Kansas: The destruction of the soul

In this past week's Torah portion Israel leaves Sinai after many months. It's a year and a month after the exodus. They've been receiving Torah, and because they have remained in a single place things have gone well, with the exception of the Golden Calf incident.
Now they start out into the wilderness, and here theory meets reality. What happens? When things get tough, the people rebel. They rebel against Moses and Aaron and against God. They want meat to eat, and worry about their water supply when Miriam dies. They replace faith with worry about themselves and their own fortune. They revert to character, the character of slaves involved in their own lives and forget the miracles they have witnessed. They revert to self-protection, and forget about community.
A month ago my daughter, Amy, and I visited a newly opened plantation historical site in Charleston, S.C. Instead of a private enterprise, this plantation, The McLeod Plantation, is owned by the Parks and Recreation Dept and had just recently opened to the public. But the special part is this: the narrative is told from the perspective of the slaves.
There we saw slave cabins, probably 10 ft. by 15 ft of living space, with probably as many as 10 inhabitants.(See above) 
More significant than total space, the plantation owners had little regard for families. They broke up families, splitting up parents, and separating children from their parents. What a terror must have been built into the slaves' hearts.
Last week I was called by a friend about a sad case that we could do something about. A woman who had just gotten a job was driving on I-35 to work. A state trooper stopped her for something about her car. He discovered she was driving without a license because of an earlier problem, but she had to get to work. He arrested her and impounded her car, even though a friend said she'd come to pick up the car. She lost her job. Without a job and a car, she'd lose her place to live. Without a place to live social services would come and remove her children from her home and her custody. The result of driving without a license to get to work to support her children: lost job, housing, children, and homeless on the street.
Fortunately, the man who called me was raising the money to resolve the problems. I gave from my discretionary fund. Her car was damaged by someone while in the police lot, and the man who called me put out the money from his own pocket to get it fixed up. The woman is back out finding a job. Her fines are paid. She has her car and license back. The children will remain with her and they will not be homeless.
But I started thinking: just like in slavery, no one at the state level cared about retaining her family intact. No one cared that the traffic stop would result in the break up of her family and their homelessness, the loss of her employment and putting her out on the street. She's not on welfare. She's trying to return to the work force and keep her family together. The problem was solved with under $2000, kept a tax payer employed and a family together. But like the slave owner, no one in government cared about the family impact of their actions, or the deterioration of society that results. 
Kansas is in the process of losing its soul. The slogan that "we do better deciding where to spend our own money" is not only destroying our schools, increasing poverty, causing people to die rather than take care of their medical needs, destroying families, and costing more money than if we put systems in place to solve all of these problems. We are not dealing with a financial issue. We are dealing with the very soul of the society in which we live, and it is rapidly disintegrating. 
Slave owners didn't care about the families they separated. They were dealing with a financial question. We continue to deal with the fallout of that ethical problem embedded in antebellum southern society. 
Neither does the government of Kansas care about the destruction of families. And I predict, the results will be similar. The destruction of the soul of Kansas is the problem, not the budget or the level of taxation.
When you start out into the wilderness, the real world, it's absolutely essential that you keep Sinai in mind, the laws by which to live. Or the soul gets swallowed up in Sheol.