Sweden Eradicates Wife-Beating

[Guest guest]

No `moral policing'; `Amoral policing' instead?

Monday October 10 2005 08:53 IST

S Gurumurthy

"It is fashionable for the liberals to cite Sweden as an example for

gender rights, human rights, and liberty! Yet Sweden stands high on

the list in women-beating, that is, men, who are not husbands, beat

women, who are not wives. So statistically wife-beating has stopped

in Sweden as there are no wives to be beaten! But look at the other

side of this `advancement'.As the family as an institution is dead,

the state has to step in to fill the void, care for the aged, the

infirm, and the unemployed."

 

A cine actress publicly justified pre-marital sex. No educated man

would expect to marry a virgin, she asserted. Many, mainly women,

protested, spontaneously. Lured by the huge media space politicians

too joined the protest. The actress apologised. The show should have

ended there, but did not. After the actress closed her theatre, the

liberals opened theirs. It's `moral policing' against the actress,

they protested. Who can set standards for other's morals, they asked.

 

One has freedom to say or do what one wants, they asserted. Sex just

rests on consent between two free individuals after all, they

counselled. Intellectuals liberated from morals wrote edits and

articles and castigated `moral policing'. No one dissented, as they

would invite abuse as being un-modern, even anti-modern. Even as the

liberals were defending the actress' right to call for pre-marital

sex, they must have been mighty pleased to know that a condom vending

machine has been installed in a quiet corner of Delhi's Jawaharlal

Nehru University to help young students to live a modern life!

 

The shout against `moral policing' rests on this logic. ``If the

society were to police, it would be lawless. If the community were to

do it, it would be oppressive. If the family were to police, it would

be stifling. So allow the law, only the law, to police. That is,

allow only the state to police. In other words, allow only the police

to police.'' But the police, the liberals know, enforce only the law,

not morals. So the liberals want people unburdened of morals, that

is, to be free of morals. They seem keen to raise an amoral people

and call them free. But, how free would such free people be? They

would be the least free, in fact. They will be the most State-

dependent, in substance. Take the Swedish people, adored as the

freest and most advanced in human development index, as an example.

 

There, the liberals have succeeded in raising most of the Swedes free

of the morals that families here cherish. Two-thirds of Swedish men

and women live without marriage, any Swede with any other for any

length of time. With the result the family is no more legitimate,

actually looked down as antiquated, un-modern. It is fashionable for

the liberals to cite Sweden as an example for gender rights, human

rights, and liberty! Yet Sweden stands high on the list in women-

beating, that is, men, who are not husbands, beat women, who are not

wives. So statistically wife-beating has stopped in Sweden as there

are no wives to be beaten! But look at the other side of

this `advancement'.

 

As the family as an institution is dead, the state has to step in to

fill the void, care for the aged, the infirm, and the unemployed.

 

In the end the Swedish are most state-dependent in fact and

consequently the least free in substance. Result, a couple of years

ago, the Swedish government had to enact that the uncared for aged

Swedish could appoint a helper to look after them at State's cost.

Sweden survives this because its population is just two-thirds of

Mumbai's. Can we, a nation some 120 times bigger, think of such a

moral – actually amoral, as most of us see it – model! This kind of

liberalism knocks down marriages and families; erodes respect for

society.

 

This is amoral policing which shames those who care for basic morals

and drives them underground, so that the public space is occupied by

the shameless. The last phase of modernity, the non-procreative man-

women union, is now at the horizon. Result, population regresses

threatening the existence of many nations, their cultures, economic

prospects. Families unprotected by normative moral standards

respected by communities and the society cannot survive. Families

cannot be established or nurtured by law, nor can communities be

organised or saved by law. But, beware, the law can undo, even

destroy, both.

 

The family, community and the societyconstitute the social capital of

a people. While financial or intellectual capital belongs to

individuals, social capital is a common public asset. It is nourished

only by morals and norms. It does not need a seer to unveil these

basic truths. Socially recognised norms alone persuade husband and

wife to live together for life. Law can only help them to separate.

The law and adversarial justice set the wife against the husband, and

husband against the wife; father against the son, and son against the

father; neighbour against the neighbour. In contrast the family and

society which function on normative moral standards, unburdens the

state, and frees the people from state dominance.

 

That is why we have just 12,400 police stations for seven lakh

villages! That is why we have a family provided social security, and

the West has a state-dependent social security! It is easy to destroy

the institution of morality, but impossible to replace or rebuild it.

Neither the state, nor the law, or the courts, or the liberals can do

it. Because it calls for surrender of one's rights, a great

sacrifice, to build private and public morals to sustain families and

respect for communities. Assert your right only; there is no family,

much less a society. To amoralise to destroy (other's) families

cannot make one a liberal. Yet, the liberals are keen to usher in a

society free of all morals and living in amorality as the norm. Is

this not amoral policing? In their view, `Moral policing' is un-

modern, but `amoral policing' is modern.

 

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