One aspect of this discussion is a problem of libertarianism.
i) Not everything immoral has to be illegal.
ii) The problematic nature of making something illegal is not evidence that it's
moral enough for us to ignore it and get on with our lives.


An ugly thought about immigrants (even misuse of statistics about them to foment
hatred) may be an immoral thing.  Surely, the idea of thought-crime, where the
state sets up certain kinds of thoughts to be penalized, is problematic, likely
an immoral state of conduct itself.


But take the example of a crowded theatre.  Parents are always telling their
children what to do-- don't talk too loud, don't put your muddy feet on the
seat, don't play with the hair of the person in front of you.  Wouldn't it be
crazy if every aisle were to have a (secret) police officer writing tickets
every time a kid was noisy, touched something, dirtied something?   Who would
doubt that there is a need for parents to exercise admonition-- in the case of
teenagers by themselves with no parents, perhaps the nearest and bravest
stranger has to fulfill that role.  At the same time, it is probably an
unwritten rule that theatre goers have to be ready to accept a finite amount of
noise and hair-pulling if babies are sitting behind them.  It's just a fact of
life, the cost of civilization that you gotta endure it once in a while.

Now back to adults.  Some adults do things and say things and purchase things
that, if they had some "adult supervision", they'd get admonished about. It's
like the brave adult next to the rowdy teenagers in the theatre.  But hey,
perhaps that's another cost of civilization, is some push-back and hassle, if
not something worse, when you remind your neighbor what civilized behavior is
like.

It's the difference between nihilo- and paleo-libertarianism.

Then we could add religion-based admonishment to the question, and make it
really interesting.

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