Most people I know have principles, and some even act on them or reason from them. Too many of those who talk about Principles are really saying, when all the barnacles are scraped off: "I believe X because X."

how many shows from the late 70s/early 80s are still on television at all?

There are whole channels devoted to them.

Like it or not, Cosby was a cultural icon. The Dukes of Hazard was a crappy sitcom that lasted as long as it did because of women with great asses in very short pants. Why shouldn't it take more to get Cosby off the air than the Dukes of Hazard?

I am almost certainly older than you and I don't remember a time "when people WERE free to say what they felt and thought without fear of the gung ho thought police destroying theirs lives and careers over it." I do remember a time when all sorts of people were harassed, and many fired, for "unAmerican" views on a variety of topics.

Should the Franciscans be required to admit LGBT persons into their Order,

What makes you think they don't? I can tell you stories, and so can almost anyone else raised Catholic.

So freely-negotiated contracts are "something like" the reserve system because they bind the player to the team for the duration of the contract? Even annual contracts, which forbid the player from moving during the season whenever he thinks he can get a better deal from another team? You really don't see a difference between a club having the sole right to a player in perpetuity and a club having the sole right to a player for a time based on arms-length negotiations?

In my long experience with people who seem to think they reason from First Principles, the First Principles don't actually do any useful work and are generally after-the-fact justifications for results put into pompous language. The arguments resulting from them usually amount to long-winded ways of saying: If A then A. A. Therefore, A.
But maybe you know a different crowd, and could provide some examples.

There can't be a negotiated deal unless there is a basis for a deal. Over the last few months, I've heard a lot of anti-SSMers, now that they've had SSM shoved down their throats, argue that the pro-SSM side should have been gracious and accepted a "deal" for civil unions. I actually thought that myself, 20 years ago, but nobody showed up from the anti-SSM side to put that on the table. Indeed, most of the advocates on that side of the non-existent table were working to scuttle civil unions, too. Karma's a bitch.

These allegedly bipartisan issues we can all agree upon are small-bore things that profoundly affect organized interests groups and are of only passing interest to the larger public. Some, like the proposed partial immigration reform, involve giving one side what it wants while surrendering a bargaining chip on a larger issue. This isn't the beltway consensus or partisanship stifling something lots of people want very much, just the normal dynamics of politics.

I agree that what the Republicans need is "someone like Marco Rubio," for the reasons you mention. What they have, however, is the actually existing Marco Rubio, an all-too-obvious beneficiary of Republican-style affirmative action: young, cute, conservative empty suit with no ability to sway the ethnic group from which he has been too quickly promoted, who gets no slack from the base when he tries, and folds like a cardboard suitcase in a rainstorm when the base barks.

Fighters in Nevada have to fill out forms, under penalty of perjury, that, among other things, require disclosure of injuries. It's one thing to say that figuring out the health and condition of a fighter is part of the risk of gambling on a fight and you're on your own; it's quite another to say that a fighter can lie about it on official forms that require the truth be disclosed.

I started working through the survey, but then I realized that issues were irrelevant. I'm rooting for Labour so I can hear about Chancellor Ed Balls.

I'm not Jewish, either, and I was circumcised, too. Although I knew only a few Jewish males up through adolescence, and never saw them naked, I was an adult before I saw a live, uncircumcised penis. Fifty-odd years ago, lots of goyim were circumcised for what were believed then to be sensible medical or sanitary reasons, and may still be for all I know. I never missed having a foreskin and can't imagine that the young slob I used to be would have done what I would have had to do to keep things clean.
But all that is just an excuse to tell an embarrassing story. As a young man, I saw some Jews wearing tfillen (sp?), the little black box tied onto the forehead during prayer. I asked a Jewish friend (as I then thought he was) what was in the box. He asked if I knew about circumcision, and I told him what I knew about Abraham's covenant with God, proud of my wide-ranging, ecumenical knowledge. My friend asked if I had ever wondered what happened to the foreskins. I told him I had never given the matter any thought and he told me that the foreskins were kept on the little box to remind Jews of the covenant with God when they prayed. Made sense to me. And one day, as my erstwhile friend knew would eventually happen, I trotted out this bit of information in mixed company to predictable effect.
Some day, I will hunt this man down and kill him.

Nothing wrong with participation trophies as long as there's a bigger one for winning.