Principled or Partisan? Part 2 of 2
The Erosion of Democratic Values
A note to the reader: This week’s newsletter tackles uncomfortable territory — the gap between our democratic principles and our partisan practices. It’s not about left versus right. It’s about whether principles matter at all, or if they’re just convenient tools we deploy against our enemies and abandon when they implicate our allies. Some examples will challenge comfortable narratives on all sides. That’s the point.
This is Part 2 of a 2-Part Essay
Recap from Part 1: We examined the central paradox of our time: the gap between our stated principles and our partisan practices. Through examples ranging from free speech (Charlie Hebdo vs. Palestinian protesters) to political violence (BLM protests vs. January 6th), conspiracy theories (Pizzagate vs. Epstein), and corruption (Trudeau vs. Trump), we saw the same pattern: principles deployed as weapons against opponents, abandoned when they implicate allies. We explored why democracy exists as enlightened self-interest, how the ‘rules-based order’ is selective fiction, and where our ‘protect the children’ advocates went when real abuse was documented. The question remains: Do we have principles, or just partisans? [Read Part 1]
The Boiling Frog
There’s an old urban legend about boiling a frog. Drop it in boiling water, and it jumps out immediately. But place it in cool water and slowly turn up the heat, and it boils to death, never noticing the gradual change until it’s too late.
We are the frog. We have been swimming contentedly in the water. But the water is getting dangerously hot.
Each compromise seems small, individually justifiable.
Just this once, we will ignore corruption on our side — their corruption was worse.
Just in this case, we will excuse violence from our allies — they had legitimate grievances.
Just this time, we will abandon free speech — this speech is dangerous.
Just this time, we will abandon the application of laws — the threat to our way of life is too much to abide by the laws that gave us our way of life.
Just today, we will overlook abuse when it implicates the wrong people — we need to focus on more important battles.
Erode. Erode. Erode.
And suddenly we’re living in a society where truth is whatever serves our narrative, where justice applies selectively based on politics, where abuse is condemned or ignored based solely on who’s accused, where democratic principles are abandoned whenever they become inconvenient for our side.
This is how civilizations decay. Not through a single catastrophic failure, but through the steady accumulation of small corruptions — each one rationalized, each one excused by pointing to the other side’s equal or worse behavior. Over time, corruption becomes normal. Principles are dismissed as naïve. Power, pleasure, and tribal loyalty replace restraint and responsibility.
This is the lesson of the late Roman Empire. Nero didn’t destroy Rome in a night, fiddling away while Rome burned. But he embodied a culture that had already learned to tolerate and even celebrate excess, cruelty, and spectacle over virtue. The fire became a symbol — not the cause — of a society that had lost its moral centre.
The ancient Roman historian Livy said:
Rome was originally, when it was poor and small, a unique example of austere virtue; then it corrupted, it spoiled, it rotted itself by all the vices; so, little by little, we have been brought into the present condition in which we are able neither to endure the evils from which we suffer, nor the remedies we need to cure them.
And it’s the deeper warning in the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah: not a tale about isolated sins, but about what happens when a society stops caring whether its actions align with its stated values — when people know the difference between right and wrong and choose wrong anyway because it’s easier, more profitable, or more loyal to the tribe.
The water is heating in real time. But most of us are too busy defending our team to notice the temperature rising.
Trust Dies in Selective Light
We talk endlessly about declining trust in institutions. The numbers are sobering: media trust at historic lows, fewer than one in five Americans trusting government, courts seen as politically captured, academia dismissed as biased by half the population, science rejected by millions even during a pandemic.
But the bigger question is why should we trust institutions that don’t uphold their stated principles?
Why trust media that applies different editorial standards based on political alignment?
Why trust courts that seem to judge based on political leanings rather than evidence and the law?
Why trust politicians who weaponize morality when convenient and abandon it when costly?
Why trust any institution that treats principles as tactics rather than standards?
Our current institutional crisis isn’t primarily about misinformation or polarization or social media echo chambers. It’s about hypocrisy. When people see principles applied selectively — free speech for us but not them, due process for our side but not theirs, accountability for opponents but not allies — they don’t just lose faith in specific institutions. They lose faith in the idea of principle itself.
They conclude, often correctly, that moral outrage is just another weapon, that justice is just another word for power, that principles are simply the stories we tell to justify doing what we wanted to do anyway.
And once that conclusion takes hold, once people believe the game is rigged and principles are meaningless, democracy itself becomes impossible.
Because democracy requires believing that rules matter more than outcomes, that process matters more than power, that some things are wrong regardless of who does them.
The Only Path Forward
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: we probably can’t solve this at the societal level, at least not quickly, perhaps not ever. The incentives are too strong, the tribal identities too entrenched, the fear of losing our privileges too steep. Institutional reform will be necessary but insufficient. Cultural change will take decades.
