Mal Fletcher considers the growing fear in society of all things traditional

In this he was ably supported by passionate clerics like Bishop Tutu.

These heroic activists for human rights did not challenge social ills in the name of some ill-defined and unproven "new" morality.

They demanded a return to an even more primordial sense of right and wrong, which precedes the modern state. Their call was for a more not less traditional moral system.

They saw injustice not as a sign that moral evolution must occur, but that long-forgotten and sometimes universal moral standards must be re-applied within recalcitrant societies.

Obviously, the fact that something is traditional makes it neither necessarily right nor helpful. But what we seem to be moving toward is a tendency, perhaps because it suits sectional interests, to abandon all traditional morality out of hand, simple because it has been around a long while.

Sometimes the fact that something has a long pedigree, especially within freedom-loving societies, might be seen as evidence that it works and is worth preserving.