Newcomer Steven Ardler muses over a provocative question about the virtue loyalty in his Comment of the Day on“Penn State, the Child Molester and the Dark Side of Loyalty”:
“Out of curiosity: would you say that a better definition of Loyalty is needed? It seems to me that the dilemma can be partially resolved by claiming all Loyalty need be to “the good” rather than to a person/institution/nation (I put the term in quotations because I am conflicted as to its actual meaning).
“We choose people and institutions that we believe maximize the good and adhere to their policies and behaviors accordingly. When those people or institutions step away from the good, our “Loyalty” to them is revoked. In this case, nearly by definition, Loyalty will always be a virtue. Of course, a very simple counter to this idea will be the varying interpretations of “good.” Muslim suicide-bombers are, in their ethical consideration, maximizing good in the universe by doing Allah’s will (according to their interpretation of that will). A bishop in the Catholic church may *feel* as if he is maximizing good by not condemning his pederast brethren, as he serves what he thinks is the ultimate good – a god. A coach at Penn State may think that he is loyal to the good, by determining that the university accomplishes enough good to be worth preserving from scandal. All of these are very apparently flawed, but this type of reasoning would abound with a new definition of loyalty, nonetheless. I feel like a re-tuned definition of Loyalty *helps*, but certainly does not resolve the problem. Is there a way to define loyalty in which it is actually a virtue, and not just a description of a series of actions?”
Ethics Alarms 
There is another loyalty to consider, and that is loyalty to American standards of justice.
When it comes to child molestation, these standards were violated repeatedly. See e.g. The Kern County child abuse cases .
Unless the persons in question were presented with photographic or physical evidence, their action were justified in light of what happened in Kern County, California, as well as what happened to Gerald Amirault and Grant Snowden .
There was an investigation. Obviously, Sanduskey’s explanations were not reassuring. They would not have even banned his kids from campus if it had been nothing more than one unreliable eye witness.
You don’t have to have legal guilt to take appropriate protective measures. If they believed the account enough to say, “keep your kids away from here,” they knew, should have known or thought they knew enough to report him. This is nothing like the Kern County case.
True, but the appropriateness of a protective measure depends on the nature of what is actually known.
This is the kind of crime, for which society believes the accused is guilty until proven innocent, as a Reason.Com commenter ,a href=”http://reason.com/archives/2011/02/14/sticklers-for-procedure#comment_2136102″> noted .
As I see it, the ultimate expression of immoral behavior- which, by its nature, breaks all ties of loyalty and friendship- is that of the destructive use of children by adults. This, I maintain, lies at the heart 0f all ethical considerations that can be called moral or civilized.
This, I think, is aside to the “Loyalty” question, but a few thoughts nonetheless:
By what morality? On Christianity/most monotheisms, clearly not. A god orders wholesale slaughter of children (which I think could easily be argued as “destructive use”) numerous times in religious texts. On divine command theory, the worst expression of immoral behavior is usually not expressing wholesale devotion to whatever commander is theorized to exist. Honestly, I can’t think of a deontological system that would have “destructive use of children by adults” as its utmost expression of immorality. Could you elucidate what moral backdrop you build your comment on?
(heh, heh,heh!)
Must subscribe to comments. This is going to be fun.
What did I do here? Did I miss something? “Oops,” in advance, I guess?
Nothing’s wrong. I’m normally in your spot (though a bit less erudite), and Jack’s probably making sure he’s stocked up on popcorn.
tgt is right—that was all. I was looking forward to the new kid climbing into the ring with SPm on this topic…a Thrilla in Manilla!