Editorial illustration – A nation’s strength rests on citizens who put country before party—and build together across their differences.”
By Dr. Raymond Hamden*, OpEd.
First article in the series of “Putting the country first”
A political party should help citizens advance principles, policies, and the public good. It should never replace conscience, independent judgment, or national identity. When people defend their leaders regardless of their conduct, citizenship gives way to obedience.
Lebanon offers a painful warning about where that obedience can lead. Its experience does not predict America’s future. It does, however, reveal how political loyalty can weaken a nation when citizens stop holding their own leaders accountable.
Lebanon possesses extraordinary human talent, cultural richness, and economic potential. Its constitution affirms public freedoms, equality, and democratic government. It also identifies the abolition of political confessionalism as a national objective. Yet the promise of equal citizenship has repeatedly yielded to sectarian allegiance and party interests.
The National Pact of 1943 sought to preserve coexistence by distributing political authority among religious communities. An arrangement intended to reassure communities gradually hardened into a system of entitlement. Political leaders became gatekeepers to employment, services, protection, and influence.
For many citizens, loyalty was never simply a matter of agreeing with a political program. It became bound to religion, family history, geography, collective memory, and fear. A leader could present himself as the community’s indispensable defender. Challenging him could then be portrayed as betraying the community itself.
This produced a destructive cycle. Leaders cultivated insecurity. Citizens sought their protection. Parties provided favors where public institutions failed. Supporters rewarded them with loyalty, while those same parties had little incentive to build institutions that would make their patronage unnecessary.
The state’s weakness became a source of political strength for those who claimed to compensate for it.
The pattern survived the civil war. Former wartime factions entered government, public offices were divided among competing interests, and ministries too often became partisan territories. Foreign powers exploited internal divisions, while Lebanese factions sought outside sponsorship to strengthen their positions.
Blind loyalty alone did not cause Lebanon’s decline. War, foreign intervention, regional conflict, corruption, economic mismanagement, and institutional weakness all contributed. But unquestioning allegiance helped shield leaders from the consequences of those failures.
Citizens could condemn corruption in principle while excusing it within their own camp. They could demand accountability for opponents while accepting explanations, delays, and evasions from familiar leaders. The standard changed according to who stood accused.
A system cannot correct itself when those responsible for its failures retain protection from the people paying the price.
Lebanon’s tragedy is therefore also a tragedy of citizenship. Many Lebanese love their country deeply, yet political behavior has repeatedly favored the faction over the nation. National belonging flourishes in music, poetry, memory, and pride, while public institutions struggle to embody it.
No society can develop sustainably under those conditions. Development requires competence, continuity, accountability, social trust, and the freedom to acknowledge mistakes. Blind partisanship undermines each foundation.
The United States has a different constitutional structure and a different history. Its political offices are not formally apportioned through Lebanon’s confessional system. Those differences matter. But the psychological temptation to confuse loyalty to a party with loyalty to the country can arise anywhere.
Americans should recognize the danger whenever citizens excuse conduct from their own leaders that they would condemn in an opponent. They should question any movement that treats criticism as betrayal or demands allegiance before evidence.
The lesson from Lebanon is not to abandon political parties. It is to keep them accountable to a national purpose larger than themselves.
The essential question must change from “What does my party want me to believe?” to “What is true, lawful, just, and beneficial to the country?”
A nation begins to recover when citizens insist that their leaders answer that question, and accept the same obligation themselves.
Source note: Lebanon’s constitutional commitments are stated in its preamble. The World Bank’s public-finance analysis documents the broader pattern of elite capture and weakened public services.
* Dr. Raymond Hamden is a clinical and forensic psychologist and consultant in political psychology. His professional background spans 53 years of education and licensed practice, with consulting and professional services in more than 30 nations across five continents.
