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Notes -
This feels like a common generalized critique of modern neoliberalism, though: "You can't do [THING], it might cause [UNPLEASANTNESS]", where [THING] ranges from "Invade foreign nation", which has pretty obvious unpleasantness in most cases, to "enforce existing immigration law", all the way down to "build that apartment complex" for values of unpleasantness like "would require destroying a historic, um, laundromat" or "would cast 1% extra shadow on a public park". We've very much used this set of unpleasant tradeoffs to justify privileging inaction in lots of cases, many with pretty clear consequences for the rest of us, although I think there is certainly reasonable ground for not blindly charging ahead with everything.
It's much the same as when it shows up in international politics: "Palestinians are firing weapons (rockets) at Israeli population centers again. But we can't allow them to respond -- someone might get hurt!". I'm not going to claim that any particular action is justifiable, but I've seen a lot of long-term bad consequences enabled by choosing inaction as a response assuming it'll be free in the long-term, just because the short-term "unpleasantness" is pretty clearly defined. And it's clear that some parties take advantage of these stated values to push boundaries and normalize worse outcomes.
I suppose somewhere in here could arise a principled (anti-woke?) political philosophy that prioritizes "we make hard choices, not because we relish them, but because we don't want them badly chosen for us."
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