Garth George: Decline of the Western World

It seems to me the Western world is in such turmoil that it is sliding into chaos at an ever-increasing rate.

In England the shooting of an alleged drug dealer sets off widespread rioting, arson and looting and catches police forces flat-footed. Millions of pounds worth of property is stolen or goes up in flames, arrests are made in the hundreds, and a nation is left bewildered.

In Greece, Spain and other parts of Europe, there are riotous protests as austerity measures inflicted by governments facing bankruptcy begin to bite. And in Sweden a madman explodes a bomb outside a public building, then sets about fatally shooting scores of young people at a camp.

In the US, the world's biggest economy is a shambles, with high unemployment, manufacturing and service industries disappearing offshore, rampant poverty, tumbling property prices, and a Government debt burden rocketing up into incomprehensible figures while far-right idiots rattle on about small government and less tax.

In Australia, convoys of vehicles, from road trains to motorcycles, are driving thousands of kilometres down highways towards Canberra to protest at Government policies, described by one correspondent as a display of rural anger at policies ranging from the carbon tax and meddling with live animal exports to asylum seekers, food imports, bungled federal programmes and gay marriage.

And here in little old New Zealand normally laid-back citizens are moved to protest at, and boycott, an international conglomerate which charges exorbitant prices for an All Blacks jersey; an inquiry is under way to try to find answers to child abuse and deprivation; welfare benefits are again under review; public discontent at milk prices has forced the Government to institute an inquiry; and the profiteering of the supermarket duopoly is generating increasing anger as food prices continue to rise.

So what is the Western world coming to? How come, after more than a century of capitalism, our world is in such a parlous state? Who and what is to blame for this state of affairs?

British Prime Minister David Cameron has put the answers to those questions succinctly: "a slow-motion moral collapse" of British society over the past few generations. The same can be said of European society and US society and Australasian society.

British Opposition leader Ed Millbrand, too, nailed it concisely when he suggested it was not just the bottom of society that was to blame, but examples set by those with money and power, a breakdown in standards that had seen "greed, selfishness and immorality" become the norm. That, too, applies to the rest of the capitalist world.

Said Mr Cameron: "Social problems that have been festering for decades have exploded in our face. We must fight back against the attitudes that have brought parts of our society to this shocking state: irresponsibility; selfishness; behaving as if your choices have no consequences; children without fathers; schools without discipline; reward without effort; crime without punishment; rights without responsibilities; communities without control.

"Some of the worst aspects of human nature tolerated, indulged - sometimes even incentivised - by the state and its agencies."

So there you have it. Those indeed are the things that have crippled and will ultimately destroy society as we know it and not just in Britain but in all of Europe, the United States, Australia and New Zealand.

It is hugely significant that every one of Mr Cameron's social problems is essentially a moral issue, the consequences of the collapse of traditional Judeo-Christian values.

It is this which has to be addressed. The trouble is that we cannot rely on politicians or big business - the joint rulers of the Western world - to deal with them.

Perhaps it is too late.