South By North Strategies, Ltd.

Writing in The New Yorker, George Packer differentiates between ideology and principles.

A decade and a half after Clinton and Gingrich, Republicans are once again trying to privatize Medicare, gut Medicaid (by turning it into block grants), cut education spending and regulations that protect the environment, and give yet another round of tax cuts to the rich. They continue to insist—despite years of evidence to the contrary—that market forces will lower health-care costs and that tax cuts will create economic growth and lift all incomes. “Ideology makes it unnecessary for people to confront individual issues on their individual merits,” the late Daniel Bell wrote. “One simply turns to the ideological vending machine, and out comes the prepared formulae.” Ideology knows the answer before the question has been asked.
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Principles are something different: a set of values that have to be adapted to circumstances but not compromised away. Last week, the President remembered that he was a Democrat and gave a speech at George Washington University articulating his and his party’s vision of the positive role of government: “a belief that we’re all connected, and that there are some things we can only do together, as a nation.” He praised social-insurance programs, saying, “We’re a better country because of these commitments. I’ll go further. We would not be a great country without those commitments.” For once, he seemed eager to join a fight and draw clear lines.