A recent opinion article in The Federalist implicitly links the decline of Star Trek with the moral decline of liberalism. The author possesses an impressively encyclopedic knowledge of the Star Trek universe. The author's knowledge of the real universe, however, exhibits a fascinating form of conceptual myopia endemic (but not limited) to modern Libertarian thinking. Here we will explore the author's lamentations of moral decay, using the Star Trek universe to boldly go where no Galt has gone before.
The author's thesis is relatively straightforward (see Figure 1): Star Trek's moral fabric and popularity has eroded in the decades since its creation, and this descent can be traced by the moral devolution of its protagonists and the universe of characters that they embrace, engage and enrage. Captain Kirk is the embodiment of a full-throated defense of liberalism figure straight from the 60's and 70's. Yes, he's sexist, yes, he's bullish, but bygum he's a product of WWII veterans and that's the way they defended democracy back in those days. Kirk's Cold Warrior willfully ignores The Prime Directive at his discretion, literally willing to 'pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty'. The moral decline of liberals in the US since the making of The Original Series is reflected in a gradual corruption of the moral compass of the Star Trek universe, with a slide into moral relativism and a pervasive unwillingness to confront (or even to label) acts of evil, aggression or barbarism. The Next Generation's moral fabric only serves to shabbily clothe congenital cowardice. A commitment to non-commitment. In the author's reading, TOS's protagonist Kirk channeled the best parts of a muscular Kennedy-esque foreign policy, whereas TNG's Picard represents a kind of nihilistic moral jaundice of PC, Third Way politics as practiced by leading liberal politicians from Bill Clinton's time to the present.
Figure 1. A pictographic representation of Timothy Sandefur's thoughts on this subject.
I wish the author, Mr. Timothy Sandefur, had taken a moment to ponder why the Star Trek universe had to change to stay relevant. I wish the author had developed and applied an encyclopedic recitation to actual (not fictional) anecdotes about what being an American has become in the years since TOS. I don't think this is an unreasonable request; if the author can vividly imagine being a liberal archetype in a fictional universe, I'm fairly certain that he can imagine being a liberal archetype on planet Earth (or in a more limited and perhaps poignant regard for his thesis, a liberal archetype in the US). But he does not. It is very possible that he cannot.
Mr. Sandefur's thesis is an abysmal failure on this count, and I think the reasons for this failure illuminate the amnesiatic worldview held by what remains of US conservative thinkers. Its result is a form of civic dementia. Mr. Sandefur casually tosses terms like 'moral decline', 'devolution' and 'hostility to innovation' at a straw man facade of liberalism via the plot lines of Star Trek episodes, but leaves out the all-too-real moral paradoxes that the franchise has been compelled to take on since TOS first aired. Many of these paradoxes have direct, allegorical roots in the complexities of a robust foreign interventionist policy that has kept the US in a state of nearly constant war since Kirk first started warping around the galaxy. This is to say nothing of the Ferengi-like corporate-anarchist policy of modern Libertarianism that has been on the rise over this same time period, of which Mr. Sandefur is a direct and forceful proponent.
I realize that I am conflating real and invented timelines and histories in these statements, but these are the ground rules set by Mr. Sandefur's analysis. His synthesis is, depressingly, the most introspective and thoughtful political piece generated in defense of a conservative worldview in recent memory. I have decided to be game to these ground rules. Dispatch a message to Admiral Norquist: we have engaged the Bore.
Pay Any Price, Bear Any Burden, Break Any Law
In Mr. Sandefur's critical assessment, the latter day Federation has become a non-interventionist, self-apology-laden dystopia. Even Kirk no longer confronts the willfully evil and barbaric Klingons. His character is forced to admit at the end of Star Trek VI that he was merely resentful and couldn't see past his hatred for one of them having killed his son. Why isn't Kirk standing alone in pursuit of justice on his son's behalf? Why is he going along with the peace process at Camp Khitomer? In Mr. Sandefur's own words, "...Kirk is a victim of Klingon aggression—he needs no redemption."
Mr. Sandefur is a principal lawyer for the Pacific Legal Foundation and an adjunct scholar of the Cato Institute. So I will presume that his knowledge of legal procedures is grounded in real precedent and that this knowledge of such matters vastly outstrips my own. I would beg Mr. Sandefur to answer the question: on what moral grounds should Kirk seek justice for his son's death by obstructing a peace treaty? Kirk killed the Klingon that ordered the death of his son, Commander Kruge, by throwing him into liquid hot magma (see Figure 2). Commander Kruge was acting of his own volition, and was not under orders of the Klingon Empire. He was little more than a military criminal. I concede the point that Kirk is a victim of Klingon aggression, and that he had no recourse than to act in self-defense in the killing of Commander Kruge. But what perverse comedy of a moral code justifies the rejection of a peace treaty that may save the lives of millions or billions of souls in a personal, ideologically-driven pursuit of comeuppance for a man who was burned alive for his transgressions and has no direct or indirect role in the planetary politics of that peace treaty?
