One of Britain’s most acute and insightful thinkers today is Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (pictured). Dr Sacks has written about the UK looting and arson for a number of publications, including in this article from the Wall Street Journal.

In it he makes the point that the West has been spending its moral capital as fast and as recklessly as it spent its financial capital.

He says of the looters: “They are the victims of the tsunami of wishful thinking that washed across the West saying that you can have sex without the responsibility of marriage, children without the responsibility of parenthood, social order without the responsibility of citizenship, liberty without the responsibility of morality and self-esteem without the responsibility of work and earned achievement.”

He continues: “What has happened morally in the West is what has happened financially as well. Good and otherwise sensible people were persuaded that you could spend more than you earn, incur debt at unprecedented levels and consume the world’s resources without thinking about who will pay the bill and when. It has been the culture of the free lunch in a world where there are no free lunches.”

Then he comes to what I think is his main point: “We have been spending our moral capital with the same reckless abandon that we have been spending our financial capital. Freud was right. The precondition of civilization is the ability to defer the gratification of instinct. And even Freud, who disliked religion and called it the ‘obsessional neurosis’ of humankind, realized that it was the Judeo-Christian ethic that trained people to control their appetites.

“There are large parts of Britain, Europe and even the United States where religion is a thing of the past and there is no counter-voice to the culture of buy it, spend it, wear it, flaunt it, because you’re worth it. The message is that morality is passé, conscience is for wimps, and the single overriding command is ‘Thou shalt not be found out.’”

The article also draws on the latest book by Professor Robert Putnam of ‘Bowling Alone’ fame, ‘American Grace’ which shows, as Dr Sacks writes, “that religious people are more likely to give to charity, volunteer, assist a homeless person, donate blood, spend time with someone feeling depressed, offer a seat to a stranger, help someone find a job and take part in local civic life. Affiliation to a religious community is the best predictor of altruism and empathy: better than education, age, income, gender or race.”

One of the main arguments of The Iona Institute is that you cannot have a strong society if you have undermined both religion and the traditional family, as the West has done. Sooner or later we have the maturity to face up to the evidence that we need the traditional family and we need religion, just so long as both have shaken off the authoritarianism to which both, at their worst, were prone.