It is too complicated and abstract for citizens to feel they are a part of setting those standards or have any responsibility to clarify or enforce standards in the community. And because it involves coercion and deprivation of liberty, the legal system can only set minimum standards of behavior. Processes that encourage cooperation and voluntary engagement can establish standards for maximum behavior. So, we overthrew the community standards of the fifties, and we have learned that we cannot have strong, healthy communities without some boundaries on behavior based on shared values and shared commitment to the well being of all. Achieving that goal requires community dialog that is both extensive and continuous.
Every point of view needs to be in the dialog and there can never be a final set of boundaries.
It must always be open to change as knowledge and capacity grow. It was the failure of communities in the fifties to respond to changing understandings of equity and fairness and new information about the limitations of punishment as an effective strategy for managing behavior that triggered the massive social movements of the sixties that dismantled many prevailing community norms. Because those norms were passed down from generation to generation without question, communities did not have in place a mechanism for creating a new set of norms to fit the new knowledge and understandings. Consequently, a period of 'every man for himself' ensued. There is now a resurgence of interest in the common good and in the need for mutual responsibility for each other and for our collective welfare.