Figure 2. This Klingon cannot be trusted, therefore Kirk is correct in concluding that all Klingons cannot be trusted. Image courtesy Paramount Pictures.
Unfortunately, the absurdity of this mindset has painful ramifications for those of us Americans who have to get by in the real world that is at the whim of this spiteful vein of personality- or vendetta-driven politics. Many members of Congress are willing to risk a conflict that could kill millions by trashing an international accord that would limit Iran's nuclear capabilities because of the destruction of the US embassy there over 30 years ago. The invasion of Iraq was instigated by a man who justified his thought process, however slightly, by stating about Saddam Hussein, "After all, this is a guy that tried to kill my dad at one time." Every Republican 2016 candidate for President is willing to deny funding for women's health because they personally believe that abortions are murder. According to Mr. Sandefur's moral code, Kirk should have claimed a similar defense for opting out of, or willfully disrupting, the peace treaty process because in his sole judgment, Klingons are not to be trusted. Note the long-term consequences likely to have ensued. To say the least, continued Klingon/Federation aggression could have drained valuable resources and human capital, and prevented the formation of a powerful alliance that defeated the Romulans, the Borg and the Dominion in future cold and hot wars. We even saw some glimpse of this kind of future in the TNG episode, Yesterday's Enterprise.
I posit that Mr. Sandefur's long-lost moral code of placing personal belief above any reasonable conception of common good has a loyal and perhaps growing following today, in policies foreign and domestic: see Davis, Kim (civil rights); Cruz, Rafael (taxes/limited government); Robertson, Phil (culture wars/religion); Bush, Jeb! (income inequality/political entitlement); Bundy, Cliven (property rights/community resources); Trump, Donald (everything). I would challenge Mr. Sandefur to write a follow-up analysis of how the spirit of Kirk's fearless defense of personal liberty is or is not alive and well today in each of these, his most prolific progeny.
The Better Shepherd
The latter years of Star Trek have included an aspect of Starfleet known as Section 31. This was not an institution that was explored or even known of in Kirk's time. It's like an agency that includes the capabilities of the CIA and Special Operations Command, except nobody (not even high-ranking officials at Starfleet) knows that it even exists. It is charged with secretly defending the security interests of the Federation and Starfleet, but it also has the autonomy to kill whomever it wishes in furtherance of those objectives. Its secrecy also gives it the ability to surreptitiously shape the attitudes, opinions and politics of the Federation and Starfleet according to its own wishes without oversight.
So, we ask Mr. Sandefur's question: why doesn't the Star Trek universe keep a late-60's-Kirk-like loose cannon roaming around the universe, blasting enemies of his own idea of personal freedom? The simplest response is because this flat-line character arc fails to include the very real fears of modern Americans that increasingly find themselves constantly being eyed as a potential threat by their own government. Like the clueless military and political leadership in Star Trek, we simply don't know who is ultimately calling the shots in our free-market-money political system, and it's quite unsettling. Kirk's modus operandi would place him either as a loyal agent of Section 31 (and a willing participant in its covert affairs and casual disregard for transparent government operations), or as a rebel to the over-reach of a terrifying government leviathan (and thus, by inference, a systematic traitor, a la The Maquis). Neither of these types of characters are particularly palatable within the framework of Star Trek's moral sensibilities, past or present.
In fact, the most recent incarnation of Kirk (who Mr. Sandefur summarily rejects as little more than an unprincipled maelstrom of divergent urges) is faced with this very same moral dilemma in Star Trek Into Darkness. Kirk is sworn to uphold the laws and ideals of the Federation, but in his capacity as a starship captain, discovers the extent and horror of Section 31 acting in direct opposition to these ideals. I believe Mr. Sandefur, in his myopic dismissal of the modern Star Trek universe, has failed to comprehend that the darkness that gives the film its title is not that of the overt antagonist Khan Noonien Singh, but of a paranoia-driven portion of government gone awry; spying on its own citizens, manipulating its own military and suppressing dissent in the name of security. It is the temptation to give in to fear, without any end of combat in sight. This darkness finds strong parallels, however clumsily written and performed, in the Global War on Terror. How does a society rescue an institution that feels compelled (and empowered) to kill its own citizens without due process? Should it rescue that institution or start from scratch? We saw a similar struggle in the superb thriller Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier. The exit from darkness was not the death of the enemy but a moral reckoning with the unintended (but completely foreseeable) consequences of creating a security state, and a restoration of due process and and vigilance on behalf of government transparency.
The CIA and DOD are granted the power to kill me or Mr. Sandefur with a drone strike if they mistake (or simply question) the intent of our tourist activities in places like Central Asia or Africa, despite the fact that the Constitution guarantees our right to due process. The FBI, even at the time of writing of Kirk's galactic adventures, was spying on Martin Luther King, Jr. and disrupting his attempts to achieve civil rights and greater equality for people of color. I am a citizen of a country that tortured people to obtain dubious pieces of intelligence, detains people without trial for extended periods of time, routinely shoots people of color who are not threatening public safety and rewards politicians who maintain unsustainable levels of inequality and consumption that will lead to economic ruin. I also want to make my country a better place to live. Morality has always been a strong component of Star Trek, but TOS provides almost no guidance for how to come to grips with these inevitably conflicting feelings. To be fair, TOS played a pivotal role in getting taboo social issues onto television at a time when censors wouldn't even allow discussion of real racial strife on national networks (not to mention the first on-screen interracial kiss between white and black characters; see TOS "Plato's Stepchildren" and TOS "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield").
