Virtuous people—are never perfect. The Founders stated that if all men were angels then there is no need for government. Duh! But we had the most free and least government intrusion of all large societies in the history of the world....it is not even close...and we were extremely successful—especially when everyone was allowed gun ownership and we had a government with Just Laws. We were profoundly Christian. 20th century has led to repressive gun laws (unconstitutional) and private property confiscation which is unconstitutional. Socialism is now dominant with the destruction of Christian Ethics being forced by laws and welfare. As Mark Levine said we are a Post Constitutional Republic.
Singapore never had such freedom. That is the point. They have to have strict laws because personal virtue doesn’t exist. They need to be controlled by an oppressive government.
Our Founders believed in freedom and autonomy—guns and responsibility. Responsibility and individualism comes directly from Christianity which gave dignity to all people including children and women. (True Christianity’s goal.)
In other words, the Founders said that they did not want a nanny government. They did not want “masters” so that the people become slaves. We the People were sovereign. It was unprecedented—that concept which came only because of Christianity and The Age of Reason. The two converged before Atheism/Marxism took hold of Europe in the late 19th century and created Nazism/Fascism/Communism which forced out Christianity or perverted it to mean the opposite-—like what they are doing now in America—with homosexual “marriage” and “gun laws” and welfare (forced “charity”).
You would be hard-pressed to find anyone (who has lived and worked in Singapore) declare Singapore’s democratically-elected republican government to be oppressive. Their laws are strict, but they are promulgated and enforced by an elected polity, in accordance with the will of the people there.
To say that Singaporean society is not virtuous and to make absurd claims that they lack personal virtue is to declare lies in the face of opposing evidence, and for a person declaring so, their own virtues become suspect.
America had strict laws too, even stricter before than it is so now. Have Americans become more virtuous?
For further insight on how numerous archaic laws are in America, take a look at this site:
http://www.lawguru.com/weird/part01.html
Strange, wouldn’t it be, that a virtuous society would need to be hamstrung by so many nonsensical laws, so long ago? This collection almost competes with the bulk of the OT laws, in terms of meaninglessness.