How Europe manages the coming demands for change will determine the relationship it chooses to have with a new and emerging American renewal of constitutional free speech. Pictured: U.S. Vice President JD Vance. Photo Credit: JD Vance/Facebook.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance recently spoke in Europe about the dilapidated state of democracy in the Old World. With results from Germany showing Chancellor Olaf Scholz in third place behind the conservative Christian Democrats and the AfD (Alternative for Deutschland), Vance appears to be a prophet. Vance’s tough speech ruffled the feathers of some German politicians while many responded with strong reservations. Interestingly, young people in Europe liked it. They, like Vance, have noticed how illiberal Europe has become in recent years, unwilling to hear different voices, attempting to shut down dissent, and growing ever more censorious of ideas that do not align with elitist heterodoxy.
Vance pointed out what happened in Romania last year when elections were cancelled because of a so-called threat of Russian disinformation on TikTok. Ultimately, it was an internal scheme overseen by Romanian liberals who wanted to split the conservative vote. Still, numerous European leaders saw the Romanian objective as noble. Some have said they might do the same in Germany if the AfD looks too strong. Vance suggested in his speech at the Munich Security Conference that if Europe continues down this path the American-European partnership may have reached its nadir. With the success of the conservatives in these recent elections and AfD’s strong support, perhaps change is coming. Vance should be credited with seeing it in advance.
What Vance most emphasized was not accurately reported in the United States, much less Canada. The vice president pointed out the spread of censorship and the threat of regulating information as disinformation or misinformation in a top-down managed attempt to control what people heard because it may conflict with deep state messaging. If average people develop the wrong ideas, they may not elect the right people which might mean bureaucrats or long-time politicians could lose their entitled position of authority. Vance heard this often in his partnership with Trump and the entrenched government service wants nothing to do with this. They will go to great lengths to protect their spoils, and Vance called them out in his speech.
A strong example of Germany’s efforts to shut down opposition rests in the Euro. There had never been popular support for replacing the Deutschmark and no democratic action to legitimize its disappearance, but it happened anyway. Vance’s suggestion that technology sold to Europe will not be used to censor people is a direct challenge to European leaders. He told them that they could buy from China as an alternative. As Michael Brendan Doughtery said on National Review’s The Editors (Feb. 18, 2025), “…the gauntlet has been thrown before Europe. They can choose to be members of a Western Alliance or they can choose to be vassals of a Chinese Eurasian land empire.”
Not to be outdone, the dominant media in America had to provide a sympathetic treatment of German authorities hunting down people who had not followed the norms or posted the wrong stuff on the internet. They tout a type of “German Order” necessary to protect democracy, sounding more like Third Reich propaganda than liberal journalists advocating for free speech. Meanwhile, one of their prominent talking heads, Margaret Brennan, host of Face The Nation, declared that free speech led to the rise of Hitler. In Brennan’s world, perhaps elections should also be banned because Hitler did okay there as well. The segment and Brennan’s statement demonstrated why Vance had to speak up and what has become of free speech on the Left. Brennan’s assertions reflected the madness that has overtaken the mainstream media. One can hardly believe her understanding of what happened ninety years ago in Germany. Read her comment about Vance’s speech to Secretary of State Marco Rubio carefully, “…he (Vance) was standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide, and he met with the head of a political party that has far-right views and some historical ties to extreme groups…And you know that the censorship was specifically about the right.” Rubio had to provide her with a history lesson and correct the record, lest one of the preeminent journalists in America, anchoring a flagship program on one of the most heralded news programs at CBS validate whopping misinformation. Amending Brennan’s confusing claims, Rubio replies:
“Well, I have to disagree with you. No, no, I have to disagree with you. Free speech was not used to conduct a genocide. The genocide was conducted by an authoritarian Nazi regime that happened to also be genocidal because they hated Jews and they hated minorities and they hated those that they – they had a list of people they hated, but primarily the Jews. There was no free speech in Nazi Germany. There was none. There was also no opposition in Nazi Germany. They were the sole and only party that governed that country. So that’s not an accurate reflection of history.
I also think it’s wrong – again, I go back to the point of his (Vance’s) speech. The point of his speech was basically that there is an erosion in free speech and intolerance for opposing points of view within Europe, and that’s of concern because that is eroding – it’s not an erosion of your military capabilities. That’s not an erosion of your economic standing. That’s an erosion of the actual values that bind us together in this transatlantic union that everybody talks about. And I think allies and friends and partners that have worked together now for 80 years should be able to speak frankly to one another in open forums without being offended, insulted, or upset…
So again, at the end of the day, I think that people give all – that is a forum in which you’re supposed to be inviting people to give speeches, not a chorus where everyone is saying the exact same thing. That’s not always going to be the case when it’s a collection of democracies where leaders have the right and the privilege to speak their minds in forums such as these.”
And people remain perplexed about the mistrust half the population expresses about the dominant media.
In effect, Brennan, as Phil Klein of National Review concluded, “tried to own JD Vance and…make him look like the Nazi…there’s really no level on which you could argue charitably that…she had the shreds of a point there…you’re either arguing there was free speech in Nazi Germany, which is of course absurd. Or you’re saying that in Weimar Germany, there was something equivalent to a First Amendment, which allowed unbridled speech to take place in the 1920s in Germany, which is also completely fiction…it just makes no sense. I mean, if you flip this around, the idea is that what, if there were more restrictions on speech, then somehow the Holocaust wouldn’t have happened…it doesn’t…make any sense.”
Proponents of the First Amendment understand that Europe, portraying itself as enlightened and progressive, forward-looking and inclusive misses the American standard. What could be more inclusive than the First Amendment? Inclusivity does not tell people what they must believe and how they must express it. Inclusivity provides a constitutional order that courts uphold regardless of what you think even if you are the worst person in the world.
The U.S. Constitution has protected Klansmen, neo-Nazis, and crazy leftists intent on replacing the present order. The American system recognizes that the people in power do not get to determine who can say what and when or where. Sometimes it protects awful people and sometimes Frederick Douglass or Rosa Parks. Refusing to protect one means that you can’t protect the other. Europe does not understand this, one would hope an American news personality hosting a long-celebrated show would. Regardless, Vance has joined the battle, and Europeans will now decide whether they are ready to meet that challenge or yield to old habits. Germans seem to be seeking something more than the old ways. How the rest of Europe manages the coming demands for change will determine the relationship it chooses to have with a new and emerging American renewal of constitutional free speech.
Dave Redekop is a retired elementary resource teacher who worked part-time at the St. Catharines Courthouse as a Registrar until being appointed Executive Director at Redeemer Bible Church in October 2023. He has worked on political campaigns since high school and attended university in South Carolina for five years, earning a Master’s in American History with a specialization in Civil Rights. Dave loves reading biographies.
