Whatever the good intentions of the former officers who've been nominated, having a host of former generals in traditionally civilian positions would begin to erode principles of civil-military relations central to democracy, including civilian control and the political neutrality of the armed forces.
When the home secretary showcased them in her party conference speech in October Dominic Raab, then a backbench MP and now a justice minister, described them as "eroding basic principles of freedom that won't make us safer".
Those on the international left that applaud the reduction of poverty in Venezuela, fail to see that more advances have been made in other Latin American countries without the huge oil wealth that Venezuela possesses, and without eroding democratic principles.
In pursuing the principle of noninterference, we are eroding the principle of doing anything we please without being blasted away by jittery agents of the state.
He calls America's founding a "grand compromise": compromise, for him, is not an eroding of principle for the sake of getting something done but a principle in itself — the certainty of uncertainty, the fundament of union.
As President Bush knocks down treaty after treaty, he erodes the principles of rule of law and multilateral cooperation that are critical in the post-Sept.
This week, Britain's chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, announced the end of child allowances — worth £20 a week, or about $32, for a first child and £13 for each subsequent one — for individuals earning more than around £44,000 a year, eroding the principle of universality that underpinned the welfare state.
And finally: the political standstill within Chancellor Merkel's government, its refusal to govern and to frame and shape our country leads to a state of affairs where social status in our society is once again more and more a matter of one's social background – eroding the principle of equal chances for all, totally eradicating the empowering role of the educational system.
In power, Labour has eroded both principles, while displaying restraint in the use of its expanded powers.
Seductive as it might seem to the government to erode those principles, they are in fact fundamental to our everyday sense of trust and security.
In a letter to the Daily Mail, the 702 lawyers say the special sittings would "fatally undermine" the fairness of court hearings and would "erode core principles of our civil justice system".
