For the moral entrepreneurs who instigate, drive and profit from such panics, no purpose can possibly be as important as suppressing the object of their panic. In fact, they often “reason” and propagandize that the target of their panic is a cause of the greater harms such as war or terrorism.

For example: Without prostitution, husbands would be faithful to their wives, so there would be no more broken homes leaving children poor and without a family to raise them. Poor abandoned children grow up to lead desperate lives of crime, only one small step from terrorism. They are often trafficked by the more sophisticated criminals, and thus become fodder for even more human trafficking. This leads to even more prostitution, more abandoned children, etc.

The circular reasoning is hermetically sealed against interjection of any external facts, logic or possibly conflicting moral values. For the gullible, that is enough to prove the moral entrepreneur’s case.