The Know Insider Weblog

With the recent shakeups in the presidential cabinet, it has frequently been observed that the quality most treasured in the present administration is that of loyalty.

Is that such an admirable quality?

We prize the loyalty of our friends who protect our good name when we are not present. We respect the loyalty of committed couples who stay true to each other no matter the outside temptations. We recognize the loyalty of employees who stand by their ethics and keep competitors and enemies at bay. We treasure the loyalty of a soldier to his commander, if necessary to the death. We revere the loyalty of believers in their god and their unswerving commitment to their tenets of faith. We equate disloyalty with treason, dishonor, betrayal. We use names like Quisling, Benedict Arnold, Burgess and Hiss as epithets to express our loathing and disgust.

But loyalty has a darker side. In crime families, loyalty means embracing death or imprisonment rather than exposing crime, violence, and murder. In prison, the most despised inmate is the “snitch” who fails to stay silent about his knowledge of criminal acts, plots, and planned violence. Within adolescent groups and street gangs, the rule of silence and total loyalty is an absolute requirement for continued membership.

The old courts of kings and emperors were rife with sycophants: whatever the leader wanted to hear, they offered. Disagreements and alternative plans for the direction of governance were considered intrigue - dangerous differences of opinion to be rooted out and permanently excised from the body politic.

Where does the White House fit in? For all the positive connotations that loyalty may engender, we must look to the extent it is used and continually monitor it for abuse. No one would suggest that a President surround himself with staff who constantly criticize his ideas or regularly publicly disagree with his programs and proposals. However, the negative aspect of over-loyalty - zealousness - must be confronted if the goal is to weave plans for the common good through compromise in the face of diverse opinion.

The United States was born out of public political and ideological debate. While the framers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution has fundamental beliefs in common, they did not hesitate to publicly disagree and argue in an effort to reach the most workable goals. For more than two centuries, American political discourse has embraced differences more often than celebrating similarities. Commonly, the friction and arguments of elections become translated into legislation and leadership that seeks to bridge the gaps and bring all into the common fold.

What seems to have changed is the willingness to let disparate views and opinions coexist. We have moved from a mentality that celebrates diversity and multiplicity to a narrow conception of what is right, absolutely right. Other opinions are not valued for the richness their views add to the national fabric but are considered wrong, without value, discounted, dangerously unpatriotic. The second term White House has purified its dogma, filtering our nuances and opposing ideas until everything is distilled into the single voice of one man. The moat around the faithful has been filled, the crocs loosed, and the land lies fallow beneath the keen eye of the true believers.

Arrogance and disdain, disguised as “political capital,” has the potential to morph into a level of power and intolerance that can only encourage eventual, inevitable, corruption.

About the Author

Virginia Bola is a licensed clinical psychologist with deep interests in Social Psychology and politics. She has performed therapeutic services for more than 20 years and has studied the results of cultural forces and employment on the individual. The author of an interactive workbook, The Wolf at the Door: An Unemployment Survival Manual, and a monthly ezine, The Worker’s Edge, she can be reached at http://drvirginiabola.blogspot.com

I met Yitzhak Rabin in the Israeli Parliament in 1982 during Hanukkah. I was able to talk with him briefly and mention I was associated with Ambassador College in Pasadena, California.

That was a tactful way of saying I’m a Christian since I knew he personally knew Herbert W. Armstrong and the Worldwide Church of God, including the Plain Truth magazine. Mr. Armstrong had presented him with a gift of Steuben crystal before.

I was a volunteer at Kibbutz Ramat Yohanan at the time, in Northern Israel near Haifa. Just so happens Rabin had lived there for over a year in the late ’50s.

I initially considered Rabin - born in Jerusalem - a traitor for surrendering too much to sworn Arab enemies who had not changed their goal of genocide, only their tactics; for going against clear security concerns he once expressed. (I was in a cafe in Jerusalem when he was shot in Tel Aviv). I refused to attend his funeral, although I had attended Rabbi Meir Kahane’s some years before.

Later I found out Rabin was apparently being pressured by the dark powers that be to continue to go against what he knew was wrong and that he resisted and was therefore MURDERED by them for coming to his senses.

I do not believe Yigal Amir murdered Rabin. ( I’ve met Avishai Raviv several times at demonstrations - he’s the government agent provacateur who goaded Raviv to murder Rabin). Amir is a patsy, the fall-guy, as is thoroughly expounded upon in Who Killed Yitzhak Rabin by Barry Chamish, his first book that broached the subject and clearly indicts the traitor and murderer Shimon Peres (whose Hebrew name appropriately means vulture).

I repeatedly condemn Peres as a kapo of compromise, a prostitute who serves his German-Jesuit EU masters, a traitor who has sold and is selling out Jews, Jerusalem and Israel and say as much in my book Beyond Babylon: Europe’s Rise and Fall. I am on public record against his perfidy and continue to expose him. He was the Bolshevik in charge during my unjust deportation, who was very much aware of an article published in Jerusalem where I mention the EU plans for Jerusalem’s occupation.

The Israeli Secret Police (six men interrogated me) had a computer disk with Beyond Babylon on it and said many would read it and examine it during their investigation of me during their wild goose chase. I told them to make sure Peres read it.

New evidence further PROVES Yigal Amir did not kill Yitzhak Rabin. It’s past time Israelis demand: REOPEN THE RABIN FILE. And now with the release of the Kempler video, many are doing just that!

David Ben-Ariel, a Christian-Zionist writer and author of Beyond Babylon: Europe’s Rise and Fall, shares a special focus on the Middle East and great interest in Jerusalem, reflected in hard-hitting articles that help others improve their understanding of that troubled region. Check out Beyond Babylon.