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Your explanation is probably part of it, but there's are lots of social factors in play. Gene Roddenberry was a member of the greatest generation. It was in a lot of ways a much more idealistic time in American culture than today.

One of the empirically observable facts is that faith in public institutions is a lot lower today than it was back then. I think this phenomenon cuts in the opposite direction compared to what a lot of people on HN would suppose. When people have less faith in the system, they have less faith that the system will protect them, and are more willing to embrace characters that will act outside the system to get the job done. Hence the popularity of the Jack Bauer character: the guy who ignores taboos against torture or procedural limitations like warrants in order to get the job done and save the day.

That's starkly different to the world conceived of in Star Trek. Star Trek is a world where government (the Federation) is morally virtuous, and institutional rules like the "Prime Directive" are to be followed rather than broken.

> One of the empirically observable facts is that faith in public institutions is a lot lower today than it was back then.

I wonder if Gene Roddenberry would have had different opinions of public institutions if he grew up after the collapse of the USSR.

Actually, those of us born around the time the USSR collapsed are more in favor of public institutions: we've seen what happens in their absence.

Is this your personal ethos being projected across our entire generation, or are you referring to research that shows, when compared against public opinion of similarly aged people over the last many generations, we favor public institutions?

I'm referring to research. My personal opinions are very left-wing even for Gen Y.

Could you link it? I'm interested to see that, because most of my circles are very much not in that camp.

Captain Kirk violated the Prime Directive in practically every episode.

The Prime Directive wasn't mentioned until the end of the first season, and it wasn't defined until the end of the second season.

And, provided someone previously broke the Prime Directive, inadvertently or not, Starfleet personnel are permitted to directly intervene and ignore the Prime Directive to minimize the harm caused. And most cases where Kirk "violates" the Prime Directive, someone else already interfered, meaning no violation occurred.

> It is never moral and often unwise to support a system you would not support if you did not have a favorable position within it.

Is this an intentional reference to John Rawls' concept of the 'veil of ignorance' laid out in Theory of Justice? If not, you would definitely enjoy the ideas in the book.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_ignorance

Exactly what I was reminded of; Rawl's theory of justice, paraphrased: the only just system/rules are ones you wouldn't have a problem being on either side of.

Isn't it just Kant's "categorical imperative"...?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative

The categorical imperative is strictly weaker: It's possible to use the veil of ignorance to argue against positions nobody is insisting must be made universal.

For example, "In this house, you always clean up": The categorical imperative only works to argue against this if you try to find a way to apply it to every household; the veil of ignorance works simply by forcing the members of the household to be ignorant about who 'you' refers to.

Small note, but Roddenberry was dead before The Chain of Command went into preproduction. I'm also not sure that was an episode he would have let through considering he was against the militarization of Star Trek.

> In contrast, America's modern "wars" (I do not think these one-sided affairs deserve that name)

That's a great point. America doesn't do wars anymore. They do conquests. And the American public at large seems perfectly fine with it (or they wouldn't allow it).

What the U.S. does is to use military force to preserve the international status quo. E.g. if we go into an oil rich state like Iraq, we don't just take the oil, we just ensure that it continues to be sold in the market as usual. This isn't "war" but it's not "conquest" either.

The thing is that the status quo is in the favor of the US, and they ensured that the oil continued to be sold to the US.

Sure, the status quo is in favor of the U.S., and we ensured that oil continued to be sold to the U.S., but it's also in favor of France and Germany and the U.K. and Australia, etc, and we ensured that oil continued to be sold to those countries too. It doesn't really make sense to call that "conquest."

Sounds like conquest by NATO vs solely the United States.

Since when does conquest have to benefit just one party to be called conquest? If Russia and China split the US amongst themselves, would you call it conquest?

Did we split Iraq amongst the U.S., France, Germany, the U.K., Canada, Australia, etc? When many beneficiaries are involved, a military action seems less like conquest and more like an attempt to maintain a certain balance of powers.

"maintain a certain balance of powers" and "conquest" are not mutually exclusive.

"many" really just means "more than one", but okay: if 50 nations invaded and split up the US, would that be conquest?

The other thing is, it's not just the US that benefits from the status quo. Lots of allies get to ride on their coattails.

Isn't that generally what goes along with allying yourself with someone - the parties agree to do mutually beneficial acts and let each other benefit from each other's actions? I don't see how benefiting your allies makes an action less self serving.

I wouldn't say that the American public at large seems perfectly fine with it (or they wouldn't allow it.) That's a very broad brush you're painting with. A large proportion, probably a majority, don't like what's being done with our military. We tried to get Bush Jr out of office after his first term, and that was a very close election with just as much evidence of vote tampering as the his first election. Obama was overwhelmingly elected because everything thought he would do things differently and restore our standing in the world, but that's turned out not to be the case. His reelection was much closer, and he probably only won because his opponents were so weak.

After all these years, I think the American public has largely given up on their votes making any difference whatsoever; President, Senate, House of Representatives, they mostly all do whatever their financiers want once they're elected, public opinion be damned.

Anyone want to come in and liberate us from our corrupt government? (I was going to say tyrannical, but I don't want to devalue that word; we're not there yet.)

Too many typos in that; too late to edit it. Oh well. I need to proofread better before I submit a reply.

I like your analysis, DougWebb, I deeply like it.

Please note it's important you American citizen communicate on your opinion as much as you can, beyond your borders. Even if you see no immediate effect, it will benefit you.

There's been a joke for a few years: the USA needs to invade America, bringing freedom, providing democracy, constructing infrastructure, and creating jobs.

Don't forget that we can also just ignore it or have it hidden from us. In that case it happens without us being for or against it.

And the use of torture in America's modern wars has led to a great amount of lost goodwill in the world, not to mention the military failures on the ground.

Do unto others...

How quickly morality fades ....