It is my experience that while people may understand the value of what they have and they may understand the risk of losing or compromising what they have, few understand both at the same time. Even though VPNs provide ubiquitous, perimeter security, firewalls are still needed. Walls around cities went away because it became inexpensive to bring them in closer to individual homes. Only a perimeter enforcement mechanism can guarantee adherence to an organization's security policies. However, as part of policy enforcement, a firewall might need to be able to look at the information in a packet.
Encryption makes that rather difficult.
There are ways around this. The easiest way is to make the firewall a trusted third member of the conversation. People who value privacy above everything else chafe at this. But people who value the security of their organization realize that this is a necessity. Aventail is a leader in this market.