Suppose someone kidnaps someone close to you, and demands all of your life savings. Kidnapping is a federal crime, because those who are kidnapped might be moved across state lines. The FBI is brought in, and negotiators are given the task of handling the job. Someone says to you that you are part of the problem. You should try to reach a compromise in which you give, say, half of your life savings to the kidnappers, in exchange for your loved one. That's called "compromise." What's wrong with you? You're obviously just as much to blame as the kidnapper. Maybe more. Why won't you compromise?
Realistically, you might pay the ransom rather than risk your loved one by alerting the FBI, but I'm addressing the philosophy here. Just go with it.
There are two problems with the moral demand that you compromise. First, the demand is that you give something up that the hostage-taker has no moral right to demand. The hostage-taker didn't offer to sell you something in exchange for money, creating a situation in which the price is something over which you haggle. The second problem is that the tactic itself takes away the hostage-taker's moral authority to demand any compromise.
Compromise is not an intrinsic moral good, and telling someone to compromise when circumstances don't warrant it is problematic. I'll have more to say about this over the weekend, I think, as it relates to academic theories of political bargaining and negotiation, but this is just something that bugs me.
