Tolerance? Decency vs Expression

Help me out here. Something happened last night that has me thinking about our culture, about the ever changing line of what constitutes decency.

I grew up in the era where a neighbor had the right to spank you or at least wash your mouth out with soap if you uttered a course word. That actually happened in my neighborhood. As kids, it influenced our behavior. I know its hard for some 20 and 30 somethings to believe this -- today you'd be sued -- but it was an era where we actually lived out the belief that it took the whole village to raise a child. There was general consensus about what behavior was appropriate in the community, and what wasn't.

So here's my question: Does our non-judgmental culture require that we just acquiesce to the coarsening of our society -- to it's rudeness, its increasing brazenness, it's shock strategies at getting attention? Do we speak up when personally offended? Or do we just accept this as the way it is, and tolerate it?

This isn't a hypothetical question.

Last night as I was grocery shopping I noticed a young woman who appeared to be about 17 years of age, holding an employment application in her hand talking to a store employee. Her black T-Shirt proclaimed in bright pink letters "I have the pussy, so I make the rules."

Several questions hit me at once, and their likely answers disturbed me to the bone: How could this young girl proclaim something so crude? (Answer: she thinks it's funny, and no one in her world would challenge that.) How could she request an employment application wearing such an offensive shirt? (Answer: because we have come to a point in our culture where she doesn't think it matters.) Have we come to the point where management would even hand an application to someone wearing such a shirt? (Answer: Unfortunately, yes. Apparently they don't think it matters either.)

And my final question, for which I ask your input: Should I have confronted her about how offensive the shirt is? For the sake of holding some line of decency in our culture should I have done the unthinkable -- that is, calmly express my displeasure at her form of expression, and tell management that if they hire someone who thinks that kind of thing is OK, that I won't shop there anymore? (Answer: you tell me)

The fact that we have come to a place in our culture where one can say and do anything with impunity because others will not dare overstep the expectation of "tolerance," means that we are on a slippery road that will take us to a place our parents and grandparents knew would be akin to hell.

I am haunted by the well-used aphorism, "the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for enough good people to do nothing." Well, I did nothing. What would you have done?