Loyalty is often cited as the key to a successful organization. It keeps the hierarchy viable and effective, minimizes disruptions and the depredations of the ambitious, and emphasizes the negative aspects, neutral or actively negative, of walking away from a loyalty.
But what happens when a subgroup’s loyalty ends in subgroup decisions at odds with the encompassing group?
Only fifteen years later, the expectation that a president would not be prosecuted came into play again when members of President Ronald Reagan’s National Security Council ignored Congress’s 1985 prohibition on aid to the Nicaraguan Contras who were fighting against the socialist Nicaraguan government. The administration illegally sold arms to Iran and funneled the profits to the Contras.
When the story of the Iran-Contra affair broke in November 1986, government officials continued to break the law, shredding documents that Congress had subpoenaed. After fourteen administration officials were indicted and eleven convicted, the next president, George H. W. Bush, who had been Reagan’s vice president, pardoned them on the advice of his attorney general William Barr. (Yes, that William Barr.)
The independent prosecutor in the case, Lawrence Walsh, worried that the pardons weakened American democracy. They “undermine…the principle…that no man is above the law,” he said. Pardoning high-ranking officials “demonstrates that powerful people with powerful allies can commit serious crimes in high office, deliberately abusing the public trust without consequences.” [Prof. Richardson, Letters From An American]
It’s important to note that both AG Barr, now of such poor reputation, and President Bush (R, 41) were exhibiting loyalty to a subgroup, roughly defined as the Republican Party, although historians might narrow it down further. Their overriding loyalty to the United States, in the face of the flagrant violations of law cited, would have required leaving their fellow Republicans in prison. The subgroup loyalty illicitly rose over their overriding loyalty to country; Bush’s use of his pardon power, ostensibly exercising a judgment better than that of judges, juries, and possibly even Congress, simply acted as cover for his poor selection of loyalties.
One has to wonder if the American public perceived the pardons as a form of corruption on Bush’s part, and an implicit rebuke to democracy, and their part in democracy. And then kicked him out of office for it.
Loyalty has an implicit component of the suppression of one’s own judgment in preference to that of whoever controls the group. This can range from classic democracy, one person one vote, to the classic autocracy, one person at the top of the pyramid, whose word controls, to a greater or lesser extent, the actions of each person in an inferior position. Clearly, an argument can be made that the people pardoned by President Bush at AG Barr’s urging were simply exercising their independent judgment when they moved against Congress’ dictates, and it’s an interesting argument. I think, though, such an argument can be countered by, as ever, examining the context. Those pardoned were not free agents within the scope of employment, but rather members of the Executive Branch, unauthorized to make policy and law. By discarding their loyalty to the United States’ collective decision-making process, they subvert the will and expertise of people who’ve, in many cases, studied foreign affairs for decades, all in favor of their own collection of prejudices and preconceptions.
And, yet, history is replete with groups, most often, but not exclusively, autocracies committing atrocities.
It’s worth keeping all this in mind when considering the delicate question of loyalties, and it’s always worth asking if you’re relying on good judgment, superstition, or arrogance, when subverting your loyalty to the greater entity in favor of an embedded group.
