Unprincipled Foolishness, Kathleen Parker blows an easy one.

What is now a very long time ago,  my occupation, working on elevators, was a good job.  Paid well.  I spent money from time to time on a credit card, but only what I could pay before the grace period was up.  Well, I found myself unemployed abruptly, and a credit card bill the size of which was at the noise level became unpayable.

Lesson learned.

It doesn't seem to a lesson Kathleen Parker has learned yet, which is an impression got from reading her column entitled Principled Foolishness.  She insults a group of Republican Congressmen exercising a clear public mandate, voting as they promised their supporters they would.  She calls them a "Tea Party Gang" as part of a confused exercise in praeteritio sliding into metanoia.  As a member of the local Ithaca Tea Party, I say that I personally will support the fiscally conservative candidate, Democrat or otherwise, other things being equal.  Tea parties are essentially local.

I was bothered by the rudeness of it. 

She attacks them for being men of principle, apparently preferring the alternative.  There was no sign that she had available counterarguments to the principle in such: We shouldn't live on borrowed money.  It doesn't help to point to varieties of foolish people who do so.  These foolish people get stuck like pigs during these downturns, yet there is a difference between taking on risk that others might not take on and forcing others to take on risk that they don't want.

Kathleen Parker says  "The conservative view, with which I happen to agree, is that confidence is crucial to growth and stability. In effect, the Tea Party gang has undermined its own central philosophical tenet. "

Quite False.

The sentence should start with the indefinite article.  Also, one looks in vain for Burke, Roland Kirk, Daniel Boon, Jesus Christ, My self, any tea party member I have ever talked to, to name confidence as a central tenant.  Where does she get this stuff? Does Kathleen Parker own a parrot?  Fiscal conservatism, one of the legs of the Tea Party stool, is quite a harder trick than confidence, which can be got with a few lines of coke.

To close, The point is that a lack of principles causes one to make continual judgements.  Since judgements can be right or wrong, one may fall into error, which will not happen when correct principles are applied.