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being done in the name of 
the right not to be offended 
— a right that would have 
terrified George Orwell, 
whose dictum, engraved on 
the walls of the new BBC 
Broadcasting House, states: 
“If liberty means anything 
at all, it means the right to 
tell people what they do not 
want to hear.”
This is closely related 
to a third phenomenon 
playing an ever-larger part 
in the liberal democracies 
of the West, namely 
identity politics. There 
was a time, until recently, 
when politics aspired to be 
about what is best for the 
nation. One of the lasting 
unintended consequences 
of multiculturalism is that 
we no longer think of the 
nation as a whole. Instead, 
the electorate has been 
fragmented into a series 
of subcultures, defined by 
ethnicity, religion, gender 
or sexual orientation. 
These can easily become 
competitive interest groups, 
less concerned with the 
common good than with 
what is good for those-like-
me.
Each group can be 
encouraged, by the mood 
of our time, to see itself 
as a victim and to identify 
an oppressor who can be 
blamed for their current 
predicament. This gives rise 
to a divisive and rancorous 
politics that divides society, 
like the dualisms of old, into 
the children of light and 
the children of darkness. It 
also provides a justification 
for the use of social media 
to manipulate public 
opinion by fake news and 
“alternative facts.” When it 

comes to defending your 
group against oppressors, 
people think that the end 
justifies the means.
These are dangerous 
tendencies at both an 
individual and collective 
level. You can see this in 
the spate of bestselling self-
help books about anxiety 
and depression on the one 
hand, and, on the other, a 
string of books with titles 
such as How Democracies 
Die, The Suicide of the West 
and The Retreat of Western 
Liberalism.
What connects the 
personal and the political 
was given a name more than 
a century ago by the great 
sociologist Emile Durkheim. 
He called it anomie: a state 
of instability, in societies 
and individuals, resulting 
from the breakdown of a 
shared set of moral beliefs 
and attitudes. This would 
lead, he thought, to a rise in 
suicides as well as a loss of 
social cohesion.
Since the 1960s, we have 
come to believe that you 
can outsource morality to 
the market and the state. 
The market is about wealth, 
the state about power. The 
market gives us choices, 
and the state deals with 
the consequences of those 
choices. Within those 
parameters we can do 
whatever we like so long as 
it does not directly harm 
others.
We are learning that this 
only works in the short 
term. In the long term, 
when all that matters is 
wealth and power, the 
wealthy and powerful gain 
and the poor and powerless 
suffer. That’s what has 

happened for at least a 
generation. Hence the anger 
and loss of trust that today 
divide societies throughout 
the West.
There is an alternative. 
Since civilization began, 
morality has been human-
ity’s internal satellite nav-
igation system as we have 
journeyed toward the undis-
covered country called the 
future. It has taken different 
forms, but it is always about 
caring for the good of oth-
ers, not just ourselves; about 
decency, honesty, faithful-
ness and self-restraint, treat-
ing others as we would wish 
to be treated. It’s the world 
of “we” not “I.”
While the market and 
the state are about com-
petition, morality is about 
cooperation. It is born 
and sustained in families, 
communities, voluntary 
organizations and religious 
congregations. Altruism, 
Viktor Frankl taught us, is 
the best cure for depression. 
Virtue, as Aristotle noted, is 
the basis of strong societies. 
And we can each make a 
contribution. As Melinda 
Gates reminds us in the 
last program of the series: 
Change one life for the 
better and you’ve begun to 
change the world.
Morality is the redemp-
tion of our solitude. With it 
we can face the future with-
out fear, knowing we are not 
alone. 

This article was first published in 

The Daily Telegraph, Sept. 1, 2018. 

The late Rabbi Lord Jonathan 

Sacks served as the chief rabbi of 

the United Hebrew Congregations of 

the Commonwealth, 1991-2013. His 

teachings have been made avail-

able to all at rabbisacks.org. 

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