ABSTRACT
The times we live in appear to be increasingly hospitable to rather shrill partisanships. This is visible in many areas of life and in many countries, and is spread equally between various cultures of belief and those that are called (though often for no good reason) ‘secular’. Such stridency is always wearying, when it is not positively dangerous. But for many in the last fifty years its antidote has always been supposed to be the liberalism that had triumphed in conflict with two very strident ideologies indeed, fascism and communism, and that had led those who professed it to a pinnacle of prosperity, peace and well-being unparalleled (it is often argued, at least) in human history.
