An apt observation. However, with the decline in stigmatization for conduct that was once unacceptable, there is a decline in the moral character of the people. Of course that has little, if anything, to offer as a justification for more laws. The need is for a general awakening of the intelligent element, as to what works in human society--and what leads to certain disaster.
While the States have Police Powers to deal with anti-Social conduct that threatens Society, the Federal Government does not--outside the District and the Federal Reservations. So it is important to understand that not only can the Federal Government not correct the effects of the moral decline; its efforts to do so, other than by repealing unconstitutional laws--which of course it should do--can only cause more of a decline. As Reagan stated so well, the Federal Government is not the solution; the Federal Government is often the problem. (And see The Moral Bases of A Political Society.)
It is difficult to even imagine a more corrupting influence on the youth of America, than the image of a Government, which refuses to respect the limits on its own powers. Clintonesque liars, who escape retribution, set the worst possible example.
Your peaceful picture of American community life is also threatened today by the unholy combination of a half-baked immigration policy, combined with politically correct adulation for the concept of multi-culturalism and "diversity," which is not calculated to preserve much tranquility in our midst.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
The need is for a general awakening of the intelligent element, as to what works in human society--and what leads to certain disaster.
Business/science community works to increase prosperity. Politics/government work to diminish prosperity. For the work hours/money put in, the benefits accrued by business and science are obvious. For the work hours/money put in, the benefits accrued from government are not obvious. In fact, on net accounting, the government by far diminishes prosperity. Government wasn't intended to increase prosperity. It's supposed to ensure that people are left to their own means of creating prosperity for themselves others and society. That is accomplished by protecting private property/individual rights.
Congress has created so many laws that virtually every person is assured of breaking more than just traffic laws. Surely with all this supposed lawlessness people and society should have long ago run head long into destruction. But it has not.
Instead, people and society have progressively prospered. Doing so despite politicians creating on average, 3,000 new laws each year which self-serving alphabet-agency bureaucrats implement/utilize to justify their usurped power and unearned paychecks. They both proclaim from on high -- with complicit endorsement from the media and academia -- that all those laws are "must-have" laws to thwart people and society from running headlong into self-destruction.
Again, despite not having this year's 3,000 must-have laws people and society increased prosperity for years and decades prior. How can it be that suddenly the people and the society they form has managed to be so prosperous for so long but suddenly they will run such great risk of destroying their self-created prosperity? Three hundred new laws each year is overkill, but 3,000 is, well, it's insane.
Politics is not the solution, it's the problem. Honest business and science is the solution. It has always been the solution.
War of Two Worlds
Value Creators versus Value Destroyers
The first thing civilization must have is business/science. It's what the family needs so that its members can live creative, productive, happy lives. Business/science can survive, even thrive without government/bureaucracy.
Government/bureaucracy cannot survive without business/science. In general, business/science and family is the host and government/bureaucracy is a parasite.
Keep valid government services that protect individual rights and property. ...Military defense, FBI, CIA, police and courts. With the rest of government striped away those few valid services would be several fold more efficient and effective than they are today.
Underwriters Laboratory is a private sector business that has to compete in a capitalist market. Underwriters laboratory is a good example of success where government fails.
Any government agency that is a value to people and society -- which there are but a few -- could much more effectively serve people by being in the private sector where competition demands maximum performance.
Wake up! They are the parasites. We are the host. We don't need them. They need us.