One argument that Bertrand Russell makes in Authority and the Individual is that loyalty among people has grown from loyalty based on association and fear to loyalty by creed. The creed he identifies in this case is religion. He gives the example of Islam in the Middle East and Christianity during the Crusades. I would agree with this argument and say that is has persisted to today’s time as well. Watching the breakdown of votes in the Iowa Caucus, I learned that individuals of similar religions tended to vote as a group for particular candidates. Ted Cruz won the vote of Evangelicals and born again Christians. Religion is a strong unifier the larger the group the more powerful their loyalty can be.
“At a later stage in the development of civilization, a new kind of loyalty began to be developed; a loyalty based not on territorial affinity or similarity of race, but on identity of creed” (Russell, 6).