The biggest threats to democracy today are the inner impulses of northern governments, according to Vice President J. D. Vance, who cautioned Western leaders in Munich.
The risk that I worry about most about Europe is the threat from within, according to Vance, “while the Trump presidency is really involved with European stability and believes that we can reach a fair settlement between Russia and Ukraine.”
The vice chairman characterized the danger at the Munich Security Conference as” the surrender of Europe from some of its most basic values, principles shared with the United States of America,” according to the vice president.
Vance went through a number of instances in which Western leaders hailed the kind of repression and vote interference that the West after criticized.
” For decades, we’ve been told that all we bank, and help is in the name of our shared politics values”, Vance said. We should question whether we are holding ourselves to an appropriately higher standard when we see Western courts cancelling elections and top officials threatening to withdraw others when we see all from our Ukraine scheme to digital censorship billed as a protection of democracy.
Vance made reference to the Romanian election’s cancellation in December, which was approved by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR ) in January. The vice president also admonished leaders in Brussels, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, including Scotland, where Western governments have engaged in the repression and prosecutors of political opponents. Vance also criticized the promoters of this very event later in the conversation for having “banned politicians representing populist parties on both the left and the right from participating in these interactions.”
” Free speech, I fear, is in retreat”, Vance said,” and in the interest of comedy, my friends, but also in the interest of truth, I will admit that sometimes the loudest voices for censorship have come not from within Europe but from within my own country”.
Vance condemned the Biden administration’s bureaucratic pressure on Silicon Valley that” threatened and bullied social media companies to censor so-called’ misinformation.'” The previous administration’s attempts to discredit the lab-leak theory of COVID-19’s origins as an example were cited by the vice president as an example of how “our own government encouraged private companies to silence those who dared to say what turned out to be an obvious truth.”
The most likely explanation for the origin of the novel coronavirus was a Chinese laboratory in Wuhan, the Central Intelligence Agency ( CIA ) confirmed what other federal agencies had begun to admit in January.
” So, I come here today not just with an observation, but with an offer”, Vance said. ” In Washington, there is a new sheriff in town”.
” And under Donald Trump’s leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer it in the public square”, he said.
However, Vance said,” there is nothing more urgent than mass migration,” after warning European leaders about the democratic repercussions of their own censorship.
No voter on this continent cast ballots to open the floodgates to millions of unscreened immigrants, according to Vance, but you know what they actually voted for. In England, they voted for Brexit … and more and more all over Europe, they are voting for political leaders who promise to put an end to out-of-control migration”.
The vice president called on the continent to increase its own defenses and end Soviet-style censorship at the conclusion.
Vance said,” The business of democracy is to decide these significant questions at the ballot box.” ” I don’t think that preventing elections or excluding people from the political process protects anything,” he said.
” In fact, it is the most surefire way to destroy democracy”, Vance added.
The vice president also made fun of Elon Musk’s outcry at the end of the speech.
” If American democracy can survive 10 years of Greta Thunberg’s scolding, you can survive a few months of Elon Musk”, he said.
