The Australian political theorist, Professor Kenneth Minogue, posited the idea of ‘St George in retirement syndrome’ in his 1961 book The Liberal Mind to describe the tendency of Western liberalism to charge at ever smaller ‘dragons’, when the real dragons, such as slavery, suffrage, and such have been slain.
Douglas Murray, in his great 2019 book The Madness of Crowds, pushed the analogy further to reflect the recent crude extremism of puritans wishing to purge historical figures with the most laughable excuses, with St George no longer even slashing at tiny dragons, but at thin air.
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