JD Vance to Europe: "Free speech is in retreat" (02-17-2025--Hour1)

[00:00:04] What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to 3 on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content, like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to thepetekalendershow.com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, write to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support.

[00:00:29] So, people think, oh, Pete, you get off the air at 3 o'clock. That must be nice. Your day ends at 3 o'clock. Ha ha! It does not. No, it does not. For example, on Friday, well, I do the hangover with Brett Winterbull, so it doesn't even end at 3. But at like 3.15, I left the studio and I went home and I started listening to the speech that J.D. Vance, Vice President J.D. Vance,

[00:00:58] delivered at the Munich Security Conference, where the previous day, like 30 blocks away, an Islamist ran over a whole bunch of people. We may not ever know the reason. I think he was shouting something like Aloha Snack Bar, so we may never know the motive.

[00:01:16] But, yeah, the Munich Security Conference was the site for J.D. Vance's trip to the woodshed with the European leaders. And he delivered it not in some stern, angry way, but to the woodshed they did go.

[00:01:35] He talked about how they are threatened from within. Why? Glad you asked. Because they are abandoning the very things that was essentially the West's unique value proposition. This was our strategic advantage versus the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

[00:02:02] Right? Free society versus an authoritarian society. And now, having, you know, dispatched the USSR to the dustbin of history, they have begun adopting, and we are part of the Western civilization, we have begun adopting some of the very things that the Soviets utilized.

[00:02:27] And that is not good. Not good. Particularly on the free speech front. And somehow or another, this concept of free speech has now turned into, like, on the left, they hear the terms free speech, and they associate that with right-wingers.

[00:02:52] That somehow or another, the concept of free speech is something that those evil, nasty, conservative right-wingers are talking about. And they just want to espouse hate. That's why they do it. Well, actually, you know, free speech has been a cornerstone of this project, this American project. Since its inception.

[00:03:20] And there are always, you know, court cases that test the boundaries of what is, you know, allowable under free speech, and what kind of restrictions there might have to be. I'm not going to say fire in a crowded theater, because that was not actually a Supreme Court ruling. So, there are restrictions, though. Like, you cannot, you know, call for, you can't go up there and, you know, direct people to go murder somebody, and then go and, and then the people go and murder people.

[00:03:49] Like, then there are going to be penalties for that kind of speech. But over in Europe, they have begun to take an ever more restrictive view on what is and isn't allowed. And we have seen this here. For some reason, and I don't understand why.

[00:04:10] There are a lot of people, particularly on the left, the political left, that look to Europe for guidance on a whole mess of stuff. And I don't understand why that is. Like, the people who came here from Europe came here because Europe stinks. Right? Well, I mean, at the time, let's just say that. Well, but they still kind of, anyway. Like, Europe was not a good place for them to be.

[00:04:39] They wanted to exercise religion. They wanted to exercise their free speech rights. They wanted to petition their government for redress. They wanted to own property. I mean, crazy things like that. And so, they fled. They left. They didn't like it. They didn't like what was going on over there. And so, I don't know why we look over there for any kind of guidance, really, on anything any longer.

[00:05:04] But for some reason, this growing appetite to clamp down on dissension among your own citizens, it is a force. It has gathered a lot of momentum. And I think it was most acute we saw during, like, the American elections in 2016, 2020.

[00:05:35] A little bit, but not so much. Well, I shouldn't say not so much. But not as much, let's say, as the previous two election cycles with Donald Trump. I believe, like, my own personal experience was that there was more ability for people to post stuff online, if that's any indication. But COVID was a really bad example of it, right? People getting deplatformed.

[00:06:03] And, by the way, all of this stuff connects back to the USAID operations. All of the NGOs. And I did also, over the weekend, get a chance to sit down and watch almost all. I think I have about 20 minutes left of the three-hour interview that Mike Benz did on the Joe Rogan show. And, honestly, Joe Rogan, I think, didn't even really speak at all.

