General Michael Flynn has been offered the post of national security adviser in Donald Trump’s administration. Flynn is a senior intelligence officer and during the election campaign he was vociferous in his denunciation of Hillary Clinton, even leading the chants for her to be locked up. He is also a long-standing critic of Obama’s military policies – or what he regards as the lack of them. In particular he has called for a fiercer response to Islamic State. He is on record as having said, “It’s rational to fear Muslims.” On the BBC’s Today Programme, the presenter Nick Robinson described Flynn’s statement as “controversial.” So that’s the BBC’s assessment of what counts as controversial! How so when for decades Muslims have been shooting, bombing, dispossessing and otherwise terrorising people in large numbers on three continents? But the left wing establishment – that politically correct amalgamation of politicians, senior churchmen and huge sections of the media – insists that we shouldn’t notice the slaughter. As a priest in the Church of England, I wish we would adopt the attitude and policies of some of our best forebears. In the Burgundian town of Vézelay, on 31 March 1146, St Bernard of Clairvaux delivered his