Me, I'm motivated by a single issue: I can't find the message in which you wrote "compromise is betrayal of principle", but damn, it was so harsh that the image of that post, not just the words, is burnt into my memory forever. I can see it now. Someday, I promise you, I will find that message!
You won't find it. I would never have said such a thing. You're remembering a more complex statement in oversimplified terms and probably running it through at least one internal filter.
"Compromise" has an exact meaning, and like the term "negotiation," it's a process, not an end in itself. How the compromise is arrived at, what's involved in terms of the goals and moral principles, and what is gained and lost by each side determines whether the process is moral or not, and these are not simple analyses in most cases. I could give examples if I thought it would help. I've tried before with little result.
The phrase "compromise is betrayal of principle" is as imprecise and inane as the phrase "using a gun is evil."
"A major symptom of a man's—or a culture's—intellectual and moral disintegration is the shrinking of vision and goals to the concrete-bound range of the immediate moment. This means: the progressive disappearance of abstractions from a man's mental processes or from a society's concerns. The manifestation of a disintegrating consciousness is the inability to think and act in terms of principles."
- Ayn Rand, "Anatomy of Compromise"