If you grandstand about how a socially-approved and very mild punishment for doing bad things is Evil Boundary-violating Control, people who care about those bad things are less likely to let you alone than to switch to harsher punishments.
Not necessarily. Wild-eyed idealists, being idealists, are markedly biased towards shaming folks for whatever it is that they consider “bad”. Shaming and guilt-tripping people is not even particularly hard for them, since their whole worldview is often based on these emotions; whereas applying harsher punishments may not even occur to them unless they are rather authoritarian, and it might even be completely infeasible. Thus, reacting assertively is entirely appropriate, at least in the likeliest case.
Not necessarily. Wild-eyed idealists, being idealists, are markedly biased towards shaming folks for whatever it is that they consider “bad”. Shaming and guilt-tripping people is not even particularly hard for them, since their whole worldview is often based on these emotions; whereas applying harsher punishments may not even occur to them unless they are rather authoritarian, and it might even be completely infeasible. Thus, reacting assertively is entirely appropriate, at least in the likeliest case.