Yes, John Adams was correct.
But Virtue is necessary for Freedom, period, and that is Western Civ. in a nutshell. Only the Christian Worldview is a rational religion, that believes “Blind Faith” is irrational and came up with the concept of the Law of Non-Contradiction which created the Age of Reason-—that Reason is what makes us in the image of God. Wisdom is discerning Good and Evil (Cicero) and without Wisdom (a virtue), there is no possibility of a civil, Just (a virtue) society.
No people created Individual Natural Rights from God-—but Christians-—all other cultures are collective rights-—socialism—destroys individuals for the common “good”. Equal outcomes can ONLY occur with totalitarian government. That is Marxism/satanism and anti-Constitutional.
That is why the Fabian sodomite Socialists targeted Virtue in our Prussian School system-—took out the Bible and only banned Christianity while promoting satanism, paganism and atheism (Marxism) because the Bible is the wisest book in the history of man and gives a clear (provable) picture of Good and Evil. The godless need children to be dumb and irrational and believe what the elites program into them so they can flip Good and Evil (like the SCOTUS just did) so children remain irrational and incapable of critical thinking (Reason). They force the “faiths” of satanism, paganism and/or islam-—any irrational belief system, so they remain dumb.
Without Virtue in people, no system of government will work....chaos, tyranny, and Darwinian laws, only. The only religion in line with Natural Law Theory (Modern Science/Common Sense) is the Christian worldview-—all other faiths are inconsistent and incoherent and remove Wisdom.
Virtue is ONLY embedded in childhood (which our public schools are designed to destroy with operant conditioning into dependency and destruction of identity/individualism for a ‘collective” mindset), Socialism rots the Soul-—Solzhenitsyn-—it is total dehumanization of children into irrationality (just godless animal to be herded and culled).