All the puffing and snorting from the GOP Establishment over Donald Trump's reasonable (and in all probability constitutional) suggestion that we stop issuing visas to foreign Muslims brought H.M. Bateman to my mind.

Bateman was a cartoonist, floruit the 1920s.  He is best remembered for his "The Man Who...." cartoons, in each of which some lone figure commits an offense against the social or sumptuary codes of upper-middle-class Britons.

Samples:

• the man who lit his cigar before the Royal Toast
• the shareholder who dared to criticize the chairman's report
• the man who bid a half-guinea at Tattersall's (a famous firm of bloodstock auctioneers, still in business)
• the girl who ordered a glass of milk at the Café Royal
•  the man who asked for a second helping at a grand banquet.

The flushed, apoplectic faces and the popping monocles; or in other cases, the herd-mind laughter and humiliation . . . . Yep, we live by taboos.