But the social environment of the early Trek universe (and, apparently, Mr. Sandefur's modern colleagues) would not countenance a plot that involves Kirk struggling with his own ethical complicity in crimes carried out in the name of the organization he has sworn to defend. In the good ole days, these activities were always conveniently shoveled onto the shoulders of various Other aliens, such as Klingons or Romulans. In the modern world, our Star Trek characters simply do not have the luxury of ignorance.
Resistance is Futile
There is a common theme in Mr. Sandefur's lamentations of a lost moral code: namely, that the main characters of Star Trek are no longer written as unthinking purveyors of an agenda based on one's personal conception of justice or rights. This particular streak of vanity in the modern Libertarian movement can be traced at least as far back as Ayn Rand, who insisted that she could objectively prove that Beethoven was superior to Mozart (she had to be right, objectively and provably right, rather than simply possessing a personal preference, because her judgment was objectively superior).
The galaxy has become a much smaller place by the time of TNG, the Federation has expanded significantly and knowledge of alien cultures has increased. Characters have more diverse backgrounds and less homogeneous formative experiences. They are therefore more willing to evaluate and question the moral context of their activities, and to accommodate the extension of rights they would wish for themselves to others when possible. Our characters are given little choice but to develop a more nuanced view of justice. If they didn't, it would be incredibly difficult to continue writing relevant new stories, since a Federation with an unchanging view of moral behavior must, by necessity, begin to resemble the intransigent enemies it is always fighting. Who would our heroes be, if they were unresponsive to the needs and interests of their newly joined protectorates?
Figure 3. Not the droid you're looking for. If this doesn't make much sense to you (except perhaps as a critique of the use of drone warfare), rest assured you are not alone in the universe.
The simple truth is that many modern political problems find no corollary in the characters and ethos of TOS (see Figure 3). Can you imagine an episode in TOS where Kirk is campaigning Starfleet to bomb Romulus on the basis of his selective reading of intelligence data that is, at episode's end, shown to be incorrect and manipulated to support his case for war? Can you imagine an episode in TOS where half of the crewmen insist upon openly carrying phaser rifles at all times around the corridors of the ship, in peacetime, just in case the captain decides to invade the mess hall or the cargo bay? Can you imagine an episode in TOS where a mid-ranking officer decides to shut down the warp engines in the middle of a mission, simply because he suspects the captain wasn't born in Iowa or because he thinks the Federation has overstepped the constitutional boundaries envisioned by its framers? Can you imagine an episode in TOS where half of the ship quits because Chekov wants to have dinner with Scotty?
Mr. Sandefur laments the loss of a leader willing to meter judgment in the face of barbarity and injustice. His dissatisfaction is grounded in reality, but tragically misplaced. In the real universe, half of our ship has lost its mind and is refusing to acknowledge basic facts, or to correct their colleagues who would prefer to err on the side of ignorance rather than go through the humbling work of introspection. It is The Naked Time, only we can't blame it on an alien virus. It is not the liberal part of our country that has acted without shame. The tragedy is that Mr. Sandefur is seeking judgment of deliberate conservative insanity, but that he lacks the comportment to evaluate his own place in perpetuating this insanity. He is far from the only one to do so, but the fallacies of his analysis illuminate the nature of their collective affliction. In this, the real world, the only court martial we can hope for is a series of painful elections, wherein the less sane part of our country will (hopefully) continue to lose elections despite many heroic attempts to gerrymander and purchase their desired outcomes.
Mr. Sandefur's synthesis has blithely ignored critical repercussions of American foreign and domestic policy as blithely as he has ignored the possible existence of a realistic, evolving dimension of moral complexity in the Star Trek universe. Morality is more than a conceptual recognition of right and wrong- it is the identification of a proper course of action befitting the specific circumstances of a moral dilemma, and the courage to implement that course of action with full acceptance of its consequences. There is no indication that Star Trek, as a franchise, has exhibited a devolved moral compass over the last decades. If anything, the moral blueprint of Star Trek remains peculiarly unchanged: there have been no written amendments to the Prime Directive. What makes the franchise relevant over its 40+ years of existence, and what has caused Mr. Sandefur and his comrades so much heartburn, are the struggles that we face in attempting to implement a constant ideal of justice under increasingly less-than-ideal circumstances.
I do agree with one small part of Mr. Sandefur's thesis: Kirk would categorically reject, and aggressively confront, any member of the crew that declares his or her intent to shrink the Federation so much that it can be drowned in a bathtub: "This is mutiny, mister!"