Blind loyalty – one virtue that can fast become a vice

Date Published: {J}

A friend, more gentle than I, pointed out just how violent the talk of the upcoming budget sounds. She’s right: ‘Brutal’ cuts will ‘punish’ the poor, taxpayers will ‘suffer’ in this financial ‘war’. A visitor from Mars would think the Fascists had taken over. If they know what Fascists are on Mars that is, which I hope they don’t. Martians at all would be disturbing enough, let alone Martians who are into Hitler. What an image.

But I digress. Should we really be thinking in these violent term? I’m in two minds. The language is clearly not healing in any way, is being used almost with a relish bordering on the sadistic. Maybe we should, to borrow a phrase from Stephen Colbert and John Stewart’s March to Keep Fear Alive, bring it down a notch. With the courts deciding that governments do actually have to hold elections even when it doesn’t suit them, the end may be in sight for our lords of misrule. If we can’t quite think clearly and constructively yet, we can at least start thinking about being able to think clearly and constructively.

But toning it down now would I think be to let this administration off the hook. The budget is, after all, going to hurt. By God it is. It will feel like falling down two flights of steps into a pitch-black cellar full of upturned broom handles.

The only term I really object to is ‘punish’. Punish who for what? If one thing’s for sure, it’s that the people most responsible for this will suffer the least. Maybe a few corrupt politicians and bankers will lose their positions, perhaps even their liberty. Many more however will sail happily into directorships or pensions bigger than most of us could ever even imagine earning, while people at the other end of the wealth scale who need the support of working health and welfare services – even of working banking services – are in real danger.

Many have already lost their jobs. Some will lose their businesses, some their homes, some even their health. Ordinary people are going to die because of this.

So what exactly are they being punished for? Their only crime was to keep voting for the same old politicians and parties, when deep down they new full well that many of them were steeped in venality and cronyism. And perhaps that was a sort of crime. I just don’t think it merits the death penalty.

It’s strange to think that what they are being punished for is their loyalty. Well and good though, we are too loyal in this country – loyal to a fault. If ever there was a virtue that when taken to excess can become a vice, it is surely this. Loyalty is no virtue in a beaten dog, it teaches our leaders nothing.

If they still reap the rewards for things that their grandfathers did, why should we be surprised if we’ve fostered a political generation whose most significant feature is their own sense of entitlement? Sticking with the same party through thick and thin is only admirable until you realise that it’s the politicians who are getting thicker.