{"id":107590,"date":"2025-02-17T14:50:39","date_gmt":"2025-02-17T20:50:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=107590"},"modified":"2025-02-17T14:50:39","modified_gmt":"2025-02-17T20:50:39","slug":"107590","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=107590","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Europeans Don\u2019t Get Free Speech, and Neither Does CBS News, Apparently.<\/a>
\nThe network had a true banner weekend.<\/p>\n

JD<\/span>\u00a0Vance<\/span>\u00a0spoke over the weekend at the Munich security conference on behalf of the United States \u2014 the primary topic was Ukraine, for obvious reasons \u2014 but instead of discussing the immediate geopolitical matter, he took his time at the rostrum to\u00a0deliver a harsh message<\/a>\u00a0to the European grandees gathered there about the enemy \u201cwithin.\u201d And he wasn\u2019t subtle in identifying that threat as the overreaction of Europeans to dissident populist parties:<\/p>\n

The threat that I worry the most about vis-a-vis Europe is not Russia, it\u2019s not China, it\u2019s 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.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2019t go to plan, the very same thing could happen in Germany too.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Now, these cavalier statements are shocking to American ears. For years we\u2019ve 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.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

But when we see European courts canceling elections and senior officials threatening to cancel others, we ought to ask whether we\u2019re holding ourselves to an appropriately high standard. . . .<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You may be outraged or shocked to see Vance speaking so bluntly to our European allies, but I, for one, am not.\u00a0I wrote about<\/a>\u00a0the canceled Romanian elections last December with shocked disbelief at the casual annulment of democracy on the flimsiest of pretexts \u2014 and in truth, merely for going unexpectedly wrong for the establishment party in power \u2014 by people who constantly scream about \u201cdemocracy.\u201d\u00a0Near as I can tell, NR was one of just five serious outlets\u00a0in all of American political media<\/em>\u00a0to even bother with a commentary about what was otherwise a completely ignored and blandly reported travesty of democracy. (\u201cNothing to see here, move along.\u201d And always, the paper-thin excuse: \u201cWhy are you complaining? You don\u2019t want the\u00a0Russians to win<\/em>, do you?\u201d No, but I don\u2019t like being transparently condescended to, either.)<\/p>\n

My only disagreement with Vance is that I suspect he is either making an intellectual category error or \u2014 more disingenuously but intelligently \u2014 arguing like a Straussian, subtly undermining his nominal point to demonstrate the hypocrisy of everyone he\u2019s speaking to in the audience.<\/p>\n

Let me explain rather simply: The Europeans\u00a0do not<\/em>\u00a0believe in \u201cfree speech\u201d in the same way Americans do, and never really have. Anyone who has spent even a moment\u2019s worth of study on the differences between Continental, British, and American speech laws \u2014 and how they have historically evolved \u2014 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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Only in the United States, with its First Amendment, are such principles codified \u2014 and foregrounded \u2014 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;\u00a0Nina Jankowicz<\/a> would argue for the worse.)<\/p>\n

Vance\u2019s entire speech is 20 minutes long and worth reading in full \u2014 he is the Trump administration\u2019s most effective advocate by far \u2014 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 \u2014 it is usually instead deployed by Europeans to lecture us.)<\/p>\n

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. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

But the crisis this continent faces right now, the crisis I believe we all face together, is one of our own making.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

If you\u2019re 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.<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No wonder\u00a0the Germans were weeping<\/a>\u00a0by the end of it all. Vance had called everybody in the audience on their bluff. \u201cYou\u2019re not afraid of your own people, are you?\u201d\u00a0Of course they are<\/em>. (And also, let\u2019s not kid ourselves, either: They have their reasons,\u00a0especially if they\u2019re Germans<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

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<\/strong>. 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.<\/p>\n

Margaret Brennan made headlines pontificating about\u00a0the origins of the Holocaust<\/a>\u00a0from too much \u201cfree speech\u201d \u2014 a topic for tomorrow\u2019s\u00a0Carnival of Fools<\/a>\u00a0because few in the media have more willingly donned clown makeup in recent weeks \u2014 but really it was\u00a060 Minutes<\/em>\u2019 remarkable praise of Germany\u2019s anti-free-speech laws that took the cake for me.<\/p>\n

Now,\u00a060 Minutes<\/em>\u00a0has had a pretty rough go of it lately, to be fair. I don\u2019t 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 \u2014 everything I said about that was already said\u00a0when I discussed<\/a>\u00a0his equally repulsive \u201crevenge lawsuit\u201d against Ann Selzer.<\/p>\n

But watching\u00a060 Minutes<\/em>\u2019 hosts nod sympathetically along with German state prosecutors and investigators as they calmly explained that every random racist internet insult in their country\u00a0was a prosecutable crime<\/a>\u00a0was both mildly horrifying \u2014 they presented this to America as\u00a0a preferable alternative<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 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 \u201cmanaged.\u201d Why shouldn\u2019t we hold them in equal contempt? They\u2019re as post-democratic in their impulses as Elon Musk, the man they hate, who\u00a0happily avers<\/a>\u00a0they 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Europeans Don\u2019t Get Free Speech, and Neither Does CBS News, Apparently. The network had a true banner weekend. JD\u00a0Vance\u00a0spoke over the weekend at the Munich security conference on behalf of the United States \u2014 the primary topic was Ukraine, for obvious reasons \u2014 but instead of discussing the immediate geopolitical matter, he took his time … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-enemies-foreign-domestic","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=107590"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107590\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107591,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107590\/revisions\/107591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=107590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=107590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=107590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}