I think you're right. We live in an era where unprincipled "for hire" values are considered virtuous. It has the superficial trappings of moderation, of calm and reasoned evaluation of the facts at hand, but in reality it's to adhere to incoherent and often contradictory positions.
The good news (if you can call it that) is that reality will not be forestalled much longer, so they can wring their hands and wish upon a star as much as they want. It's like the people who say they're not "willing" to "accept" changes to Social Security. Well guess what? Change is a coming. You can either do some preemptive, proactive reforms and control the change, or you can demagogue about old people eating dog food and dying in gutters until the whole system blows up in our faces, i.e. what we might call uncontrolled "change".
What moral cowardice corrupts the modern citizenry!