Civilizations and democracies fail because of a lack of integrity in the citizens. They do not fail because of a lack of respect for the law. There is a time and a place for disrespect of the law.
In nazi germany the government encouraged both the kids to turn in their parents when they merely said anti-nazi things in the home and they encouraged parents to take their mentally retarded or otherwise handi-capped children to the doctor for euthenasia. Both kids turned their parents in sentencing them to harsh punishment and parents brought their own children to the doctor for the purpose of having them killed. These kids and these parents were following the law, doing exactly what the in fact elected authorities asked them to do, but they were doing the wrong thing.
We need to encourage our children to have love for truth and respect for their parents. The very last line of the old testament shows us that it is the way of our creator to turn the hearts of the children towards their parents and to turn the hearts of the parents towards their children. As public schools all over america openly instruct children that it is OK to call 911 and turn in mom and dad these schools are violating the basic tenents that we have considered truth for thousands of years. It is this tendency that is far more likely to cause destruction to us as a people than a little bit of disrespect for laws.
After all, every cop I ever saw driving a police car went over the speed limit. Is our civilization going to falter because of that?
Be careful of your criticisms of foster homes! There are many times where it is a temporary home until the children can be placed back in the home. There are parents who do not make the changes required in order to have the children returned, and in most of those cases, the children are better off in the foster home than back in their own home. I know your beef is with the government getting too involved in people's lives. But I have been a foster parent, and I have seen the system work for good. Just as in every type of business, there are the bad guys giving it a bad name, it happens in foster care as well. But don't generalize and kill the program because of a few bad apples!
I disagree that the children would have been better off left in the home as it was. Have you been on the receiving end of someone who uses pot? The teen didn't want his youngest brother to grow up in that kind of a home. There was more behind his words than were printed.
Also be careful of the reporter trying to paint the father as an athletic, high class business man. I would suspect the reporter to be sympathetic to the father, from the journalism I have studied.
The scripture tells us to respect those in authority over us in I Peter 2:13-16 "Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake: whether it be to the king , as supreme; or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well. For so is the will of God that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men: as free, and not using your liberty for a cloke of maliciousness, but as servants of God. "
The father was not raising his children to be respectful of the authority (law) placed over them. Anyone, in expecting the teenager to ignore or go along with the father's activities, is saying that the father and anyone else doing wrong is not responsible or accountable for their actions. So what kind of morality are we then teaching our youth? Disrespect for those in authority, as well as their not being responsible or accountable for their actions! Then we wonder what is wrong with our society today??