It was Niccolo Machiavelli that wrote in "The Prince," that in order to do good you had to do evil. In the United States, and in the rest of the world, there have been politicians, dictators, judges, special interest group leaders and more, that have followed this teaching. They have justified wrong conduct in order to do, at least in their minds, "good works." For example, there have been many liberal and "moderate" politicians that have defended the growth and spending of government in order to "help the people." What they do not say, is that they are ignoring the Constitution and other laws with regards to limits on power. In order to justify this all, they say that the limits on power is "antiquated," "does not apply to today's society" or "belongs in the horse and buggy days." Franklin D. Roosevelt should be smiling on these folks.
Recently, there were many journalists, columnists, editors, producers and commentators that literally character assassinated those that participated in the Tea Parties. The press labeled the protesters as "a fringe," "a part of a Republican Plot," and went out of the way show how these people deserved no respect, according to their eyes. The reality of what these journalists and others were doing was nothing more than defending their social class biases and prejudices, saying that they are superior to the protesters, and giving support to those in the political arena (namely Democrats and liberals).
The habit of justifying bad motives and behaviors underneath good ones, has caused great harms to people, individuals, civilizations and society. The remedy to this is not to ignore it, but expose it and bring it out in the open. The Tea protestors done that, the media and the opponents own words have done that, as well as their looking down upon them. This should continue in order to show that despite what they say is "good," it is really nothing more than bad.