Speaking at the Munich Security Conference in February, US Vice President JD Vance ruffled some feathers with the following words:
“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, and thank God they lost the Cold War.
They lost because they neither valued nor respected all of the extraordinary blessings of liberty, the freedom to surprise, to make mistakes, to invent, to build.
As it turns out, you can’t mandate innovation or creativity, just as you can’t force people what to think, what to feel, or what to believe. And we believe those things are certainly connected.
And unfortunately, when I look at Europe today, it’s sometimes not so clear what happened to some of the Cold War’s winners.
I look to Brussels, where EU commiss- — commissars warn citizens that they intend to shut down social media during times of civil unrest the moment they spot what they’ve judged to be, quote, “hateful content.”
Or to this very country, where police have carried out raids against citizens suspected of posting anti-feminist comments online as part of, quote, “combating misogyny on the Internet, a day of action.”
I look to Sweden, where, two weeks ago, the government convicted a Christian activist for participating in Quran burnings that resulted in his friend’s murder. And as the judge in his case chillingly noted, Sweden’s laws to supposedly protect free expression do not, in fact, grant — and I’m quoting — “a free pass to do or say anything without risking offending the group that holds that belief.
And perhaps most concerningly, I look to our very dear friends, the United Kingdom, where the backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious Britons, in particular, in the crosshairs.”
Vance’s speech was not greeted with much enthusiasm among the Eurocrats in attendance. The Munich Security Conference was supposed to be an extended Two Minutes Hate against Russia and Vladimir Putin. Vice President Vance suggested that many so-called democracies in NATO and the European Union ought to reexamine their own commitments to liberty on the home front instead.
This was more than just an American vice president not minding his business. If the United States and Europe are not united by shared values, then what does unite us? If Europe is no longer free, then why should anyone care if Ukraine eventually joins the European Union, or is absorbed back into the Russian Empire?
Vance’s speech came across as a little ham-fisted, even for a free-speech absolutist like me.
But Vance adduced concrete examples. And today, alas, we have another one.
Today a phalanx of armed British police arrested Irish-born comedy writer Graham Linehan for the crime of making anti-trans tweets on X. Linehan, like fellow British writer J.K. Rowling, has run afoul of twenty-first-century speech codes in the past.
In the USA, some semblance of sanity is returning on these issues. But in the United Kingdom, simply asserting that men are men and women are women is still considered a thoughtcrime.
Which brings us back to Russia. I was never a fan of the Soviet Union, and I’m not a fan of the current leadership in the Kremlin. I wish the people of Ukraine a peaceful and independent future—provided that is possible without provoking World War III.
To be honest with you, though, I’m a lot more worried about the United Kingdom and Keir Starmer right now. We always knew what Russia was really about. Britain was supposed to be different.
-ET