Decent people should ignore politics, if only they could be confident that politics would ignore them - William F. Buckley Jr.

Henry Kissinger said in 1968:

Word should be gotten to Nixon that,
if Thieu meets the same fate as Diem,
the word will go out to the nations of the world,
that it may be dangerous to be America's enemy,
but to be America's friend is fatal.

The danger comes when a distrust of doctrinaire social systems eases over into a dissolute disregard for principle. A disregard for enduring principle delivers a society, eviscerated, over to the ideologists.

She [Ayn Rand] had to declare that....altruism was despicable, that only self-interest is good and noble. (About Ayn Rand)