loyalty above all else except honor

Sometimes, when your friend is in a fight,
you pick a side in the fight out of loyalty
before you know what the fight is about.

Maybe later you find yourself fighting on the wrong side of an important principle?

How can you possibly argue that public service should not be transparent.

How can you possibly defend letting public servants self except themselves from accountability as public servants?

You will not betray your principles
and you can not betray your friends.

You can only stonewall, forever.

Perhaps if they were really friends, they would not ask.

That's what I used to tell students when they asked me what to say when a "friend" says,

if you were really my friend you would shoplift with me, lie for me, have sex with me, commit vandalism with me, cheat for me, smoke dope with me, steal for me ...

I told kids to tell their "friends", if you were my friend, you wouldn't ask me to do something I think is wrong; simply to prove my friendship;

and I told them, they would find some new and better friends.