Consider some of the specific practical effects of moral compromise:
- Those who admit exceptions to their principles lend ammunition to their opponents, by inviting the inference that those principles lack logical validity and may therefore be dismissed without consequences. For example, suppose that party X advocates a certain government program; meanwhile, party Y professes to believe that the program is wrong, but offers to compromise by supporting it 50% (
). Already, party Y has lost the argument. If the program can be justified to any extent, then it cannot be wrong in principle; furthermore, if we should provide support for it, then we have no valid justification for limiting that support. In contemporary politics, such compromises have become a standard strategy, recently termed "triangulation." Not surprisingly, its practitioners have brought popular scorn upon both themselves and their beliefs. 
