Kevin Drum discusses how “principles” make it easy reach conclusions quickly and wrongly (which is correct) but ends his discussion with a strange tidbit:
On a slight tangent, have you noticed that although “ideology” and “principles” have nearly identical meanings in common usage, we usually use ideology when speaking about people we don’t like and principles when talking about ourselves?
Except “principles” and “ideology” aren’t really identical in common usage. One is a part. The other is the whole. An “ideology” is a group of (presumably) semi-coherent “principles”. A slight metonymy develops by which a principle like “Less Government” stands for the whole “Libertarian” ideology but that is more referential than anything else.
As far as, “principles” for me but not for thee, consider the above example. Libertarians are famously divisive and diverse in their sub-ideologies. Yet, they are all Libertarian no matter whichever principles they claim motivate their belief.
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