The mistake people may make about loyalty, whether to a person or a nation, is to make loyalty equivalent to going along with whatever the person, or whatever those running a country, want to do. To be loyal to a friend who wants to cheat somebody, or who gets drunk and wants to take his car on the highway anyhow, it’s not loyalty. To be loyal to this friend would be for one to object — not agree. If we agree with a person's desire to be unjust, we're not loyal to the person: we're enabling this person into doing something that will make him ugly and weak. Unfortunately, that kind of spurious loyalty does go on often between people.
In the field of American history it is now felt that the people who disobeyed the Fugitive Slave Law were the truly loyal Americans. It was the law in 1855, to inform on a slave attempting to escape to Canada , and have him returned to his Southern master.
In order to be loyal, we have to see what the person or thing to whom we're loyal most deeply is. And that is not the same as what he, or it, may be doing at a particular moment.
Allegiance to a person is to encourage that person's care for the world, fairness to the world. Certainly, it is to want to counter anything from the outside or from the person which hurts and makes that person weaker.
True allegiance includes a state of mind in encouraging the best in a friend. The "allegiance" that says, "You're my buddy, so whatever you do, I'm for. Even if you're wrong, I'm with you" is contempt.
What is true about loyalty to a person is true about allegiance to a country.The Civil War had been won. The fact that the U.S. was not a country that could be divided, was a tremendous victory for justice over ego and contempt. The Southern states wanted to own other human beings, and if the U.S. did not go along, they tried to leave the Union . They were not permitted to, and that fact was beautiful!
We are very much aware that there is not yet true liberty and justice for all, when some people are unjustly poor and others are unfairly rich, and where children work in factories, people living in pain, diseased lives in slums, men and women working in sweatshops for wages that can not feed their families. Liberty and justice are still ideals to be sought with equal opportunity and justice for every citizen, and brotherhood for the world. To be loyal is to work to have that liberty and justice really become a reality for all.
So, if in the U.S. we do say the Pledge of Allegiance we should feel we are saying: "This flag stands for a republic with liberty and justice for all. The Declaration of Independence does. The U.S. Constitution does. And we have to make sure that that republic comes fully into being, a nation fair to everyone."
America needs this honesty and knowledge in order to be truly herself,
