When it seems the world is going mad it’s time to turn to GK Chesterton. “Earnest freethinkers,” he says, “need not worry themselves so much about the persecutions of the past. Before the Liberal idea is dead or triumphant we shall see wars and persecutions the like of which the world has never seen.” This seems to speak of the current mood of those people driving round American cities burning and looting, or the Women’s March bearing placards with slogans of abject hate towards Trump or the unborn in the name of tolerance and liberal values.