>>111363172with the veal thing, well, that's not that kyle didn't CARE about the issue, it's just that the issue he cared about was tortured baby cows, not meat production in general. he wasn't going to become a vegan, he just didn't want to eat veal and didn't want baby cows to be tortured. in that instance, at least, he was being a lot more reasonable than stan was.
i haven't seen whale whores in a while, but yeah, i'll give you that kyle didn't care about the whales (which always seemed weird to me considering how much he liked wilzyx).
kyle is compassionate, but there are definitely times when his own self-preservation outweighs his compassion - in the case where he agrees with cartman about killing butters, he's afraid of his mom finding out he was playing with weapons.
he's scared of his mom, perhaps too much, but considering she started a war over a movie with bad words, imagine what she'd do if she found out kyle was playing with "authentic weapons from the far east." he probably thought she would start another war with japan, or something.
he HAS gone out of his way to do the right thing even when it was inconvenient for him - almost pretty much every time he tries to stop one of cartman's plots, it inconveniences him in some way. of course, if he doesn't particularly care about an issue he won't inconvenience himself over it, but if he believes something is wrong he almost always acts against it somehow.
obviously, kyle's morals aren't objective, so yes, when he does the right thing it's usually based upon his own sense of right and wrong - but the same goes for pretty much every human being on earth.