Schmidt is a syndicated columnist and editorial board member with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
In the midst of the darkness that is our politics and ongoing threats to democracy, I found light while sitting in the Grand Ballroom of The Conrad Hotel in Washington, D.C.
There were two “conservative” conferences taking place in D.C. on the weekend of Feb. 23-25: the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and the Principles First 2024 Summit.
I had the pleasure of attending the second one. The three-day grassroots summit was focused on rebuilding principled leadership that serves our country — not partisanship or personality. The summit’s theme was “Conserving America’s Liberal Tradition.”
Listening to the variety of speakers at Principles First, I caught myself looking up at the chandelier. It had a hundred or so cylinders hanging next to each other in a large rectangle. The cylinders were of varied lengths and there were several different shades of glass. Each cylinder had a light in the center – at its core, if you will. Because each glass cylinder was hanging next to another one, their individual lights reflected on each other. This configuration produced an abundance of illumination and was absolutely beautiful.
This chandelier serves as a metaphor for Principles First. Imagine each glass cylinder as an individual and the primary light a principle or set of principles that each person in that room held dear. The reflections of light caused the entire room to glow, extending beyond each individual cylinder. One couldn’t help but be attracted to its radiance.
In 2019, founder Heath Mayo began organizing Americans on the right and center-right who were concerned about the health of American democracy. He started a series of meet-ups around the country and then envisioned bringing together those grassroots leaders from across the country to offer a positive vision for advancing principled conservatism in the United States. That movement grew into what is now known as Principles First.
Mayo describes the idea of principle as anchoring our politics to core values and ensuring that those we elect today wield power tomorrow according to some blueprint larger than themselves. “Principles define who we are, what we believe in, and the type of country we’ll become. That’s why we choose to put them first — before politicians and before party.”
The organization identifies 15 principles as a part of its commitment to holding our government and ourselves to a higher standard:
- Integrity, character and virtue matter.
- Every person has dignity, quality and worth.
- Truth, honesty, rationality and facts are non-negotiable.
- The Constitution and the rule of law are paramount.
- Our government is a limited one with enumerated powers.
- Congress writes laws, the executive executes laws and the courts interpret laws.
- Government closest to the people is most accountable.
- People reach their full potential when they are free.
- Free and functioning markets deliver prosperity.
- Equality of opportunity, not equality of outcomes.
- Government must responsibly steward resources for the next generation.
- Civic associations, faith communities and families should be the primary engines of our culture – not the state.
- Strong families are the building blocks of society.
- Sovereignty is critical to self-government.
- America's role in the world is unique and important.
The various speakers at the conference touched on one or more of those 15 principles. Each of the speakers also demonstrated that during some point in their careers or in their life, they put “principles first.”
Despite using light as a metaphor, the people in that ballroom were under no illusion that they have a home in this Republican Party. They have been exiled and are now considered RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) and are deemed globalists for supporting Ukraine or for pushing back against authoritarianism.
While this small band of scrappy idealists may be a minority within the Republican Party, they hold much power in the broader electorate. These are the voters who determine elections. And the Principles First movement is growing. The fourth summit roughly doubled in size from last year, bringing in over 600 attendees from 45 states.
The goal and hope of the summit is that individuals would leave D.C. with their lights shining a little brighter, go back home to their communities and inspire other individuals to join them, resulting in a focal point of luminescence.
Interestingly enough, the symbol for Principles First is a lighthouse. So if those 15 principles spark something in you, look towards the beacon of integrity.
A deep look at how "All in the Family" remains a striking mirror of American politics, class tensions, and cultural manipulation—proving its relevance decades later.
All in This American Family
There are a few shows that have aged as eerily well as All in the Family.
It’s not just that it’s still funny and has the feel not of a sit-com, but of unpretentious, working-class theatre. It’s that, decades later, it remains one of the clearest windows into the American psyche. Archie Bunker’s living room has been, as it were, a small stage on which the country has been working through the same contradictions, anxieties, and unresolved traumas that still shape our politics today. The manipulation of the working class, the pitting of neighbor against neighbor, the scapegoating of the vulnerable, the quiet cruelties baked into everyday life—all of it is still here with us. We like to reassure ourselves that we’ve progressed since the early 1970s, but watching the show now forces an unsettling recognition: The structural forces that shaped Archie’s world have barely budged. The same tactics of distraction and division deployed by elites back then are still deployed now, except more efficiently, more sleekly.
Archie himself is the perfect vessel for this continuity. He is bigoted, blustery, reactive, but he is also wounded, anxious, and constantly misled by forces above and beyond him. Norman Lear created Archie not as a monster to be hated (Lear’s genius was to make Archie lovable despite his loathsome stands), but as a man trapped by the political economy of his era: A union worker who feels his country slipping away, yet cannot see the hands that are actually moving it. His anger leaks sideways, onto immigrants, women, “hippies,” and anyone with less power than he has. The real villains—the wealthy, the connected, the manufacturers of grievance—remain safely and comfortably offscreen. That’s part of the show’s key insight: It reveals how elites thrive by making sure working people turn their frustrations against each other rather than upward.
Edith, often dismissed as naive or scatterbrained, functions as the show’s quiet moral center. Her compassion exposes the emotional void in Archie’s worldview and, in doing so, highlights the costs of the divisions that powerful interests cultivate. Meanwhile, Mike the “Meathead” represents a generation trying to break free from those divisions but often trapped in its own loud self-righteousness. Their clashes are not just family arguments but collisions between competing visions of America’s future. And those visions, tellingly, have yet to resolve themselves.
The political context of the show only sharpens its relevance. Premiering in 1971, All in the Family emerged during the Nixon years, when the “Silent Majority” strategy was weaponizing racial resentment, cultural panic, and working-class anxiety to cement power. Archie was a fictional embodiment of the very demographic Nixon sought to mobilize and manipulate. The show exposed, often bluntly, how economic insecurity was being rerouted into cultural hostility. Watching the show today, it’s impossible to miss how closely that logic mirrors the present, from right-wing media ecosystems to politicians who openly rely on stoking grievances rather than addressing root causes.
What makes the show unsettling today is that its satire feels less like a relic and more like a mirror. The demagogic impulses it spotlighted have simply found new platforms. The working-class anger it dramatized has been harvested by political operatives who, like their 1970s predecessors, depend on division to maintain power. The very cultural debates that fueled Archie’s tirades — about immigration, gender roles, race, and national identity—are still being used as tools to distract from wealth concentration and political manipulation.
If anything, the divisions are sharper now because the mechanisms of manipulation are more sophisticated, for much has been learned by The Machine. The same emotional raw material Lear mined for comedy is now algorithmically optimized for outrage. The same social fractures that played out around Archie’s kitchen table now play out on a scale he couldn’t have imagined. But the underlying dynamics haven’t changed at all.
That is why All in the Family feels so contemporary. The country Lear dissected never healed or meaningfully evolved: It simply changed wardrobe. The tensions, prejudices, and insecurities remain, not because individuals failed to grow but because the economic and political forces that thrive on division have only become more entrenched. Until we confront the political economy that kept Archie and Michael locked in an endless loop of circular bickering, the show will remain painfully relevant for another fifty years.
Ahmed Bouzid is the co-founder of The True Representation Movement.