Yes yes I know language changes, but that doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to be annoyed at a language trend that is damaging the ability to convey or even conceptualize information.

“Prison labor is a form of legalized slavery and that is bad.”

“That’s just morals. To each their own.”

The implication of “morals” as a summary of ethical and philosophical discourse tends to lead to such “morals” being dismissed as irrelevant or even irrational because they can’t be measured in a test tube in a laboratory environment (neither can the concept of logical positivism but that one gets a pass).

Less commonly but still in existence is this version that is used by right wingers for a different but still grating purpose.

“The problem with society today is there is not enough morals. That is why bad things happen. There needs to be more morals in the family and in the school.”

It’s still a crude summary, but one with even less philosophical consistency, that takes the already crude idea of “morals” and turns it into some kind of currency of goodness that is measured between those that ostensibly have a lot of it and those that don’t.