This morning as I rounded the corner to depart the Metro station in our nation’s capital, the man behind me uttered a four-letter word devoid of any apparent context. For a moment, I wondered what I had done to offend him, and then I looked forward and realized why he cursed. Both escalators were broken, so he was going to have to walk up 72 steps to get to the street level.

My first thought was that his vulgar, one-word outburst is proof that America truly is plagued by an “obesity epidemic.” We’re so fat and lazy that we can’t even bear the thought of walking up the stairs. But another thought came to me as I read an article about how coarse our discourse has become. People are cursing so much that government officials feel compelled to punish it:

[Middleborough, Mass., Police Chief Bruce Gates] is asking citizens to vote at the annual town meeting on Monday to flush potty mouths by granting police the power to issue $20 civil tickets to anyone who publicly “accosts” another person verbally with profanity.

He isn’t targeting ordinary swears, like an understandable expletive uttered after a Red Sox loss. He said he is aiming at offenses like “profane language at some attractive female walking through town.” His officers patrol on bikes and can already give tickets for public drinking, rubbish thrown in streets and more. Cursing is another “quality of life” issue, he said. …

Middleborough isn’t the only place, by golly, where officials want to effectively wash citizens’ mouths out with soap. In April, work at the Alabama Legislature turned a little off-color when a lobbyist allegedly verbally took a lawmaker to the woodshed after a vote. So for the first time ever, legislators issued a formal reprimand for cursing, saying the lobbyist violated Rule 27 pertaining to “the honor of the legislative process.”

Arizona state senators in February debated legislation that would have banned public-school and college instructors from any swear word not allowed on broadcast television. The bill died after much discussion. And counties from Los Angeles to Mobile, Ala., have declared “no cussing week” in recent years.

Language isn’t the only evidence of a country headed over a cliff into the abyss of spiritually defiant vulgarity. At our 12-year-old son’s soccer tournament over the weekend, I saw the kind of soccer mom who gives rednecks a bad name. She had a bare-breasted woman tattooed onto the back of her right shoulder — a shoulder that she proudly bared so hundreds of young children could see her body porn. She’s an embarrassment to soccer Moms, all Moms and all womankind, and sadly, she doesn’t care.

We can’t regulate bad words and bad behavior like hers out of existence, nor should we necessarily even try. But decent people who say nothing as filth continues to saturate American culture — and parents who tolerate it among or, worse, teach it to their children — should be ashamed.

We, the people, have allowed a great nation to become the United States of Profanity, and only we can steer our children and our country onto a more wholesome path.

UPDATE, 6/12: Residents of Middleborough voted 183-50 for the fines on public profanity. Ideally, Americans would take the hint and wash their own mouths out with soap so their neighbors or the government don’t feel compelled to act. But that’s unlikely.