Debauchery is another effect of personal sin which seeks eternal expression, in this case by corrupting others. For the inwardly empty cannot bear their burden alone- they tend to empty society of whatever values it possesses. Solitariness of the soul creates its own atmosphere and makes a solitary world. Self-expression, understood as the expression of the animal self whose satisfactions are external, thus begets not only its own destruction but also the dissolution of peaceful society. The traditional restraints and moral sanctions of society come to be regarded more and more as worthless, outworn taboos or as cruel checks placed upon individual egotism, which now goes under the name of freedom. A stage is eventually reached where there is no acknowledged limit to self-expression. The most traitorous deeds are defended as civil rights; the defense of even the natural law is ridiculed as “medieval.” This lawlessness, if widespread, creates such confusion in society that a tyrant soon arises to organize the chaos through force. Thus is fulfilled the dictum of the Dostoevski that “unlimited freedom leads to unlimited tyranny.”
--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Peace of Soul, 1949
