Loyalty means the blind following or favoring of an individual or group, irrespective of their actions being right or wrong. Loyalty is related to other vices like nepotism and cronyism, yet unlike these concepts, it is often given a positive connotation - why? The reason is that loyalty is an extremely useful trait to the rulers, who depend on it to exercise unlimited power, and who thus support it.
Loyalty is what enabled the Nazis and others famous for genocide and other atrocities. Loyalty is the fuel that enables lunatics to achieve their horrendous goals - that they could not achieve by themselves. Loyalty is often paired with totalitarianism, which uses fear and punishment to further strengthen loyalty (including weeding out those who ask too many questions or don't follow orders). Education and the media is used to foster group idiocy (slave mind), too, encouraging slave-like loyalty to the masters.
If loyalty is a virtue, we need to be loyal not to fallible individuals or groups, but rather to universal ethics:
- Don't kill
- Don't rape
- Don't steal
- Don't lie
If humankind is loyal to these universal ethics, then they will not be willing pawns to a crazy, sociopathic leader who calls for war or genocide. Leaders are fallible, just like anybody else. As human beings, we have the capability to know right from wrong, and have the responsibility to be loyal to that.
This is the right kind of loyalty that is in fact a virtue, along with faithfulness to one's partner (which is often confused with "loyalty").
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