Being cautious to be on the right side of history is a legitimate concern.
I'm more concerned with saying what I believe to be right than I am with how anyone else will judge me.
I find the debate about TNG politics tremendously interesting, and you're right that TNG1/2's innate moralising tends to piss off just about everyone. That's a big part of why I do find it interesting.
I think a lot of it is because they don't have the courage to make any definitive stance.
In LAU you have Riker stating that
most people in the Feds do not eat 'real' meat, but they
do eat replicated meat because it is
tasty and nutritious. There's no direct statement about the value of animal life, nor does he attempt to tell the Anticans that they should not do so. His expression is certainly one of disdain, but there's no direct statement of values.
Yet, only a few episodes later Riker is on a Klingon ship eating live Gagh, not just 'real' meat, but an animal that is
alive when you eat it. So the audience ends up feeling they've been patronised but a show which itself doesn't have a position to take. It's beige politics shouted loudly. On the one hand they say 'don't eat meat because that's icky' on the other they say 'eating meat is manly and cool'.
In broad terms ST is a wierd kind of hybrid marxist/socialist collective (itself interesting becaue the main reason for marxism being inhuman in the real world is obviated by the surfeit of goods) but refuses to make that position relevant. They'll judge the Ferenghi for being concerned with wealth whilst at the same time proselytising that they don't judge. They'll happily, joyously, withold aid from worlds that are starving, even though it would cost them nothing because the concept of cost is itself meaningless, and they do
that because the entire Federation is deist, but they're too frightened to show any of them actually having a religious position. Every depiction of religion i can recall is either alien cultures of the week shown to be too dumb to live, or the half-assed at best religion of the Bajorans, which is, itself, not even a religion because it is DEMONSTRABLY TRUE.
It's like being at a dinner party with someone who will loudly declare their position is the only morally good position, but then refuses to tell you what their position actually is.
Thinking about it, I'm going to have to go back now and rewrite up the LAU scene to have Yar counter Riker by saying she DOES eat meat, and has no issue with eating meat, because if you at least have people discussing a subject you're showing that the world is complicated and virtually every position you can take on anything is only ever one side. Not to mention Yar's background ought to make her painfully aware that when the shit is down you work out what is actually important, and what is just entitled whinging about irrelevant minutiae.
