Blind loyalty

Blind loyalty involves being loyal to a person or cause despite the damage the person or cause does to himself or herself or others. Excusing bad behaviour in the name of protecting allegiance to another seems honourable at first, but is ultimately dangerous as silence is a form of collusion. Many people feel torn between retaining loyalty to a cause or group and risking rejection or ostracisim or personal attack by outing misconduct. Blind loyalty involves a form of cognitive dissonance where a person sees evidence of a problem or bad behaviour and then turns a blind eye to the truth in favour of keeping a positive image of the person or cause. Knowing in your gut that something is wrong, and yet acting as if everything is fine. The classic example is a battered woman who protects her partner when police arrive in answer to a domestic violence call. Think of priests covering for sexual abuse among their colleagues, mothers denying incest in favour of protecting their husbands, and teachers turning a blind eye to abusive conduct by their peers to comprehend that "Loyalty is only a virtue if the person or cause is good".