The Prime Directive, also known as Starfleet General Order 1, the Non-Interference Directive, or the principle of non-interference, was the embodiment of one of Starfleet's most important ethical principles: noninterference with other cultures and civilizations. At its core was the philosophical concept that covered personnel should refrain from interfering in the natural, unassisted, development of societies, even if such interference was well-intentioned. The Prime Directive was viewed as so fundamental to Starfleet that officers swore to uphold the Prime Directive, even at the cost of their own life or the lives of their crew.
The fundamental idea is that you can have the best of intentions but still fuck things up, so you shouldn't intervene even if you think you have good reason. This strikes me as the best counterargument to what constantly sucks liberals into imperialist adventures -- the tempting idea that "someone has to do something," or "if we stand by and watch bad things happen, doesn't that make us complicit?"
The Prime Directive has a simple answer to that: it's likely you're going to make things worse, and what right do you have to intervene, anyway? The Star Trek libs in your life will have to recognize this principle, and the closer you look at U.S. foreign policy, the more sense it makes. It's also a natural lead-in to talking about how often the government lies to manufacture consent for wars.
And what are they going to do, say "that's a fictional story and the real world is different"? These are the folks who are comparing Lev Parnas to Neville Longbottom or some shit.
Terrible idea because the PD is actualy shit. The principle might be reasonable, but the in-universe execution, what we actualy see and what the writers usualy give is nothing but shit brain non-material pacifism i.e I'll watch you die and suffer if that makes me feel better about my own principles. For a civilization that prides itself so much on peaceful coexistence it seems to make a strong case for shitty right wing conservative talking points.
The worst prime directive episode is in Enterprise the one where Archer decides to NOT help a suffering planet because the stupid
writersDoctor doesn't understand the first thing about genetics and medicine so there is the nonsense that curing a disease is akin to interfering with the "evolution" of a race. Dear Doctor is a fucking criminal farce and I would easily ban whoever wrote that shit from ever working in entertainment again and probably schedule a visit to a reeducation camp just in case.By that reason humanity should just abandon medicine right now because nature has decided that the correct path for humanity is to suffer and die from everything ranging from basic infections to cancer. Nobody in real life would actualy make that argument, not even libs(the target demographic of the show) would suggest Medicine bad actualy, which is why the episode is one of the worst ever.
There were certainly better and more nuanced takes on the PD too in TNG but usualy the PD is used to give some bullshit excuse to why suffering must continue and our mighty heroes can't do anything to help. It is THE cheapest way to create the stupid TV drama/moral dilemma Trek writers have so much trouble manufacturing so it is no surprise it is done badly like this.
Comparing the Federation to the US is silly because both could do a lot of good without fucking anything. The COVID masks for example it costs nothing to distribute these masks to people around the world and there is literally no possible negative consequence that would outweigh the benefits. But sure you might convince some lib that "intervention is bad" but the point is that it isn't actually. The problem is the US never actually tries to help anyone, it is always some give and take bullshit if not outright exploitation(imperialism).
TL;DR you may have good intentions but trying to make a case in favor of the PD in real life is just as likely to result in libs thinking it is ok to tune isolationism to 11 which is a very shortsighted way of looking at harm reduction.
Yeah I'm pretty sure it was just a throwaway line in one episode when they didn't expect the series to go anywhere and now they have to keep twisting around the logic of it to justify obvious nonsense
From: For the Earth is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky
It right away is viewed as being invalidated by immediate suffering, by both Kirk and Spock. Its not until TNG when it becomes this high-minded liberal concept