Just as the American mainstream media have become the propaganda arm of the Democratic party, so the once great FBI resembles little more than its private enforcement arm.

Attorney General Merrick Garland’s raid on Mar-a-Lago represented no more than an application of the principle that guided Stalinist Lavrentiy Beria, ‘Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime’.

Garland recently unleashed the FBI under, of all statutes, the Patriot Act, on parents merely for daring to speak out at school board meetings against schools filling children’s minds with the latest fashionable Marxist dogma, transgenderism.

Garland actually likened these parents to domestic terrorists.

The raid was approved by a federal magistrate-judge, one so hopelessly compromised politically that it was obvious he should have recused himself.

Garland hoped that something would be found to convict Trump in a trial before a Washington, DC jury where a little over five per cent actually voted for him.

The reason is the Democrats are terrified of a second Trump term and hope to disqualify him with a conviction. But their tactic has already backfired, solidifying support for Trump. And in any event, a conviction can be appealed, while the validity of the disqualifying legislation is questionable.

This pursuit of Trump should be contrasted with the FBI’s refusal to prosecute Hillary Clinton for placing sensitive communications on a private server, and then bleaching this clean and destroying equipment. This was allegedly done to hide emails concerning massive donations to the Clinton Foundation for favours done as secretary of state.

In addition, we should not forget the FBI has had Hunter Biden’s laptop since 2019. Although it contains strong evidence of a long-standing Biden family conspiracy to sell access and influence to the very heart of the administration to foreign oligarchs including those under the control of Beijing, little serious seems to be being done.

As to those who accept the US media view that Trump is unfit for office, they should reflect on the fact that in terms of foreign and domestic policy he made America great again. Indeed, in terms of what he achieved,  his exceptional record makes him clearly the greatest president since Ronald Reagan.

Trump is much condemned for not accepting the results of the 2020 election. Yet Mrs Clinton not only refused to accept the 2016 results, but she and her party also paid for the Steele dossier fabricating the lie that Trump won because of Russian collusion.

While Trump is blamed for the incursion into the Capitol building on 6 January, he had in fact offered National Guard contingents to protect the building. And he insisted his supporters protest peacefully.

It was his opponents who can be criticised.

First, they blatantly suppressed news about the Hunter Biden laptop, news which, subsequent polling found, would have significantly affected the vote.

Second, some Supreme Court justices refused, on a technical ground, but more likely out of fear of Democrat mobs, to hear the key case of Texas v. Pennsylvania.

Third, they argued, unlike the founders, that in processing electoral college voting, a vice president is no more than a rubber stamp.

The result was Biden became president, leading to the significant decline of the nation at home and abroad with a serious weakening of the half-century-old Pax Americana with the consequences we have seen in Afghanistan, the Middle East, Ukraine, Taiwan, and Iran.

If this decline accelerates and the United States falls from its dominant position, so will the West, with Australia particularly vulnerable. Because of political mismanagement and certainly not because of serving Australians, we are today in a weaker position, comparatively speaking, than in 1942. .

Then, it will be recalled British general, Arthur Percival, against Churchill’s clear instructions, disgracefully surrendered Singapore to a smaller Japanese contingent.

With this in mind, it is essential that all Australians appreciate their duties to the nation. Above all, this requires a certain realism and a reassessment of what is important. ‘Climate’ and other hysteria as well as division about race, sex and other matters should be replaced, as they were by our predecessors, by a love of country and a willingness to serve her.

Our leaders in government and industry have a duty not to encourage the following of the latest fashionable dogmas while they themselves should stop being guided, as many so often are, by self-interest and a refusal to face the truth.

Since the settlement, we have had the good fortune of being part of two of the most civilised and benign empires the world has ever seen.

We share with them the same language and the same respect for constitutional governance and the rule of law.

Recently, I had the opportunity to reflect on the emergence of the British and then the American centuries both of which flowed from the great victories achieved at Trafalgar and Waterloo. On the succession of the American imperial republic, as Raymond Aron called it, we should not forget an important fact. This is that like the enforcement of the abolition of the slave trade, the Monroe Doctrine which protected the fledgling US from European intervention, was only effective because it was guaranteed by the Royal Navy.

I reflected on this on the occasion of the fifth commemorative dinner for these two battles, convened by a remarkable loyal soldier and lawyer, Stephen von Muenster.

For these he assembled an eclectic group of soldiers, Australian and Allied, all exceptionally attuned to military history.

The commemoration dinner reminded me that unlike the monsters of our time, Napoleon was not an agent of the devil. That is what we face today.

And without the United States made great again, Australia’s future is probably bleaker than even in 1942.