There was a time not so long ago when educated men and women read Edward Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire as a matter of course. Gibbon’s ultimate thesis was that Rome, the world’s greatest civilisation, collapsed because its citizens lost their virtue.

On that topic – civilisational collapse – I woke earlier this week to a bemusing  tweet from Daily Wire editor Ben Shapiro:

‘The President of the United States explains to a man cosplaying as a woman that it is “moral” to allow the mutilation of gender-confused children.