JB: Last time we spoke, you were warning readers about how "The West" is dangerously embracing the very same ideas that led to much – if not most – of the vast suffering and misery we saw in the 20th century: the whole suite of collectivist ideas, essentially.

I felt this acutely as I travelled through Brussels – "Europe's Capital" as it's sometimes known – a few weeks ago. You can feel a fundamental shift in attitudes there.

What do you make of the situation in these so-called "progressive" societies?

DC: When I first visited Brussels, in 1966, it was a delightful little city. You could go to the downtown and see the Manneken Pis, hang out in the Grand Place, have an inexpensive bowl of moulles pommes friteswith a beer, and fit in easily. Everybody you saw was, more or less, representative of Western Civilization.

I was last there about five years ago; it had changed.

I presume, on your recent trip, that you found that a lot of the people were Muslims, from either the Middle East or Africa south of the Sahara. Was that the case?

JB: I'd say so, yes. I stayed right off the Grand Place and was certainly in the minority… and in more ways than obvious.

The mix seems, at a glance, to be one of ultra-conservative religious attitudes alongside ultra-progressive political intuitions – essentially, Islamists and neo-Marxists, respectively. They come together in that strange concoction one sometimes hears referred to as "multiculturalism" … whatever that means.