Pedantic thread drift: Understood properly, the end does justify the means, and the other way round. The idea behind it isn't that having a good purpose means it's all right doing bad things, but that, if you are doing something for a good purpose, ordinary uninmportant things become righteous; and if you are doing it for a bad purpose, those very same things become evil. Like driving - there's a big difference between drivig an ambulance and driving a getaway car, but it's the same skill involved.
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But I quite accept that by now "the end justifies the means" is an expression which has been distorted and degraded. However, though the degraded version is always fashionable among a certain type of mentality, and it gets adopted as a fashion item by a lot of people or as a way of sounding smart, I think that the reverse attitude ("We Before Me") is actually a lot more prevalent, in actions if not always in words, than is sometimes recognised.   

I think that is reflected by the way that the Mudcat does manage to get along, and get back on track, and that article helps clarify the processes involved.

There are always going to be some egomaniacs around, and the important thing is to have ways of responding to them as a nuisance, and limiting that nuisance - but making sure never to set up systems which end up with the egomaniacs running the place, which is what all too often happens in the big world.