[00:06:27] It's like the whole three hours is Mike Benz just going through all of the receipts, like, literally receipts, showing, you know, where this money comes from and where it goes and the operations.

[00:06:41] And whatever you think of the outcomes, the point is the same, which is that these government entities, these agencies and their affiliated NGOs have been used to foment color revolutions in other countries and now even our own. And that's a problem. That's a problem.

[00:07:06] So, Vice President J.D. Vance goes over to Europe, goes over to the Munich Security Conference on Friday, and he confronted them, according to the National Review report on this by Haley Strack, He confronted them over their support for authoritarian restrictions on speech, putting the assembled dignitaries on notice that the Trump administration expects the continent to revive its commitment to Western values.

[00:07:36] Not so sure that's going to work. CBS immediately rushes out to defend the Europeans on this. And I saw, where is it here, from Eric Erickson, talk show host out of Atlanta. And he makes a really good point on all of this. Oh, the Internet's down again. Oh, well. It was a good run. I had a good run. It was like 15, 20 minutes. I had it up. That, uh, I had my moment.

[00:08:04] Anyway, Eric says, a postmodern conceit of the left, the postmodernist left, is that free speech is bad and good speech is good. See, good speech is whatever advances the left's power. And defending free speech is to elevate Nazis.

[00:08:26] You may recall the ACLU used to defend the Klan and neo-Nazis because they, their argument was they, too, have the right to free speech. You may not like what they are saying, but they have a right to say things.

[00:08:46] Now, over in Europe, they do not have free speech protections like we have in America, which is why they can do some of the absolutely crazy authoritarian crap that they've been doing. And J.D. Vance, he also came with receipts and he laid them out. He gave like half a dozen examples of these authoritarian excesses. And then, of course, a guy from Germany gets up there and he's like, we're doing nothing wrong. Like, whoa, whoa, whoa, German.

[00:09:16] Like, maybe, maybe you're not the best person. And I'm just saying, given the German history, I'm just saying you might not be the best person here to be the the paragon of defending democracy. Because that's what they that's what they claim they're doing. They're defending democracy by silencing people. That's their argument. All right. If you're listening to this show, you know, I try to keep up with all sorts of current events.

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[00:10:39] Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports Ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. So Vice President J.D. Vance spoke to EU leaders about how they are drifting from the core tenets of liberal democracy or Western values. Right. These are the values that have made. The civilization.

[00:11:05] The historical dominant leader of the globe. He said he worries about, yes, threats from outside, but also threats from within. The retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America.

[00:11:26] Now, 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.

[00:11:50] 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.

[00:12:18] And I say ourselves because I fundamentally believe that we are on the same team. We must do more than talk about democratic values. We must live them. He went on to say that he is concerned about the slide in Western civilization since the Berlin Wall fell in 1991. 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.

[00:12:48] 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.

[00:13:15] 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. Boom. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:13:38] Mike Benz on the Joe Rogan podcast over the weekend when I watched most of that as well, talked about this shift that occurred after World War II, which was, you know, no more hot wars, right? The kind that we saw in World War I, World War II, right? Things moved into political warfare.

[00:14:01] And the things that the United States and the other Western countries did in order to undermine autocratic governments and, you know, communist governments. And there were all these different avenues. And that's why USAID, for example, is involved in so many different operations, including music.

[00:14:25] He, yeah, apparently, like, there are connections with so many of our musical acts. He mentioned by name, Dua Lipa. Have you heard of this performer? Yeah. And there's another one. Remember that Russian punk band? That was another one. Bono from U2. Yeah. Like, it's, they're in everything.

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[00:16:08] Or check out all there is to offer at CabinsOfAsheville.com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. J.D. Vance went over to Munich and told those Europeans what for. I mean, he basically went over and said, look, you guys, the whole point of this liberal democracy experiment of the West is to encourage self-governance. Right? Right?

