Time for a moral counter-revolution in SA?

Jack Bloom writes that family values and sexual morality need reasserting to stem social decay

"There is one thing a professor can be absolutely sure of; almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative."

This is the opening line of Professor Allan Bloom's acclaimed book, "The Closing of the American Mind".

When I attended Wits University in the late 1970s, there was the same relativist spirit.

The positive part is that it opens the mind to new perspectives.

On the other hand, it undermines values and leads to an "anything goes" approach that corrodes social order.

How does one defend anything if all cultures and practices are deemed of equal worth, and everything is really just a matter of opinion?

James Q Wilson, a Harvard professor, was shocked by students who could not agree that those guilty of the Holocaust were guilty of a moral horror.

"It all depends on your perspective" was a typical response.

Instead of good and evil, or right and wrong, everything is held to be determined by social conditioning, with no absolute reference point.

The criminal is therefore as much a victim as the person he robs or assaults, since the inequities of society shape his actions.

Intellectuals are particularly afflicted by this notion. The big change came with the 1960s counterculture in Western society that took aim against middle-class morality, including the "shackles" of work, marriage and parenthood.

In England and America, about 40% of births are to unmarried mothers, with appalling social consequences.

Earlier this year, reports that 12-year-old baby-faced Alfie Patten had fathered a child by 15-year-old Chantelle Stedman caused a stir in Britain. When Alfie was asked during an interview: "What will you do financially?" he replied: "What's 'financially'?"

Alfie's dad was no role model, fathering 9 or 10 children with various mothers. After DNA testing on other possible fathers of Chantelle's child, it turned out to be not Alfie after all, but a 14-year-old boy.

In America, statistics show that only 2% of those who complete high school, work full time, wait until age 21 and marry before having children, are poor. Among those who fail to do any of this, 76% are poor.

As opposed to wealthy Western societies, it is far easier to blame poverty, urbanisation and other outside factors for the breakdown of family life in South Africa.

We also suffer still from the "liberation before education" and "make townships ungovernable" campaigns that undermined parental discipline and respect for authority.

But I am not convinced that "progressive" thinking imported from overseas has helped us tackle our social ills.

Sociologist Lawrence Schlemmer observes that in traditional African society, youthful sexuality was carefully regulated, and males were held fully accountable for pregnancies.

He concludes bravely: "If ever there was a need for a conservative revolution in sexual morality and family values, it exists in South Africa today. However, the dominance of public and policy debate by politically correct opinion-formers makes this unlikely. The typical approach to problems of this nature among the progressive intelligentsia the world over is to plead for counselling and youth programmes - or virtually anything except the restoration of the social and moral authority of conservative and religious institutions."

Values matter. Families matter. We need far more support for both.

Jack Bloom is a Democratic Alliance MPL in Gauteng.