Loyalty - A Dangerous Virtue

Today is a national holiday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther-King, Jr. Three of my greatest heroes are black men and he is one of them. King was a moral giant with enormous reservoir of courage, integrity and passion. The other two are Louis Armstrong and Mohammed Ali both of whom, in their own fields, exhibited similar virtues.

Armstrong virtually single-handedly created jazz, a wholly new, and essentially black art form that is also quintessentially American. I love that music. Ali brought grace and beauty to brutal sport which, until I experienced Ali, I had considered totally barbaric.

All three of these men knew exactly who they were and, in spite of great pressure from the establishment, refused to sell out or to be, as the renowned intellectual and Princeton Professor, Cornel West put it — Santa Claus-eted. I don’t know how he would spell it, but what he meant when he said this about Martin Luther King Jr., on the Tavis Smiley show last night on PBS, was ‘de-fanged’ or made to seem like a cozy old man who was basically harmless, even though he was extremely dangerous.

King was dangerous because he challenged people to look deeply into themselves, to critically examine what they found in there and then to fess up to, and accept, their profound limitations. He made people look at the real meaning of words like justice, equality, compassion and freedom and to examine how they were living up to those ideals in their everyday lives, or not. That was dangerous stuff, so they de-fanged’ him by making a caricature of him and (reluctantly, of course), naming a holiday for him. Each year, the media gives the obligatory sound-bite of his “I Have a Dream” speech but seldom is he held up or revered as an example of one of the greatest, if not the greatest of all Americans, which I believe he was. I once heard a black kid ask, “If Martin Luther-King was such a great man, why do all the schools named after him look so badly run down and neglected?”

Another black man who I once admired, who has since fallen off the pedestal, is Colin Powell. I now consider him a real traitor. As Secretary of State at the time that the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld axis was pushing to go to war in Iraq, Powell was against it. He must have known that he had it within his power to put an end to the adventure by publicly coming out against it, or even resigning. But he didn’t do either. He was a traitor not only to his country, but to himself.

The plan was, after all, completely against the Powell Doctrine of “overwhelming force and a clear plan to win,” a policy that was established in the wake of the lessons of Vietnam, and enshrined in the Pentagon Operations Manual about how to fight a war. He was the architect of that doctrine and Rumsfeld was about to stamp all over it with his lean and mean ‘shock and awe’ approach.

Since Powell was the only member of the administration that had any sort of credibility and respect, both at home and within the international community, his public dissent and resignation from office would almost certainly have prevented the war. It would have broken the extreme myopia and denial that existed within the U.S., and what little international support there was for the war would have collapsed. The American media would have been forced to wake up and Congress, in the wake of his resignation, would have had to have held hearings. And we wouldn’t be in the mess that we find ourselves in today regarding Iraq.

Instead he chose to invoke loyalty to the President as his reason for acquiescing and saying “Yes, Mr. President,” even though he knew that he had the power to change the course of history and save thousands of lives. Bush went to war on the back of Powell’s reputation, and then soon after, fired him.

Colin Powell put the weakest of all virtues above the very ones that we celebrate in Martin Luther-King, Jr. — courage, honesty, integrity, service to country and dedication to truth and justice. You never hear King being revered for his loyalty to any leader other than his own conscience and God.

I believe that had Martin Luther-King Jr., or, come to that, Armstrong or Ali, both of whom bucked the government a few times, been in Powell’s shoes, he would have said “No, Mr. President. I cannot do it. In spite of my respect for the Office of the President of the United States, my moral compass won’t let me. So I must resign my post since I cannot, in all honesty, carry out a policy or go to the U.N to sell a war about which I have the gravest doubts.” Powell clearly was unable to take the high road. Loyalty to a chief executive who didn’t deserve it cost the country dearly. Loyalty is a dangerous virtue.

This ‘loyalty thing’ seems peculiarly American. Yesterday I heard some senior media correspondents discussing the likelihood and even the desirability of Republican Senator, Chuck Hagel, running for President. They all agreed that he would be a viable choice for the Republicans, but to a man, they said that he would never be forgiven by his party for voting against the war — even though history has proven him to have possessed, at that time, great wisdom, foresight and immense courage, of which his colleagues had little. Nevertheless, his disloyalty to the party line, they said, trumped every other virtue and basically disqualified him.

Tony Blair must be very envious of his ‘mate’ George Bush being treated more like a king than a chief executive by his loyal servants. If you’ve ever seen Blair at the Dispatch Box in the hurly-burly of Question Time in the House of Commons, taking hard questions directly from the Opposition every Friday of every week, to which he must give immediate answers, you will understand what I mean.

Such a premium on loyalty as we see in American political life leads to a profound unwillingness to tell a leader anything that he doesn’t want to hear for fear he should interpret it as disloyalty. Witness the case of General Shinsecki who paid dearly for his professional honesty and his accurate foresight.

The government has given us a great lesson about the danger of elevating this virtue above all others. It can be like a cancer in an organization run by people who are loyalty freaks like Bush and Rumsfeld, because it feeds on fear, stifles creativity and promotes inertia. It also leads to an extraordinary reluctance to ask for, or even accept when it is offered, a resignation from officials who are clearly incompetent, out of touch or beyond redemption. Rumsfeld’s head, among many, should have rolled years ago.

Given the spiritual big picture perspective, I can radically forgive Powell and recognize that he had a role to play at the soul level in the healing of America, along with Bush and all the others. I have written extensively about my take on that scenario, so I’ll say no more about that today.

But, let us not forget that Radical Forgiveness does not absolve us from being the best we can be as human beings. That means having a moral compass that can guide us and lead us to see what virtue or ethical principle should take precedence over all others, given the circumstances we find ourselves in at any one time. Loyalty, I believe should be very low on that list of virtues.

I am only too aware of my own limitations in the areas of courage and integrity, but I thank God that there are people like Martin Luther King, Jr., who come along from time to time to serve as a beacon for the strongest of virtues, not the weakest. Loyalty has its place, but it is dangerous to elevate it above those virtues that we intuitively recognize in people like Louis Armstrong, Mohammed Ali and Martin Luther-King Jr., and for which we are, thankfully, given a holiday.

I hope you enjoy it.
Colin Tipping January 15th 2007