[00:16:36] Is to have people express their opinions and for the leaders to then do what the people want them to do. That's the purpose. And when you restrict all of that, you are now on a road towards authoritarianism. Oh, he also talked about immigration, the rampant migration that Europe has been allowing, much like the – oh, actually, I just saw – well, I didn't – well, I don't know if I flagged the tweet.

[00:17:07] But I saw, like the number of border crossings at the different, like Eagle Pass and the various border crossing points. It's down – I think there – oh, here it is. I found it. As of – yeah, this is the total southwest border crossings as of yesterday. El Paso, 75. 75. This is for the first, like, what, six weeks of the year?

[00:17:37] 75. RGV, Rio Grande Valley, 18. Laredo, 13. Del Rio, 13. Big Bend, 7. Total border crossings, 230. And we didn't even need any new laws by Congress to do it, despite what the media and Democrats, but I repeat myself, and some Republicans, insult us, we have to pass this border bill.

[00:18:06] We need these tools. We can't possibly get control of this. So what happened? Were you guys lying? Yes, you were lying. We have all of the laws we need. We just needed to start enforcing them. And when you start enforcing them and telling everybody that you're going to be enforcing them, people stop coming, which actually saves lives, because the people don't die on the trek. They don't get raped on the trek.

[00:18:34] It is a more humane approach to border security than to say, hey, everybody, download an app, and then if you can pay the $5,000 to some rapist coyotes, then you can get in. Anyway, you'll hear some of J.D. Vance's comments on the migration issue, too. But he raises that issue because it is an example of how the leaders of these countries are not listening to their citizens. Here we go.

[00:19:02] This is from the National Review. A majority of French, German, Dutch, Italian, and Portuguese citizens believe that their countries should have stricter border security measures to curb illegal immigration. Most respondents to a Tyson Group EU-US forum. It's a nonprofit of some kind.

[00:19:32] I'm sure they're getting our money, too. They did this polling, and most respondents from France, Italy, Portugal, and the Netherlands all agree, quote, I am more worried today than I was a decade ago about government censorship of my ideas.

[00:19:49] Vance ran through a series, about half a dozen examples of laws and court rulings against free speech that are designed to protect people from being offended. Like, that's their rationale. You're going to offend somebody. Your comment is offensive to somebody, so therefore we're going to fine you.

[00:20:14] This last October, just a few months ago, the Scottish government began distributing letters to citizens whose houses lay within so-called safe access zones, warning them that even private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking the law. Naturally, the government urged readers to report any fellow citizens suspected guilty of thought crime. In Britain and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat.

[00:20:43] 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, where the prior administration threatened and bullied social media companies to censor so-called misinformation. Misinformation like, for example, the idea that coronavirus had likely leaked from a laboratory in China,

[00:21:11] our own government encouraged private companies to silence people who dared to utter what turned out to be an obvious truth. So I come here today not just with an observation, but with an offer. And just as the Biden administration seemed desperate to silence people for speaking their minds, so the Trump administration will do precisely the opposite. And I hope that we can work together on that. So he mentioned in that clip safe access zones.

[00:21:41] This is around abortion clinics. And they're arresting people for being in a, quote, safe access zone and silently praying. Right. Just standing on a sidewalk, head down, praying for the souls of the babies, praying for women to make a different decision. Right. They're just people are just standing there praying. And now you can't do that. That's illegal.

[00:22:09] That's a it's a safe access zone. And then they just sent out in Scotland. They they sent out a notice. Hey, if you happen to live in a house that is in a safe access zone, you can't even pray silently in your own home. This is insanity. Like, first off, how do you get busted for that?

[00:22:36] Somebody in your home who disagrees with you rats you out. This is the kind of stuff that we saw in authoritarian governments. That utilized secret police and they actually relied on their neighbors. That's the vast majority of this stuff of the ratting out of people that then were disappeared by the government. It came from their own neighbors and family. All right. I hope you had a happy holiday season. But tell me if something like this happened at your house.

