US Vice President Urges European Leaders to Return to Core Values They Share with the United States
On February 14th, U.S. Vice President JD Vance gave a speech at the Munich Security Conference (you can find the full transcript here) that likely took some delegates by surprise. Instead of focusing on external threats to Europe, Vance turned his attention to what he argued should be viewed as “internal” threats to the European project and way of life, “the threat from within,” which was more worrying, in his view, than Russia, China, or “any other external actor.”
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The threat he was referring to was the steady erosion of traditional European - and Western - values like freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the right to protest. Any civilisation worth its salt will have certain lines it will not cross. But these lines are becoming increasingly blurred in Europe. Vance’s speech could be viewed as a sage admonition to European citizens and public officials to pull back from the brink, and refrain from destroying its moral and legal foundations.
The idea that great societies collapse under the weight of their own corruption is certainly nothing new. For example, many historians believe the Roman Empire came undone primarily due to internal division and corruption, rather than due to the military prowess of a competing power. But internal corruption is not always easy to recognise in real time: you have to have eyes to see it. Things often look more or less “normal” to the average citizen until the system starts to crumble in conspicuous or spectacular ways.
There will be those who resent a U.S. official coming to Europe to warn Europeans that their society is drifting away from its core values and thus at risk of falling apart. But sometimes, it takes a foreigner to recognise and deliver uncomfortable truths that the native would prefer to ignore. And it is very much in our own interests to hear uncomfortable truths, even if we do not particularly like where they come from.
And what are those truths exactly?
First, there are those in Europe who embrace the idea that citizens’ political choices should be second-guessed and filtered out by a more enlightened political class: indeed, that entire elections should be cancelled just because some foreign propaganda gets fed into citizens’ social media feed.
Vance mentions how “a former European commissioner (Thierry Breton) went on television recently and sounded delighted that the Romanian government had just annulled an entire election” and “warned that if things don’t go to plan, the very same thing could happen in Germany too.” This is a very slippery slope: how much foreign propaganda or “disinformation” is sufficient to cancel an election? And who exactly decides the tipping point?
Second, European leaders are growing ever more aggressive in their determination to shut down social media messages that they perceive to constitute “hate speech” or to be “misogynistic.” For example, the EU Commission has said it will use the Digital Services Act as an instrument for shutting down “hateful content.”
In Germany, as Vance pointed out in his speech, “police have carried out raids against citizens suspected of posting anti-feminist comments online as part of ‘combating misogyny’ on the internet.” Because “hate speech” is a thoroughly contested and politically charged concept, it inevitably serves as a proxy for political censorship.
Third, the right to protest and even pray in public places is coming under attack in Britain, where prayer in the vicinity of abortion clinics, including silent prayer, is being treated as a crime. The case of Adam Smith Conner is particularly revealing. This gentleman, an army veteran, was charged two years ago with the crime of standing nearby an abortion clinic in the public street and silently praying for his unborn child who had been lost to abortion. Apparently, he had broken the government’s “buffer zone laws.” So silent prayer is now a criminal offence in Britain.
Fourth, Vance underscores the problem of “mass migration” in Europe. Europe is undeniably taking in very large numbers of non-EU migrants, frequently under the guise of “international protection applicants,” often with strong welfare incentives, and even if immigration not completely “out of control” in the EU, as Vance suggests it is, it is certainly a problem that has been grossly mismanaged to the detriment of European citizens and their safety.
While a large intake of migrants with limited vetting may appear commendable from a humanitarian perspective, the numbers admitted have overwhelmed Europe’s migration system, unleashed serious tensions with local communities, and given rise to unprecedented and extremely disturbing forms of street violence, like cars being rammed into crowds, and children children being attacked with knives.
Last but not least, the rhetoric of many European politicians has implied that a significant section of their electorate are “far right” extremists or are a “danger to democracy.” So the voices of some citizens are muted by political correctness, and the central idea of democracy, that citizens have a right to participate and express their concerns, is abandoned.
The steady erosion of free speech and other civil rights across Europe are indeed a “threat from within” because without effective rights to protest, practice one’s faith, participate in political life, feel safe from violence, and speak freely, democracies becomes authoritarian, governments lose legitimacy, and political leaders are not held accountable for their actions.
Ultimately, when you scratch beneath the fancy Eurospeak about making the world a “safer” and more “inclusive” place, you just end up with the idea that Big Brother knows best, and as Vance aptly put it, “it looks more and more like old entrenched interests hiding behind ugly Soviet era words like misinformation and disinformation, who simply don’t like the idea that somebody with an alternative viewpoint might express a different opinion or, God forbid, vote a different way, or even worse, win an election.”
But as so-called “far-right” parties (consider AfD in Germany, for example) grow to rival some of the old establishment parties, this rhetoric becomes increasingly unrealistic and anti-democratic: are we seriously suggesting that a large contingent of voters should simply be shut down or treated as enemies of democracy, because they do not tow the official line on immigration, abortion, or some other issue dividing society?
Vance is right that “dismissing people, dismissing their concerns or worse yet, shutting down media, shutting down elections or shutting people out of the political process protects nothing” and “is the most surefire way to destroy democracy.” And if the American revolution has taught us anything, it is that “telling millions of voters that their thoughts and concerns, their aspirations, their pleas for relief, are invalid or unworthy of even being considered” is a surefire recipe for alienating citizens from the democratic process and destabilising a political system.
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