MILESFORTIS

Europeans Don’t Get Free Speech, and Neither Does CBS News, Apparently.
The network had a true banner weekend.

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, NR 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 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.