You can adopt Buddhist principles without "converting" per se to Buddhism
This isn't just true of Buddhism. You can do this with any opinion package. You can respect the people and utilize some of what they've said in your life without becoming an "-ist" or an "-ian" of that thing. Finally, I'd personally even go so far as to say you can be boneheaded about whatever it is, as long as it's really yours and wasn't implanted into you by whatever authorities. This probably wouldn't make for good public policy, but basically I am saying on a personal level give people latitude, but when they act as groups, we all need to get involved, we can't just let people get overly nutty when it's a group of more than say 100 million or something. As an individual you have more leeway to get nutty. But when some behaviors and ideas become embraced by groups, depending on what those ideas are and the size of the group, things can get much more dangerous compared to the exact same ideas being radically embraced by singular individuals. It seems like common sense to me.