Sarah Chidgey, of the Attorney-General's Department, infamously demanded that Tony Abbott explain why he should not be required to register as an agent of foreign influence after addressing last year's CPAC conference. Has Ms Chidgey asked the same of business leaders and fellow public servants who have enjoyed China Matters' hospitality? If not, why not?

Liberal democracy lost its vital aura of legitimacy amid the tumult of the Sixties and it has never recovered. 'The best lack all conviction / while the worst are full of a passionate intensity,' observed Yeats, who would have found no novelty in the statue-topplers, bleating mobs and corporate appeasers who are once again doing their worst

In France, while the immigrant enclaves swell with the self-righteously enraged, calls for the better integration of Muslims are denounced as racist by the elites who betray their heritage of liberté, égalité, fraternité. The future, according to a pair of best-selling books, belongs to Islam

Writing in Quadrant, Mervyn Bendle took to task the new breed of historians who seem bent on destroying the Anzac Legend. One of his subjects, rather than the debate the issues he raised, reacted by demanding that the essay be removed from public view. Alas, such arrogance is entirely typical

The Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) is proposing to introduce a radical national history curriculum that encourages students to criticize, ridicule, and debunk (‘deconstruct’) the Anzac tradition.