Most of us cannot imagine a life without loyalties. Our shared loyalties build trust, unity, community, and personal growth. It would be a sad life and grim world for us to have no devotion to any higher cause or larger community other than ourselves. But our loyalties begin with a shared respect and commitment to our values, ethics, integrity, safety, and most of all, our shared universal human rights. If we don’t have loyalty to those shared values and principles, we don’t have loyalty with our brothers and sisters in humanity at all.

Loyalty matters. Loyalty defines our lives and our characters as individuals.

Loyalty is never an excuse to allow the human rights abuses and suffering of others, or to excuse those whose actions have allowed the human rights abuses and suffering of others. That is not loyalty at all. That is disloyalty to the truths that we hold self-evident and the human rights values we all share as human beings.

Loyalty without values, without principles, without a commitment to our universal human rights has nothing to do with community. Such shallow expressions of “loyalty” are nothing more than gangs who seek to use their force to suppress the rights, the dignity, and the security of others. We have seen this throughout history, and we see this today. This shallow view of loyalty is devoid of a sense of responsibility for our shared universal human rights and dignity, putting the pride and ego of their clan above the dignity and decency of others, even the weakest and most vulnerable of our citizens.

Loyalty does not justify bullies. Loyalty does not just committing crimes and violence against the helpless among us. Loyalty is not an excuse for those who rationalize such anti-social behavior and anti-human rights behavior by others in their group. There is no loyalty in the actions of criminals, their co-conspirators, and those who rationalize their anti-social behavior.

A life without loyalties is a grim existence. This is why, as human beings, our community is more than our own self-interest. This is why we urge of all our fellow human beings to work in improving the priority of our shared universal human rights in our culture. This is why we urge all to be responsible for equality and liberty.