But we can start at the individual level. And, ultimately, that’s where all real change begins.
The path forward requires something almost impossibly difficult: applying your principles consistently, especially when it hurts, especially when it costs you, especially when it means criticizing your own side or acknowledging merit in your opponents’ position.
The test of a principle isn’t whether you apply it to your enemies — it’s whether you apply it equally to your allies, and vice versa.
If you defended free speech for Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, you defend it for Palestinian protesters.
If you condemned BLM violence, you condemn January 6th violence.
If you were outraged by Pizzagate conspiracies, you are outraged by the actual abuse documented in the Epstein files.
If you criticized Trudeau’s corruption, you criticize Trump’s.
If you criticized Russia’s pre-emptive attack on Ukraine, you criticize the US’s pre-emptive attack on Iran.
And vice versa, for all of the above.
Before you speak, before you post, before you condemn or defend, ask yourself one question: “If the parties were reversed, would I still hold this position?”
If the answer is no, if your position depends on who’s involved rather than what they did, then you don’t have a principle. You are a partisan — you have a team preference. And that’s fine — we all have tribal loyalties. But we should at least be honest enough to admit that’s what we’re defending, rather than pretending we are standing on principle.
The ability to say “My side got this wrong” might be the hardest practice in modern political and community life. But it’s also what separates someone with actual principles from a partisan. Not the lazy “both sides are bad” equivocation or the in-vogue “what-about-isms”, which is just another way of avoiding accountability. But the specific, uncomfortable acknowledgment: “I generally support X, but in this particular case, they’re wrong and Y is right”.
This requires rejecting selective outrage, noticing your own emotional patterns. When are you outraged? When are you dismissive? What’s the pattern? If you’re consistently outraged when opponents misbehave but dismissive when your allies do the same thing, you’re engaged in performative outrage, not genuine moral concern. You’re signalling tribal loyalty, not defending principles.
The hardest truths are always the ones that undermine our preferred narratives.
Maybe your side wasn’t entirely victimized.
Maybe your opponents had legitimate grievances.
Maybe the reality is more complex than your tribe’s talking points.
Maybe people you admire did terrible things.
Maybe principles you champion have been weaponized unjustly.
Maybe your team’s corruption is as bad as theirs.
Embracing this discomfort, sitting with these uncomfortable possibilities, allowing evidence to change your mind even when it’s politically costly — this is the only path to actual understanding, to genuine principle, to anything resembling intellectual honesty.
Principles Either Matter or They Don’t
Democracy doesn’t die in darkness. It dies in selective light — when we illuminate our opponents’ sins while hiding our allies’ crimes in shadow. It dies when principles become weapons we deploy against enemies rather than standards we apply first and most rigorously to ourselves.
It dies when “protecting children” means attacking political opponents, not protecting actual children.
When “free speech” means speech we agree with.
When “law and order” means laws applied to people we don’t like.
When “justice” means our side winning.
We’re not in Nero’s Rome. We’re not in Sodom and Gomorrah. Yet. But it sure looks like we’re heading there, one rationalized compromise at a time, one justified hypocrisy at a time, one principle hollowed out for tribal advantage at a time.
The question isn’t whether our institutions will survive this erosion — they may or may not. The question is whether we will. Whether we as individuals can reclaim principle from partisanship, whether we can rebuild trust by actually being trustworthy, by actually meaning what we say, by actually applying our stated values even when it costs us.
It starts with each of us. It starts with the uncomfortable admission that if you can’t apply your principles to your own side, if you can’t acknowledge when your team is wrong, if you can’t hold your allies to the same standards you demand of your opponents, then you don’t have principles.
You just have preferences. You just have a team. You are just a partisan. You just have the tribal loyalty that has characterized human conflict for millennia, dressed up in the language of principle to make it feel more noble.
Fundamental principles either matter or they don’t. Either the standards apply to everyone, including and especially our allies, or they’re just convenient tools we deploy when useful and ignore when costly. Either we mean what we say about justice, equality, freedom, and truth, or we are just playing the same power games humans have always played, just using prettier words.
The choice is ours. The water is boiling. And the question is whether we will notice before it’s too late to do something about it.
A closing note
The Good Human Practice is a biweekly reflection on living with purpose, not just profit, in an increasingly noisy and fractured world.
This isn’t self-help. It’s slow, meaningful practice.
If this essay stayed with you, sit with it. Notice what it surfaced. Return to it when you need to.
If you’re interested in simple reflection tools to support this kind of inner work, you’ll find them here.
For leadership and decision-making work under uncertainty, I write a separate publication called The Uncertainty E.D.G.E.™.