About blind loyalty

 

"Loyalty is only a virtue if the person or cause is good".

Defining Blind Loyalty

Blind loyalty involves being loyal to a person or cause despite the damage the person or cause does to himself or herself or others. Excusing bad behavior in the name of protecting allegiance to another seems honorable at first, but is ultimately dangerous as silence is a form of collusion. Many people feel torn between retaining loyalty to a cause or group and risking rejection or ostracism or personal attack by outing misconduct. 

Blind loyalty involves a form of cognitive dissonance where a person sees evidence of a problem or bad behavior and then turns a blind eye to the truth in favor of keeping a positive image of the person or cause. Knowing in your gut that something is wrong, and yet acting as if everything is fine. The classic example is a battered woman who protects her partner when police arrive in answer to a domestic violence call. Think of priests covering for sexual abuse among their colleagues, mothers denying incest in favor of protecting their husbands, and teachers turning a blind eye to abusive conduct by their peers. 

Nationalism v. Patriotism

Patriotism is devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force upon other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. 

Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist follower is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality. Nationalism for a nationalist leader is the quest for power for himself and he alone.