Democracies cannot guarantee justice. And sometimes the majority oppresses the minority. This is why the founding fathers feared democracy. They certainly knew this instinctively, they lived on land stolen from the Indians and worked by forced labor, and they looked to Imperial Patrician Rome as the source of their political philosophy. They also embraced the Divine Right of Kings, until they felt it interfered with their own freedom.

But how else are we going to define "principle" besides a democratically arrived-at consensus of a representative political process? I don't happen to agree with many of your principles, and the opposite is also true, I'm sure. And look how long it took for this country to decide on the validity of the principle of slavery. And it was settled the old-fashioned way, with guns. There were principled people on both sides of that issue.

I do know one thing, though, the more people claim how obvious and self-evident "principles" are, the more I tend to feel uncomfortable with theirs. The best (and perhaps the only) alternative to the violent resolution of matters of principle is the democratic process, leavened with the flywheel of constitutional law. I do not necessarily approve of decisions arrived at by the democratic process. I don't necessarily approve of my doctor's diagnoses or the economic health of my business, either. But I have to accept them as a fact before I can take steps to change them.

Yes, I believe in right and wrong and principle, and justice, too. Perhaps a lot more than you think I do. I just don't expect you to believe what I believe, or that you fail to do so because you are unprincipled.

And I believe if you search your heart, you might just feel the same. After all, you certainly believe there is a market out there that regulates economic activity. And that it does not depend on subjective principles like justice. It is a process, isn't it, one based on the automatic cumulative results of collective individual actions and decisions? And it is one of your principles that its decisions must be accepted no matter how unjust or unprincipled they may appear.