another woman (say, John McCain) as well as from a man presently sleeping around. But don't get all...prickly when I say that even if a man is discreet, if he is presently keeping a mistress, I will not feel loyalty to him. And that's to say nothing of the likes of W.J. Clinton who did considerably more than keep a single mistress. I can't help wondering how far it would have to go (Tiger Woods before he was found out?) before you would stop making comments about what countries are "preferable" to others because they are so much more "honest" about sexual infidelity.

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