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[00:23:58] Trust the experts at Create a Video, conveniently located in Mint Hill right off I-485 and online at createavideo.com. J.D. Vance said that with Donald Trump in office, there's a new sheriff in town. And while he says we may disagree on your views, we will fight to protect your freedom to express them in the public square.

[00:24:22] And this brings us back, he said, to this conference that we're at right here in Munich. Where the organizers of this very conference have banned lawmakers representing populist parties on both the left and the right from participating in these conversations. Now, again, we don't have to agree with everything or anything that people say.

[00:24:44] But when people represent, when political leaders represent an important constituency, it is incumbent upon us to at least participate in dialogue with them. Now, to many of us on the other side of the Atlantic, it looks more and more like old entrenched interests hiding behind ugly Soviet-era words like misinformation and disinformation.

[00:25:07] Who simply don't like the idea that somebody with an alternative viewpoint might express a different opinion or, God forbid, vote a different way or, even worse, win an election. Now, this is a security conference. And I'm sure you all came here prepared to talk about how exactly you intend to increase defense spending over the next few years in line with some new target. And that's great.

[00:25:34] Because as President Trump has made abundantly clear, he believes that our European friends must play a bigger role in the future of this continent. We don't think you hear this term burden sharing, but we think it's an important part of being in a shared alliance together that the Europeans step up while America focuses on areas of the world that are in great danger.

[00:25:56] But let me also ask you, how will you even begin to think through the kinds of budgeting questions if we don't know what it is that we are defending in the first place? Right. Right. Right. Like, what is it that we're trying to defend? Is it just, you know, the infrastructure of power that currently exists and that's what you're defending? Well, that's not a defense of the democracy. Right.

[00:26:23] You're abandoning your values, the things that made us superior. You're abandoning those for personal political gain, to maintain control so you can be calling the shots. You've got like there were politicians, as he said in that clip, that were not allowed to come to this conference. For political reasons.

[00:26:50] Because they're expressing opinions that citizens that they represent hold and you don't like those opinions. And so you're just going to shut them out. You're going to pretend that it's oh, it's just some fringe idea. Oh, they don't represent people. Oh, my gosh. You saying this thing about, you know, limiting immigration, that that is, you know, that's offensive. That's racist or some, you know, phobia.

[00:27:20] That's a threat to the democracy. Right. It is the fatal conceit of the central planners and it manifests itself in all these different ways. And this is one of them, which is we don't need the wisdom of the crowd. I've given this example before. I forget it was who told it to me one day during an interview during COVID. And the example he gave was, you know, Anthony Fauci. You go.

[00:27:49] He goes to a baseball game at the Washington National Stadium. And he may be the smartest person in that stadium, but he is not smarter than everybody in that stadium. Everybody of the 70,000 people, they are going to have collectively more wisdom, more intelligence and knowledge about all sorts of other stuff than he will. He cannot be smarter than all of those people put together. And that's the fatal conceit.

[00:28:19] They think that they know these things, whether it's about planning the economy, planning immigration, foreign policy, whatever it is, zoning. Right. All of these types of these types of issues, they think, well, I know what's best. I'll do the thing that's best. I encounter this all the time. He said that the security conference has focused a lot on what they are defending themselves from.

[00:28:46] He says, but what are these nations defending themselves for? What is the positive vision that animates this shared security compact that we all believe is so important? And 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.

[00:29:12] 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?

[00:29:37] You need Democratic mandates to accomplish anything of value in the coming years. Have we learned nothing that thin mandates produce unstable results? But there is so much of value that can be accomplished with the kind of Democratic mandate that I think will come from being more responsive to the voices of your citizens. Right. This is very basic elementary stuff.

[00:30:03] You cannot govern a citizenry that disagrees with your governance. They will eventually revolt. It becomes an unstable society. And then you end up having to, you know, crack down, clamp down more and more violence and authoritarian policies against your own people. It's not sustainable and it is not the thing that the West was built on. All right. That'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening.

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