By my reading of the rules, alignments are a little fuzzy but generally well established and objectively clear. Bringing in real world concepts is the major factor that confuses understanding of the alignments; this is the capital-E Evil (game concept) vs. lower case-e evil (real world things) problem. Another more insidious factor is the concept of "leaning" one way or another. I submit, for consideration and discussion, that any concept or comment of "leaning" should be forgotten and avoided for clarity.
As I said, the alignments are already a little fuzzy. There is wiggle room in each of the nine alignments. Further, no character (or god or kingdom or organization or anything else that may have an alignment) is ever going to be a one hundred percent pure paragon of any given alignment; there is always going to be some drift or "leaning" this way or that.
It goes without saying. If a True Neutral character (god, kingdom, etc) "leans Lawful", for example, then there are two possibilities: 1) the character (etc) is Neutral and is to be expected to have some opinions that may cause a mild drift from the purest of pure neutrality, requiring no qualification as "leaning" since that just adds unnecessary complication for no gain at all, or 2) the character (etc) is actually Lawful Neutral and the player (writer, etc) chose wrong (and should ask for a correction, make a correction, etc).
Neutral is actually the driftiest alignment. On any given day, a Neutral character may "lean" any way. Claiming any of the other alignments indicates a commitment to those ideals and the courage of those convictions. A Good character may (and will, really) do something not Good from time to time, but always pursues Good to the fullest of his ability. That's "alignment rule capital-G" Good, not "lower case-g what my character thinks is good" good. If your Neutral character "leans Good" then... Well, actually, that's part of the
definition of Neutral:
Such a character thinks of good as better than evil—after all, she would rather have good neighbors and rulers than evil ones. Still, she’s not personally committed to upholding good in any abstract or universal way.
And if your Neutral character actually is committed to "upholding good," then she's Good rather than Neutral. And "upholding good" would be a general thing, applying to everyone rather than just those preferred by the character, which would be Neutral. That, incidentally, is why I think many Good characters are actually Neutral, but that's a different topic.
Anyway, skip all the nonsense with statements of "leaning" alignments. They are unnecessary and make things messy.
