From Dr. Walter Williams most recent article, "Are Guns the Problem?" (Jan. 16, 2013):
"Customs, traditions, moral values and rules of etiquette, not laws and government regulations, are what make for a civilized society. These behavioral norms--transmitted by example, word of mouth and religious teachings--represent a body of wisdom distilled through ages of experience, trial and error, and looking at what works. The importance of customs, traditions and moral values as a means of regulating behavior is that people behave themselves even if nobody's watching. Police and laws can never replace these restraints on personal conduct so as to produce a civilized society. At best, the police and criminal justice system are the last desperate line of defense for a civilized society. The more uncivilized we become the more laws that are needed to regulate behavior."
Of course, I have been saying that for years, and writing exactly that on this blog since I started it. I provide Dr. Williams' quote just so readers will know that I am not the only one who is saying it.
What Williams describes is the fundamental core of "conservatism"--that there are certain values, customs, traditions, etc. that have, over time, proven essential in promoting and sustaining a civilized society. I argue, of course, that those values, customs, traditions--moral laws--come from God. When a people reject them, there is bedlam in that country, as we see happening in the United States today. Modern liberalism, based upon the mythical, unscientific Darwinian theory, rejects that there are any absolute values or morals, and asserts that everything is "evolving", which means morality evolves, too, and will be decided by man, not God. Thus, the fundamental, foundation disagreement between modern conservatism and liberalism is over the existence of the Christian God; if He does exist, then obviously, liberalism is, in its very essence, wrong and destructive. If He does not exist, then there are indeed no absolute values, and society can be ruled by popular will--or, more often, by tyrants (Stalin, Hitler, Mao, et al)--not eternal, moral law, or even wise, historical traditions. To the liberal, everything is subject to change because that is the very "law" (Darwinism) of existence. But, given this crucial, fundamental difference--a belief in God--it is profoundly manifest why liberalism hates God and Christianity, and must do everything it can to destroy traditional religious belief in America. Decent, moral people, in history, have nearly always lost such a war, because they have God-given, or conscientious, restraints on their behavior; the wicked can be as ruthless as necessary, because they have no moral values. It is why Ho Chi Minh defeated Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam; it is why Mao Zedong, one of the most consciousless, brutal, pitiless human beings to ever walk the face of the earth, defeated Chiang Kai-Shek in the Chinese civil war in the 1940s. Mao and Ho didn't care how many people they killed; Johnson and Chiang had at least some scruples. And, as of 2013, in the American godless left, scruples are conspicuously absent; the decent right, by philosophy, must restrict itself. It's not a good omen for the near future.
To see just a small sampling of the effects of liberalism in American society, I encourage you to read the remainder of Dr. Williams' article:
http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/wew/articles/13/AreGunsTheProblem.htm
His article, "A Hundred Percent of Nothing," is also a grand expose' of liberal policies as they have affected a once great American city, Detroit, Michigan: http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/wew/articles/12/AHundredPercentOfNothing.htm
Believe me, the information provided by Dr. Williams is only a small sampling of the degeneration of American society under liberalism. It's plain to see, but you have to dig a little bit to get statistics like those Dr. Williams presents, because the "mainstream" American media is, full throttle, in complicity with the liberal agenda. The media are no longer journalists reporting the news; they are co-conspirators, left-wing ideologues, deliberately, forcefully, hatefully, and persistently pushing the anti-Christian liberal Democratic agenda. And, with the help of the government-run education system, they are succeeding in indoctrinating vast numbers of people--apparently now, a majority. Even the strongest rock can be worn down, in time, by a consistent dripping of water. In this case, it hasn't been a drip, it's been a pounding. And too few Americans have the intelligence, and moral integrity, to resist it and to continue honoring their Creator. Even most Republicans now are totally gutless.
As the Bible and history both show, most humans will try to find excuses for sin; wickedness has always existed. What liberalism has done, over the last 50 years in America, is make it easier for Americans to find those excuses--and, worse, to rationalize them. At least before the modern left took over the culture in the United States, people knew what sin was, knew it was evil and destructive, often hid when they did it, and at least had the common sense, intelligence, and decency to know you don't exalt it (Bill Clinton), flaunt it (Barney Frank), and make it public policy (abortion and "gay" marriage) and the foundation of your culture (Hollywood). But we live in a different world now, and only the wicked revel in it and think it is a better one.
The answer...to Detroit...is more liberalism? More "progressivism"? Less God and Christianity? Perhaps the greatest tragedy of all in America is that truth is hated so vitriolically by the left that they would rather destroy the lives of countless millions of people than accept the truth that will make all men free.