Rules and laws will ultimately only be adhered to under one of two conditions. A moral belief that the laws are virtuous and right or through tyranny enforced by totalitarianism. If rules are enforced through tyranny, there will always be a desire and continued attempts at revolution. This means war, literally.
The only means to have a peaceable society in which the members are engaged in the society’s wellbeing and preservation is that there be widespread moral conviction that the rules and laws are virtuous and morally upright. The people must believe and know that the laws are good and just. If this understanding were to be belief only, then inevitably there would be questioning of the laws when found inconvenient by someone. If the members of a society do not understand the basis for law or regulation then they cannot understand why their liberty is being restrained. This will start a movement towards whatever is convenient and beneficial to the special interest group that puts in the most effort or rallies the most support. This begins the establishment of subjective reasoning and is the departure from objective reasoning and morality.
The universality of morality is an absolute. For there to be any justice at all, we must all adhere to the same rules and understanding of what right and wrong are. Society cannot function if different members or groups within the society are operating under a different set of rules and different definitions of virtues and vice.
Abstaining from a moral code will result in the proliferation of rules and regulations. This will ultimately lead to a totalitarian state.
Adherence to, and the following of a common understanding of right and wrong that is ingrained within the institutions of a culture (family, education, limited government) will produce constituents that are well educated and developed on issues of morality. They will not only comply to virtue, but perpetuate, teach and self enforce this code. When there is a common understanding of right and wrong, it is easy for a group to align the actions of any wayward individual. The group will hold each-other accountable to appropriate moral conduct.
Because wrongful action is possible and does exist, there will always be instances where a person feels wronged. They may have actually been transgressed or simply feel they were and will in many cases seek a just retribution. For this they will appeal to what is available. In a culture that largely follows the same moral understanding, an individual can appeal his case to other people around him and the perspective of these people will recognize what is right. Fairness, being so essential to trust and collaborative trade, will quickly influence the perpetrator to realize his wrong doing and motivate him to make an amends. The social consequences for not doing so can be very significant. For many cases, the majority of which tend to be minor, this system alone is often enough to teach people how to behave honorably.
When there is no coherent moral code or when interactive groups are living by different standards, the appeal to others will likely result in taking sides based on each persons definition of right and wrong. This will have a tendency to escalate the conflict. Appeals will be made to authority to pass and enforce laws to create order. In the absence of a moral code, people will seek legal regulations protecting their interests, dignity and wellbeing. Lacking any clear understanding of moral right and wrong, laws and legislative actions will be passed based on best argument, or best effort put forth from a lobbying group or through whatever remnants or interpretations that remain of a moral code.
Where clear understanding of morality recedes, laws and regulations advance to fill the void. For this reason, a society that is ideologically aligned and homogeneous will always enjoy more freedom than a culture of mixed ideologies. Without a clear understanding of right and wrong aligned to a common system of virtue, how will these laws be made? Who will they benefit? Who will obtain the power to create them?
Whether it is well thought out or not, all people live and operate with others based off of some type of virtue system. Some actions are acceptable and good, while others are unacceptable and therefore bad. A person will always believe that there is good and bad regardless of how differently they organize these classifications. Even a person who believed all actions were acceptable, would have to believe that someone else who asserted that a particular action could be wrong, had to be wrong in their own inclination.
Conflict will arise continually when people interact with each other while their behavior aligns to ideologically different virtue systems.
When right and wrong are known to us only as laws which are the product of legislation, then there always remains a temptation to break or bend the rules when it is to our convenience. We may rationalize this in that we don’t see any harm or no one will ever know as long as the act is carried out in secret.
Laws are only enforced when those tasked with its enforcement are watching or if someone else were to turn us in. Because law enforcement officials and whistle blowers are not always present, then there remains ample room to operate outside of the law so long as sufficient caution is taken. If the laws are just and good, then the effect of breaking them in secret should be similar to breaking them out in the open.
A sense of right and wrong based solely on legislative creation and policed enforcement can only ever be so effective. As people find legal loopholes and venture nefariously into un-legislated territory, law makers find continued reason to push out more laws for the safety of those who have been victimized or might become so. Indeed, this drive often originates at the desperate requests of those private citizens who wish for safe guarding against the harmful conduct of others. As Criminals find creative and subversive ways to skirt law enforcement, the police are continually motivated to have an ever increasing presence and to find more efficient ways to detect illegal activity. This also, is often times demanded by common people who wish for increased safety.
Both of these actions ultimately threaten our privacy and the degrees of freedom that well intentioned citizens should enjoy. This encroachment is always sold as being for the overall betterment and protection of society, yet always invades the freedom and privacy of the individual.
If instead of placing legislative and judicial laws on the outside of a person, we instead place morals on the inside of each individual, then instead of needing a specific law for every conduct that someone is capable of, and instead of needing an all-present police force to catch wayward actions, a person will simply watch himself and keep his own conduct in check.
For someone to self govern to sufficient means, he must obtain a thorough knowledge of good verses evil and know right from wrong. He must have cultivated within himself a sense of virtue and have the ability to recognize evil wrong doing. He must have a strong belief in moral structure and personally understand the danger of living outside of moral conduct.
How deep must any single person fully understand morality for this system to work? So long as we have enough base amiability with one another that we largely enjoy social company, there will be significant moral enforcement by peer pressure from all of our interactions with one another. We must each have at least a basic common understanding of morality. In more complex situations, surrounding people will observe actions and offer guidance to help maintain conformity to what is right. Our social bonds with each other have been carrying this out for all of recorded history.