It seems to me that loyalty can only be ethical within a group or within a system of groups of people. It could be said that hierarchies of control depend upon loyalty. Even so loyalty may call upon a person to betray someone or some people or to harm themselves.
Vows are like contracts with the gods or God or government as guarantor. Vows also are commitments: moments in which a person decides they will make something happen. A person can also vow to obey unforeseeable commands. This is what taking public office means. You give away your morality for someone else's.
Following orders means doing what you are told without thinking about it. This requires brainwashing.
Are the above things healthy? Are they necessary? Are they supportable in a moral person: a person who believes in making moral decisions?
*** To whoever participates: I expect a range of answers and no simple one size fits all solution. By the way I am not skilled in ethics or philosophy, so please forgive that.
All this philosophical conflict is due to the philosophy of relative morality. If we assume morality is relative, then each group and even each person can define their own relative morality. This allows each group to be true to itself and also make anything honorable in the group. It is only when there is a system of absolute morality; same for all, that judgment of members within various groups is possible. A terrorists who helps their group will be seen as honorable in relative morality, even if dishonorable in absolute morality.
Relative morality needs things to be more clannish, with no common standard of right and wrong or good and evil beyond the clan being the only good, in a relative sense. Both the good and evil of absolute morality, can exist in each clan, since relative morality has room for both; ends justifies the means. The clan needs its bad boys to do the dirty work that the evil can conjure up.
With an absolute standard of morality, the good and the evil become more distinct and separated within each group, since each group can police itself. What ends up happening is cultural clans, internally divide and then they remerge into just two bigger groups, good and evil, with only one battle line instead of dozens.
The concept of God, is about a theoretical entity that is higher in the evolutionary scale compared to humans. This is seen as a good choice for rules, if the goal is an absolute system of morality that applies to all evolving humans. However, this exposes evil, which can do much better, using good humans as human shields, via group relative morality. All clans have good people who naturally follow absolute morality. They have a line in the sand while being part of the clan; much less extreme.
The assassins, in spy versus spy, are both Patriots and criminals based on your relative morality. But in absolute morality both are evil. This is why evil needs to get rid of religion and anyone who pushes for absolute morality, since it sets high too bright and exposes evil. Evil works best when it can be free, like a virus, to invades groups and form pockets of zombie relative morality, to help it thrive.
If we were to separate humans into good and evil, in an absolute moral sense, with a big wall between, the naturally good would thrive within absolute morality, since law would be scaled back due to their natural instinct to do good.
The bad would continue to use relative morality, within the evil, redistributing itself as clans; semi to full scale brutal and evil. The lessor of the evils would seek sanctuary with the good. The good would allow this, but it will plant the seed of discontent, as law increases again, since being good is only show for the evil; actors. This causes clans to form and we are back to relative morality.
Liberalism is clan based due to relative morality. Now each clan has a day, week or month of celebration, to hide the evil among them. It becomes clan versus clan, such as black vs white, male vs female, natural vs cyborg, etc, each seeing itself as good, all with the ends justify the means, so evil can express itself freely within the relative morality of its creations. America was the melting pot; good and evil, but now we have all the clans. The light on the hill is not quite as bright to the rest of the world; decline via relative morality.
