I really dislike most of Europe’s political leaders. So many are prissy aristocrats who deserve a wet finger in their ears or their underpants pulled over their heads. They all display an obnoxiously snobby demeanor and tip their heads so far back that you’d think they had eyeballs inside of their noses. The U.K.’s Keir Starmer; France’s Emmanuel Macron; Poland’s Donald Tusk; Germany’s Olaf Scholz; and Europe’s reigning queen, Ursula von der Leyen, all remind me why so many of our ancestors risked life and limb to escape the lords and ladies of Europe.
As a red-blooded American from a part of the country where “Live Free or Die” and “Come and Take It” still mean something, I do not enjoy having European toffs lecturing us about the blessings of “green” energy, the dangers of free speech, or the morality of turning a Ukrainian civil war into an excuse for turbo-charging WWIII. I find it stunning that the leftovers from Europe’s hereditary guild of inbred nobles still see themselves as global leaders of anything when they lack the military strength to protect their own countries from invasion.
For eighty years, American schoolchildren have read in simple textbooks about the importance of rebuilding Europe’s struggling post-WWII economies with financial aid through the Marshall Plan. They have learned why American troops were needed to safeguard Europe from the scourge of the Soviet Union’s expanding “Iron Curtain.” Even with these events put into their proper historical context, though, I suspect that most young Americans learning about them for the first time fully expected America’s umbrella of economic and military protection to one day end. When the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed, America’s mission in Europe seemed complete. After all, how many decades could the United States be expected to foot the bill for Europe’s security?
Apparently, the answer is “forever.” To this day, one-sided trade “deals” restrict most American exports from ever reaching Europe while giving European producers much greater access to American consumers. For all of the West’s blather about “free trade,” we have highly controlled markets that are engineered to artificially stimulate Europe’s economy at America’s expense. At the same time, the United States continues to shoulder most of the military costs for defending Western Europe, freeing up European governments to invest their treasury savings in projects that might greatly benefit their own citizens. How have European leaders used these economic and military gifts from the United States? They have adopted oppressive forms of socialism that make many Americans wonder whether anything was really gained by liberating Europe eighty years ago.
Censorship and political persecution are endemic across Europe today. The U.K. locks up pro-life Christians for praying silently on the street. Germany arrests citizens for making fun of politicians online. Romania cancels elections when the “wrong” candidate wins. European governments may be too impotent to declare war against actual foreign enemies, but they are lions when it comes to waging war on their citizens’ private thoughts and public speech.
Europe used to have some of the most fascinating writers, artists, and intellectuals in the world. For hundreds of years, they challenged social convention and expanded human knowledge. Today, freethinkers who express unapproved opinions are not welcome. Science is always “settled.” Dissent is always “misinformation.” Unsanctioned points of view are always “hate speech.” Europe has constructed a prison around the minds of its citizens and calls this “freedom.” Europe has built an unaccountable bureaucracy that forces its citizens to obey and calls this “democracy.” The European Union is fast becoming the “politically correct” reformulation of the old Soviet Union.
That leaves Americans in a tough place — at least those of us in the United States who believe that personal freedom is worth any price. As Vice President Vance pointed out in Munich last week, “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 cancelled elections. Were they the good guys? Certainly not.” For freedom to survive in Europe, Vance argued, European leaders “can’t force people what to think, what to feel, what to believe.” In effect, Vance held up a mirror to the continent’s “ruling class” and asked them to consider how much they resemble the totalitarians of Europe’s recent past.
Covering their eyes and ears, those present understood nothing. Instead, many European leaders condemned the vice president’s speech as deeply insulting. They were flabbergasted that an American leader could see in their lands the growing shadow of despotism. They preferred to mock Vance’s effort as “silly and immature,” rather than to recognize it as the warning that it was. America has done much to support Europe’s survival this last century, but Americans have no interest in subsidizing tyranny.
Vance’s speech was more than a warning to Europe’s Old Guard. It was also a message of support for those in Europe who today feel ridiculed, silenced, and persecuted. As President Trump’s most visible emissary, Vance was telling those who have been censored and harassed that the new American administration has their backs. During the Cold War, Europeans who fought for freedom became heroes. Vance is encouraging a new generation of heroes to fight for free speech again today. In the United States and across Europe, liberty-loving people must unite.
