America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold: its patriotism, its morality, and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within. - Joseph Stalin
I asked what you proposed to do about it. That does not appear to be an answer. Do you have any constructive ideas?
I agree. Things cannot be turned around without mayhem and disintegration first. But after that, I am sure they will turn around. But that doesn’t mean that people without moral blindness should sit on their hands and be quiet.
Here are some thoughts of a few wise men on the necessity of morality and religion:
“Reading, reflection and time have convinced me that the interests
of society require the observation of those moral precepts ... in
which all religions agree.” —Thomas Jefferson
Religion and good morals are the only solid foundation of public
liberty and happiness.”
— Samuel Adams (letter to John Trumbull, 16 October 1778)”
Of all the dispositions and habits which least to political
prosperity, Religion and morality are indespensable supports.
In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism who should
labor to subvert these great Pilliars of human happiness.
— George Washington (Farewell Address, 19 September 1796)
“[O]ur ancestors established their system of government on morality and religious sentiment. Moral habits, they believed, cannot safely be trusted on any other foundation than religious principle, nor any government be secure which is not supported by moral habits.”
— Daniel Webster, American Jurist and Senator
“[W]hen People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners,
they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign
Invaders.” —Samuel Adams
Patrick Henry said “Bad men cannot make good citizens. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience are incompatible with freedom.”
And my favorite:
“Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites—in proportion as their love of justice is above their rapacity;—in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption;—in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon the will and appetite is placed somewhere: and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds can not be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”
— Edmund Burke