V
As the modern period began, the traditional institu-
tions to which Europeans had been loyal for centuries
had decayed and were seen as archaic, and there was
widespread religious, moral, and political corruption.
Loyalty to ideals, and loyalty itself as an ideal, were
scoffed at as childish inventions. Machiavelli's Prince
(1513) can be taken as the new voice of modern politi-
cal absolutism. In this treatise there is no concern with
religious or moral considerations; the author candidly
accepts the view of Thrasymachus that government
rests on force, and the view of Callicles that deception
is inseparable from rulership. Government is an auton-
omous art and is not subject to external ideals or guide-
posts. The only proper loyalty is to the prince, who
may be omnipotent and who is certainly outside the
law and morality. But Machiavelli was not cynical
when it came to national patriotism, for he believed
that duty to one's country wiped out all other duties
or loyalties (Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus
Livius [1513], III, 41). The idea of the omnipotent
prince was accorded fuller philosophical treatment in
Hobbes' Leviathan (1651). This line of thought was
coincidental with the rise of the modern national state,
which has culminated, in the twentieth century, in the
totalitarian states of the fascist, Nazi, and communist
varieties, in the democratic, liberal states, and in the
various experiments that have been tried in order to
transcend and to orchestrate national loyalties and
interests—as in the League of Nations, the United
Nations, the Council of Europe, and the Organization
of American States.
At one extreme is the demand of total, exclusive
loyalty—the fanatical national and ideological devo-
tion demanded by Nazi and communist theory and
practice, whether ostensibly on behalf of the proletar-
iat class and state, or on behalf of the Fatherland, the
Führer, and the Aryan “race.” But the demand of
single-minded loyalty has also been made at times by
leaders of democracies. For example, Theodore
Roosevelt attacked what he viewed to be the divided
loyalties of immigrants to the United States, whom he
labeled “hyphenated-Americans” and “the foe within
the gates”; both Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson in-
sisted that if America was indeed a “melting pot,” the
type into which immigrants were to be melted was
the type of American that had been shaped from 1776
to 1789.
The philosophy of loyalty, however, more intimately
and more often associated with the democratic process
is that of cultural pluralism. As formulated by Horace
M. Kallen in articles published in 1915, and in 1924
in Culture and Democracy in the United States, cultural
pluralism is projected as an ideal multiplicity in union,
the right to be different, the orchestration of differ-
ences, the creative interaction of coexisting loyalties—
“the union of the different,” “a federation of nation-
alities,” a federation “sustained... by their equality
and by the free trade between these different equals.
...” This position calls for the legitimacy of pluralistic
loyalties. It was expressed in 1943 by Justice Jackson
for the United States Supreme Court as follows:
But freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not
matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom.
The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things
that touch the heart of the existing order. If there is any
fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no
official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox
in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion
or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein
(W. Va. State Bd. of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624).
Multiple loyalties can create personal and national
tensions; e.g., John F. Kennedy in the 1960 presidential
campaign felt it necessary to say that as President he
would act in accordance with what his conscience
would say is in the national interest and without regard
to “outside [Roman Catholic] religious pressures or
dictates.” On the other hand, black militants in the
United States in the late 1960's took the position that
in a conflict between the demands of the black com-
munity and the larger community, their loyalty would
be with the former. In each instance the tension or
conflict was resolved by raising one loyalty above all
others, but this was seen as an undesirable forced op-
tion and as a process which did not totally annihilate
competing loyalties.
