In the last couple of decades or so, something has happened to the American dream. I don't quite know what it is, and it's still not very clear in my mind. Confusion has replaced patriotism. The intellect has replaced love. If something doesn't make money, no one is interested. Everything is for sale. Emotions are sold. Sex is sold. Everything is sex. Cars, women, clothes, your face, your hands, your shoes! Look at the ads, at television. My emotions aren't for sale. My thoughts can't be bought. They're mine. I don't want movies that sell me something. I don't want to be told how to feel.
- John Cassavetes (1929–1989) Actor, Director, Producer, Screenwriter, Film editor

Anarchy
Without law we have anarchy, we have the devil stalking the earth, picking us off one by one, the weak and strong alike. We are all vulnerable at times. It is not only justice; in the end it is survival itself. Without law, who will protect the mother and child who are tomorrow's strength? Who will protect the geniuses of the mind, the inventor, the artist who enriches the world but has not the power of money or physical ability to defend himself? Who will protect the wise who are old, and might fall victim to the powerful and foolish? Indeed who will protect the strong from themselves?
Excerpt from "Farriers' Lane" by Anne Perry

Puritan Work Ethic:
"The Puritans declared the sanctity of all honorable work. In so doing, they rejected a centuries-old division of callings into “sacred” and “secular”… This Puritan rejection of the dichotomy between sacred and secular work has far-reaching implications. It judges every honorable job to be of intrinsic value, and integrates every vocation with a Christian’s spiritual life. It makes every job consequential by regarding it as the arena for glorifying and obeying God and for expressing love (through service) to a neighbor."
Puritan Work Ethic: the Dignity of Life’s Labors
Christianity Today, October 1979, p. 15

A nation's life is about as long as its reverential memory.
Whittaker Chambers

As the Left breaks down the self-discipline of Judeo-Christian religions, more and more laws are needed simply to keep people from devouring each other.
- Dennis Prager, Sept. 20, 2005 -

Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.
- George Washington, Circular Letter of Farewell to the Army, June 8, 1783 -

A society's first line of defense is not the law but customs, traditions and moral values. These behavioral norms, mostly transmitted by example, word-of-mouth and religious teachings, represent a body of wisdom distilled over the ages through experience and trial and error. They include important thou-shalt-nots such as shalt not murder, shalt not steal, shalt not lie and cheat, but they also include all those courtesies one might call ladylike and gentlemanly conduct.

Policemen and laws can never replace these restraints on personal conduct. At best, the police and criminal justice system are the last desperate line of defense for a civilized society. This failure to fully transmit value norms to subsequent generations represents another failing of the greatest generation.
- Walter E. Williams, Nov. 21, 2007

The question: "Why should I not do as I please within the law, so long as I harm no-one else?" would, at all earlier times, have drawn one or both of the answers: "Because it offends God" or "Because you will become a social outcast".

The first of these has no force for our new elites, who do not believe in God; the second is not only without force for them, it is without meaning. To exclude a person from one's drawing-room because their personal pleasures are aberrant would be "discrimination".
John Derbyshire, Posted by Harrius Magnus
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2029535/posts?page=1#29

The Founders’ definition of “happiness” came from Sir William Blackstone’s 1765 biblically based definition: “[God] has so intimately connected, so inseparably interwoven the laws of eternal justice with the happiness of each individual, that the latter cannot be attained but by observing the former; and, if the former be punctually obeyed, it can not but induce the latter.”

Happiness and eternal justice (obedience to God’s law in creation) are inseparable. The founders of our nation understood “happy” to mean “blessed.” They knew that true happiness depends on one’s obedience to God’s commands (check out Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5). God’s commandments are not random demands, they are instructions from the One who made and sustains the universe.
"HAPPY, SHINY PEOPLE" by Robert Regier
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1817601/posts#5