This is why the French Historian Alexis de Tocqueville, who came to America to study its extraordinary success, wrote after carefully studying our culture:
“Thus whilst the law permits the Americans to do what they please, religion prevents them from conceiving, and forbids them to commit, what is rash or unjust.
“Religion in America takes no direct part in the government of society, but it must nevertheless be regarded as the foremost of the political institutions of that country; for if it does not impart a taste for freedom, it facilitates the use of free institutions. Indeed, it is in this same point of view that the inhabitants of the United States themselves look upon religious belief. I do not know whether all the Americans have a sincere faith in their religion, for who can search the human heart? But I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions. This opinion is not peculiar to a class of citizens or to a party, but it belongs to the whole nation, and to every rank of society.”
As we have lost those important Christian ideals, we have continued to lose our freedoms in America. As morality and virtue breaks down, more and more laws are needed to deal with our corrupt actions and the less free we are.
