President Donald Trump, in his March 4 address to Congress, said the U.S. plans to “conquer the vast frontiers of science, and ... lead humanity into space,” echoing the indomitable spirit of Star Trek and pleasing space nerds everywhere.

But he also talked about where Americans (and in particular American money) should not be going — like pushing harmful ideologies on developing countries.  As it turns out, U.S. policy for helpful engagement at some point turned to harmful interference.

Ambition isn’t enough.  Star Trek’s Prime Directive actually exemplifies this well.  It is Starfleet’s highest rule and forbids officers from interfering with alien societies.  Surely there is wisdom in caution, but instead of preventing the trampling of fragile societies, non-interference became a moral dogma in later Star Trek series.  In some episodes, the Prime Directive appears to become an end in itself rather than a practice to serve higher ends and is used to end the conversation when characters make questionable decisions.

The Prime Directive’s insufficiency plays out across the Star Trek oeuvre.  In the shows of the 1960s–90s, bold characters break the Prime Directive to save lives, or they conveniently ignore it for other noble (or not so noble) purposes.  The 2000s prequel show Enterprise displays a striking example of the morphing of principles underlying the Prime Directive: Character dialogue foreshadowing the directive is used to justify Federation officers leaving an entire race to die of disease that the officers know they can cure.

Sometimes in Star Trek, engagement that defies the Prime Directive is good and even morally required.  The point is that there are other values than alien autonomy underlying these captains’ decisions.  These leaders claim they want to leave civilizations alone, but they choose to engage or not based on their values.  And those values differ widely across the shows, sometimes seeming completely at odds with one another.

A similar shift has happened in our world.  Today, calls for tolerance aren’t just about preserving healthy variety in culture; often, they suggest the idea that expression of absolute truth is inherently intolerant.  So if tolerance is presented as an absolute principle, truth claims are intolerable.  Think of absolute cultural relativism and the over-exaltation of individual autonomy.

Non-interference cannot bear the weight of being an absolute principle; the result is censorship.  When contradictory views claim the same intellectual ground, they will inherently interfere, and non-interference as a first principle demands that at least one view be silenced.

So we can’t lean on a vague Prime Directive.  Instead, we must participate cross-culturally on this globe in ways that open, not close, the world to conversations about where engagement is or isn’t helpful.  Americans should affirm the value of the lives of everyone while speaking boldly about what we believe is good.  Open and vigorous debate on our values is essential to making sure that our engagement is actually helpful.  Such debate is not a place “where no man has gone before,” but we must ensure that discussions of the deep questions of human nature and morality are not silenced.

Today’s trend toward censorship is perhaps most visible in the area of gender ideology.  Online cancel culture silences many objectors for expressing anything less than full support for an ideology that has led to irreversible harm to the bodies of many young people.  In education, students have been silenced and teachers fired for expressing disagreement with gender ideology.

Meanwhile, this ideology is actively exported by various international groups and governments.  Global culture-shapers like the International Olympic Committee order the athletic world not to use wording that suggests men who identify as women are not women, while multifarious activist groups push their own verbiage to the ends of the earth.  Argument with it is discouraged by “hate speech” laws and other forms of censorship.

Like Star Trek captains paying lip service to the Prime Directive while picking and choosing when to interfere, some in the West now explore the “limitations“ of relativism to promote their values — and even demand acceptance.  This move yet again demonstrates that, underlying gender ideology’s nods to diversity, there is a value system with express truth claims — not merely a directive of non-interference — and it does not end with respect for the autonomy of others.

The censorship bred by deceptive ideologies inevitably erodes civil societies and tramples human rights.  The pretense that wholesale acceptance of other cultures is the highest virtue, and that non-interference is a moral requirement, is a red herring and only distracts society from its insufficiency.  If gender ideology proponents want to win the culture without decimating human freedom in the process, their ideas must win on their own two feet.  Honest debate lets the best idea win.

It’s time that Americans take our power on the world stage seriously.  Making sure our taxpayer money isn’t funding falsehoods is a good first step.  We must ensure, to the best of our ability, that we promote good engagement, not harmful interference — whether that’s where our words go (on the internet) or where our money goes (in our government).  Then perhaps the world will live long and prosper.

Kathryn Homoki is a communications integrity specialist at Alliance Defending Freedom (@ADFLegal).

Image via Raw Pixel.