Releasing Let That Be Your Last Battlefield at the height of the civil rights movement wasn’t some hypothetical philosophizing. That was pointed condemnation. Same with The Outcast’s attack on conversion therapy, or In The Hands of the Prophets’ take on religious dogmatism.
Star Trek has always been happy to condemn bad ideas. If you think it’s just started telling people off now then you haven’t been paying attention.
Technically, this only needs to be the practice of Starfleet (or even just human) navigators in order to account for 99% of what we see in Star Trek. Maybe it’s our guys who are doing all the careful orienting, and the alien of the week just comes in from whatever angle they want.