Traitors In Our Midst

“We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”

-- C.S. Lewis

I’ve been thinking about civil war lately. Yes, I’m a wellspring of optimism. To clarify, I’m not worried about an impending US civil war. I think another US civil war is extremely unlikely and have written about it in the past. No, what puzzles me is why civil wars are so uncommon in the West.

Civil wars, and coups, happen all the time. Since World War II there have been 492 attempted coups and 31 major civil wars (numbers vary depending on definitions).

For some reason, the West seems particularly resistant. In fact, if one considers only the more politically stable European countries by dividing Europe along Cold War lines, the number of civil wars drops to one, “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland, and calling that a civil war is a bit of a stretch.

Why?

Political stability, legal and political equality, strong institutions, economic opportunity, and social cohesion all help prevent internal disagreements from escalating into armed conflict. The presence of a common external threat, such as the Soviet Union during the Cold War, can also unify domestic factions. Economic inclusion plays a particularly important role: when people feel they have a fair chance to participate in the economy and achieve a decent standard of living, they have little incentive to resolve political disputes through violence.

There are, however, three social values, which are overlooked when attempting to explain the West’s “resistance” to civil wars and which political stability, strong institutions, and social cohesion are founded; these are trust, loyalty, and what might best be called a social norms/honor. If these begin to erode, the likelihood of civil war increases.

Trust but Verify

Trust has been under Assault for some time now. It has been decades since Americans trusted Congress, the Supreme Court, or the media.

In fact, only the police and the Army seem to be viewed with anything remotely resembling trust, and these have taken a beating recently, given what took place prior to the first assassination attempt on Trump and Trump’s recent efforts to deploy

Institutions and the media took beatings as a result of COVID, and the media further eroded society’s trust in it when efforts were made to suppress speech, print half-truths, and otherwise put a thumb on the scales during the last US Presidential election.

Contracts, law enforcement, property, and individual rights are vital to the functioning of all Western societies, and if individuals lose faith in the impartial and predictable enforcement of these bedrock activities, the normal functioning of society begins to break down. Trump's increasing tendency to push the boundaries of what is acceptable with respect to tariffs, immigration enforcement, and the separation of powers, to name just three, threatens to shatter the trust that many Americans have in the normal functioning of the Executive, if not the federal government as a whole.

Put simply, without trust, society struggles as individuals can no longer count on routine activities functioning as they’ve come to expect.

What’s wrong with loyalty?

To say that Trump values loyalty is to understate the situation. I would be more accurate to say he’s obsessed with it. The right will say it’s because he had such a difficult time getting “the deep state” to do what he wanted during his first term, while the left will say it’s because he’s a dishonest felon who needs people to cover for him when he breaks the law.

There is likely some truth to both viewpoints. On one hand, the stories of staffers keeping information from him during his first term make his desire for people who will execute his agenda understandable. On the other hand, you don’t employ someone as “a fixer” if your actions are squeaky clean. Regardless of where you stand on this issue, a desire for loyalty, while understandable, can become an issue if it is prioritized above all else.

When I was an officer cadet at the Royal Military College of Canada, there was a plaque outside the mess hall given to the school by West Point on RMC’s 100^th anniversary. I must have looked at it over 1000 times (this is a mathematical fact) and remember distinctly the West Point motto figuring prominently on it, "Duty, Honor, Country." The motto reflects a set of core values that define the ideals of a cadet and leader in the US Army. Country in this case represents loyalty…to the nation, not to an individual, and it must be weighed against duty and honor.

All members of the military, Congress, the Vice President, and the President all take oaths to defend the Constitution:

"I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States…”

It is the duty of the individual to follow the orders of their superiors, but their loyalty is to the state, not their superiors, and honor demands that the individual disobey any order that is unlawful.

Trump’s version of loyalty demands that duty and honor be subordinated to loyalty and that loyalty to Trump be elevated above loyalty to the country.

America has seen a decline in trust in institutions and is witnessing an attempt to redefine loyalty. Honor/social norms are also under threat. The loss of each of these moves America closer to some of the societies that have seen coups and civil wars, societies whose laws are enforced haphazardly, if at all, and societies in which the military is not loyal to civilian government but to its commanders.

What America needs is not people who are loyal to Trump, but people who will perform their duty and who are loyal to the country and who have a deep sense of honor that demands of them that they obey any legal order, regardless of how they may feel about it personally.

A failure to cherish these three values may very well result in coups and civil wars becoming more likely in the United States and the rest of the Western world.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author's own.