On Loyalty
Pundits bemoan the decline of loyalty in America, but the real problem is that Americans feel the tug of too many loyalties. That excess of allegiances makes it harder to forge a unum out of the nation's often bewildering pluribus.
Americans profess to love loyalty, even as they design institutions that actively discourage it. Corporations, professional sports teams, and universities bestow the biggest rewards on those most willing to move elsewhere. Young people are encouraged to serve their country with promises of benefits to be obtained when their tours of duty are over. Term limits leave politicians with no strong reasons to be loyal to the electorate--and vice versa. Whatever the theory, the practice could not be clearer: the loyal, when they are not the losers, are the suckers.
If ever a virtue were designed to be honored in the breach, it is loyalty in a society that worships the market in economics and freedom in politics. Loyalty, after all, is more a feudal virtue than a capitalist one, evoking images of knightly chivalry and codes of omertá. Not only was the United States created through a singular act of disloyalty, it has been continually replenished by immigrants willing to break bonds of family, faith, and country. The largest mutual fund company in the United States calls itself Fidelity, but it grew only by weaning its customers away from their old-fashioned Christmas club accounts at the local savings bank. You do not build a country on the values of mobility, entrepreneurship, and dissent by placing too high a premium on loyalty.