Is power needed to "implement principles"?

A "progressive" WSJ commenter stated

What is the point of principles if you have no power to implement them?

My response:

Principles are not "implemented". They are displayed, adhered to personally, and presented to others as a shining example. Principles do not require power or force.  

Some examples...

Principled: opposing abortion by standing in the sleeting rain outside a clinic holding a poster stating your beliefs

Not principled: using the force of law to prevent women from making a difficult choice

Principled: volunteering at a homeless shelter, donating your own time and money 

Not principled: using tax law to force your neighbors to support your personal cause

She clearly didn't get it, and responded with a non sequitor, mocking my nobility for standing in the rain. An aside, it has been my observation that progressives far too often respond with a non sequitur or even an ad hominem attack.

Otherwise she might have noticed that I was trying to produce an example representative of the abuses by both sides (conservatives and progressives) when it comes to trying to use their power to "implement principles". As I said, principles are not implemented (especially not through force, which kinda contradicts the very notion of "principles").

prin·ci·ple noun \'prin(t)-s(?-)p?l, -s?-b?l\ : a moral rule or belief that helps you know what is right and wrong and that influences your actions

Noble or not, I have never stood in the rain to protest abortion, primarily because the Republicans err when they try to impose their beliefs on the subject through the force of law. Thus, the quiet protest is more principled than screaming for a law so you can force your neighbors to comply.

Ditto for the soup kitchen example--"helping the homeless" is a cause readily taken up by the Democrats, who use the force of law to forcibly extract money from their neighbors to provide Section 8 housing, etc. while never stepping foot inside a shelter and doing real, principled work. Both sides relish the power to force the peons to bend to their will.

For what it's worth, I do drive past a clinic on my way to & from work. That clinic has a small group of protesters peacefully holding their signs just about every day. More than once, people in the car with me have stated something like "Whether you agree with them or not, you gotta respect that those people are standing out there in this weather for their principles."

Think Group A could be made aware of the "evil" actions of Group B?

First, we have the most recent entreaty on the part of Public Citizen, which is a progressive organization structured as a 501(c)(4) who's purpose (currently) to fund political advocacy  to urge Congress to overturn the right of 501(c)(4) organizations to fund political advocacy. 

If it weren’t for everything Public Citizen has done for the past 42 years and counting, the cloud of corporate greed looming over so much of our lives may by now have cast all of America under a permanent shadow.

During my 16 years of service in the U.S. House of Representatives, I saw over and over again just how vital Public Citizen is to defending health and safety, consumer rights, and our very democracy from Big Business and its many puppets in politics.

Public Citizen does the hard work behind the scenes that helps get good laws passed and bad bills stopped.

I really don’t know another organization that more skillfully and effectively counteracts the vastly better funded legions of corporate lobbyists that infest the halls of Congress day in and day out.

And — most significantly at this moment — nobody is doing more than Public Citizen to fight the U.S. Supreme Court’s stupid and stupefying decision in the Citizens United case.

It’s largely owing to Public Citizen that the movement to overturn Citizens United — and its evil twin McCutcheon v. FEC if it goes badly too — with a constitutional amendment has taken root so deeply and so quickly.

In this season of giving, I hope you will join me in making as generous a contribution to Public Citizen as you can.

Public Citizen can’t win without help from engaged Americans like you.

Then we have the Daily Kos. The Daily Kos is a product of Kos Media, LLC. It's a for-profit corporation sustained by advertising to and (non-deductible) contributions from its members. 

Here’s a sneak peek at our priorities for next year so you can see what your contribution would be supporting:

• We'll be rolling out Daily Kos 5 in the first half of the year, and it'll blow you away. It’s a huge investment in our community that will feature a streamlined look and dramatically better publishing experience, new features, better social media integration and added functionality to the mobile site.
• We'll be working to get Nancy Pelosi her gavel back and keep the Senate. And as bonus, we’ll be fighting to get rid of Mitch McConnell. (We raised an astonishing $1.6 million for candidates in 2013—and it wasn’t even an election year for most of the country. We’re going to blow that away in 2014.)
• We’ll continue to provide the news coverage that makes Daily Kos the go-to place for progressives when big things happen.

This is going to be hard work. It’s also going to be expensive.

Daily Kos has over five million unique readers every month and an operating budget of just $2.5 million. We could fund operations for two years if every reader chipped in just one dollar, but we all know that not everyone is in a position to do that—especially after the holidays.

So, I’ll ask again: If you’re fortunate enough to be in a position to give after the holidays, could you chip in just $5 a month to keep Daily Kos going through the 2014 election?

I wonder if the folks at Public Citizen will ever put the Daily Kos or Kos Media, LLC, in their list of corporations ruining the electoral process by funneling "unlimited" monies to candidates?

According to Wikipedia, during the 2004 U.S. election campaign, Daily Kos readers gave approximately $500,000 in user donations to fifteen Democratic candidates denoted as most needing funds and that Daily Kos led a fundraising campaign again in the 2006 midterm election campaign in conjunction with MyDD and State Project. This time around, they raised over $1.4 million for 17 "Netroots Candidates," 

A Clemson Christmas

Way back in 1999, I bought a new car. Every year, when we received our stickers from IPTAY, I put one with the others on the rear window of that car. This went on for many years until I decided it was finally time for a new car. I decided to give the old car to my niece who was turning 16 rather than trade it in or sell it, but before I did that I took a few last photos.

With my brother's family being Gamecocks, I figured the first thing they'd do is scrape those stickers off the car.I thought about making keeping the stickers on the car a condition of ownership but decided to not be an ass. I did mention that I hated seeing those go.

What I didn't know was that my brother would surprise me by presenting me with the stickers later. He spent hours carefully scraping them off the car keeping them as intact as possible and stuck them on a piece of foam poster board. He said he thought that since Mrs. Percy was so creative that she could do something with them, maybe put them in a frame or something.

That was back in the summer. Flash forward to Christmas morning when I opened a large square present, about 24-by-24 inches. It was a beautiful matted and framed 3-d Tiger Paw, made from those same stickers and foam poster board and the actual tiger paw is about the size of a large dinner plate.

A close up...

This will be hanging in a place of honor in my office from now on!

Thanks so much to my brother for saving the stickers and thanks ever so much to my wife, a true Clemson spirit!