Shall I tell you the worst thing about our finger-wagging, prissy, censorious age? It’s not the nastiness on social media. It’s not the cowardice of bystanders who hang back and allow good people to be defamed by Twitter mobs. It’s the shift in power. Learning, truth, and decency are nowadays trumped by the imagined injuries of the permanently offended.

Last week saw a horrible hit job on Roger Scruton, arguably the most distinguished philosopher in Britain. The conservative writer gave an interview to the New Statesman, a British leftist weekly for which he used to write a wine column (“the best accompaniment to Chablis is more Chablis, sipped quietly at the desk as night draws in”).