1. It is often necessary, even desirable, for political leaders to withhold information from the public.
2. There are two types of laws: just and unjust. Every individual in a society has a responsibility to obey just laws and, even more importantly, to disobey and resist unjust laws.
3. To be an effective leader, a public official must maintain the highest ethical and moral standards.
4. It is impossible for an effective political leader to tell the truth all the time. Complete honesty is not a useful virtue for a politician.
5. Those who treat politics and morality as though they were separate realms fail to understand either the one or the other.
6. Laws should not be stationary and fixed. Instead, they should be flexible enough to take account of various circumstances, times, and places.
7. The goal of politics should not be the pursuit of an ideal, but rather the search for common ground and reasonable consensus.