By Jeffrey Blehar
Monday, February 17, 2025
JD Vance spoke over the weekend at the Munich security
conference on behalf of the United States — the primary topic was Ukraine, for
obvious reasons — but instead of discussing the immediate geopolitical matter,
he took his time at the rostrum to deliver a harsh message
to the European grandees gathered there about the enemy “within.” And he wasn’t
subtle in identifying that threat as the overreaction of Europeans to dissident
populist parties:
The threat that I worry the most
about vis-a-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other
external actor. What I worry about is the threat from within. The retreat of
Europe from some of its most fundamental values: values shared with the United
States of America.
I was struck that a former
European commissioner went on television recently and sounded delighted that
the Romanian government had just annulled an entire election. He warned that if
things don’t go to plan, the very same thing could happen in Germany too.
Now, these cavalier statements
are shocking to American ears. For years we’ve been told that everything we
fund and support is in the name of our shared democratic values. Everything
from our Ukraine policy to digital censorship is billed as a defense of
democracy. But when we see European courts canceling elections and senior
officials threatening to cancel others, we ought to ask whether we’re holding
ourselves to an appropriately high standard. . . . Now, within living memory of
many of you in this room, the Cold War positioned defenders of democracy
against much more tyrannical forces on this continent. And consider the side in
that fight that censored dissidents, that closed churches, that canceled
elections. Were they the good guys? Certainly not.
You may be outraged or shocked to see Vance speaking so
bluntly to our European allies, but I, for one, am not. I wrote about
the canceled Romanian elections last December with shocked disbelief at the
casual annulment of democracy on the flimsiest of pretexts — and in truth,
merely for going unexpectedly wrong for the establishment party in power — by
people who constantly scream about “democracy.” Near as I can tell, National Review was one of just five
serious outlets in all of American political media to even bother with a
commentary about what was otherwise a completely ignored and blandly reported
travesty of democracy. (“Nothing to see here, move along.” And always, the
paper-thin excuse: “Why are you complaining? You don’t want the Russians to
win, do you?” No, but I don’t like being transparently condescended to,
either.)
My only disagreement with Vance is that I suspect he is
either making an intellectual category error or — more disingenuously but
intelligently — arguing like a Straussian, subtly undermining his nominal point
to demonstrate the hypocrisy of everyone he’s speaking to in the audience.
Let me explain rather simply: The Europeans do not
believe in “free speech” in the same way Americans do, and never really have.
Anyone who has spent even a moment’s worth of study on the differences between
Continental, British, and American speech laws — and how they have historically
evolved — knows that Europe as a whole knows no legally defined conception of
true freedom of speech and that England once had it but, without a written
constitution to turn tradition into fundamental law, has seen it eroded in
recent decades. Only in the United States, with its First Amendment, are such
principles codified — and foregrounded — in a way that has not only shaped our
culture from its earliest days but preserved that untamable expressive freedom
that is most essentially American within us. (I say for the better; Nina Jankowicz would argue for the
worse.)
Vance’s entire speech is 20 minutes long and worth
reading in full — he is the Trump administration’s most effective advocate by
far — but allow me one further excerpt from what must have landed in the room
like a rhetorical punch in the face. (You rarely see this sort of
schoolmasterly rhetoric deployed by United States diplomacy to properly scold
Europe — it is usually instead deployed by Europeans to lecture us.)
I believe deeply that there is no
security if you are afraid of the voices, the opinions, and the conscience that
guide your very own people. Europe faces many challenges. But the crisis this
continent faces right now, the crisis I believe we all face together, is one of
our own making. If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing
America can do for you. Nor for that matter, is there anything that you can do
for the American people who elected me and elected President Trump. You need democratic
mandates to accomplish anything of value in the coming years.
No wonder the Germans were
weeping by the end of it all. Vance had called everybody in the
audience on their bluff. “You’re not afraid of your own people, are you?” Of
course they are. (And also, let’s not kid ourselves, either: They have
their reasons, especially if they’re
Germans.)
You know who also is terrified of the people? CBS News.
Yes, CBS had a true banner Sunday for itself this weekend by tagging along with
Vance to Munich. And they made it clear they were on the side of the Europeans
weeping about having to listen to the angry voices of their constituents.
Margaret Brennan made headlines pontificating about the origins of the Holocaust from
too much “free speech” — a topic for tomorrow’s Carnival of Fools because few in
the media have more willingly donned clown makeup in recent weeks — but really
it was 60 Minutes’ remarkable praise of Germany’s anti-free-speech laws
that took the cake for me.
Now, 60 Minutes has had a pretty rough go of it
lately, to be fair. I don’t think Donald Trump has a leg to stand on in his
lawsuit against them (for editing a Kamala Harris interview), and I refuse to
dignify the matter with serious comment — everything I said about that was
already said when I discussed
his equally repulsive “revenge lawsuit” against Ann Selzer.
But watching 60 Minutes’ hosts nod sympathetically
along with German state prosecutors and investigators as they calmly explained
that every internet random racist internet insult in their country was a prosecutable crime was both
mildly horrifying — they presented this to America as a preferable
alternative — and perfectly explanatory as to their current position at the
bottom-most tier of American public respect: They fear us and think we, as
citizens, deserve to be informationally “managed.” Why shouldn’t we hold them
in equal contempt? They’re as post-democratic in their impulses as Elon Musk,
the man they hate, who happily avers they should be sent
to prison. Musk, whatever his other qualities, is clearly a megalomaniac with
zero respect for anything except the gratification of his own impulses. CBS
theoretically aspires to something more.
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