Government is the only institution in civilized society that uses force against individuals. As such, the United States Constitution was designed to minimize that force because the Founding Fathers knew that tyranny (the abuse of government force) could easily be abused with large extensions of government influence. But this is basic civics (assuming you do little extra study work outside of government skools). The underlying problem is that in a Republic or Democracy, a society that refuses to accept absolute morality becomes subject to tyranny.
The reasoning is really simple. When you have believe and follow an absolute morality, you have a set of boundaries on your behavior and those boundaries tend to be reflected on your elected leaders, should you happen to live under a Republic or Democracy. If you do not operate on an absolute morality, then those boundaries do not exist and get reflected in your leaders. So it follows that your leaders become corrupt simply because they have no boundaries imposed on them by the people who elected them. Without those boundaries, tyranny arises and the will of the people is subverted for the will of the state. Eventually, the system becomes a dictatorship in some form or another.
Given the current political climate, where banking executives hold more influence than regular people, which side do you think is winning? It is unfortunate that the vast majority of Americans do not accept some form of absolute morality in their lives, but that is the state of our society. Many Americans hold absolute morality on their sleeve, however, when push comes to shove, they will abandon those principles for their own selfish desires.
So in the end, without a solid foundation in morality, society eventually degenerates into some kind of oligarchy. The problem occurs from the ground up and as such must be undone from the ground up. This is why I am very harsh with social conservatives because while I generally agree with their moral stances, their methodology is backwards and ultimately ineffective.
But this also illustrates how left-wing ideology in America, where morality is relative or in “shades of gray”, is destructive and dangerous to our way of life and will ultimately lead to a hard, tyrannical oligarchy.