Europe's Liege Lords

Vice President JD Vance recently delivered a speech to a conference hall of Euro-scolds that sent shock waves across the Old World. Some have called it the most consequential speech delivered by an American statesman to Europe since Reagan's "tear down this wall" exhortation nearly forty years ago. You can read it here and you can watch it here.

The core of the speech was a defense of free speech and religious liberty. It was also a harsh criticism of illiberal behaviors by Europe's leaders, behaviors that include cancellation of election results, the promise of more such, the banning of disfavored political parties from events that included that conference, the coercing of censorious behaviors by social media companies, and most importantly the criminalizing of forms of speech that exceed even our domestic authoritarians’ fantasies.

Remember - we have a First Amendment, they don’t.

He also pointed out the peril of massive unassimilated immigration, a matter I've been pinging for years. Those new to a culture should be expected to respect that culture's core principles, which include freedom of speech and free exercise of religion. What happened instead was a whole lot of "we demand that our social rules be elevated above those of our new homes." As in, legislated prohibitions against offending the new arrivals, and a blind eye to such atrocities as the "grooming gangs" and the deliberate decisions not to prosecute pedophilic rapists lest their community be offended.

I reiterate the “unassimilated” part. I quote Konstantin Kisin:

Multiethnic societies can work, multicultural societies cannot.

America’s culture has evolved with the arrival of every immigrant wave, but “melting pot” reflects the assimilation of those waves into the American value system, and in that assimilation, its enrichment.

The true message of the speech was that Europe should not expect America to continue the long-running relationship status quo.

That status quo has long had the feel of a feudal liege lord-serf interaction, with Europe as the high-born and condescending “know better” noble who is, ironically, fundamentally dependent on the fruit of the serf's labor for his survival.

In 2016, as Trump was getting ready to start his first term, only five NATO nations reached the 2% of GDP target for defense spending. That was the USA, Greece, the UK, Estonia, and Poland. In 2023, that number grew to nine, with the other Baltics, Finland, Hungary, and Romania joining the list.

There are currently 32 NATO nations.

I've been making the point for many years, well before Trump 1.0, that American taxpayers have been underwriting Western Europe's welfare states for decades via the Pax Americana that gave Europeans peace and security without them spending on their own defense. That insult has long been compounded by Europeans' snooty derision of American politics and values, making us Orwell's Boxer to their Napoleon.

Vance put some real fear into the calcified brainpans of Europe's elite by informing them that, should they continue to deviate from the traditional values we've shared with them, they should stop expecting Big Daddy Uncle Sam to continue bleeding Americans' wealth and sapping Americans' futures on their behalf.

In doing so, he also pointed out that this roomful of leaders were ignoring the expectations and concerns of their own citizens, especially with regard to the impact of mass unassimilated migration on their freedoms and values.

The feudal economic system is, deservedly, a relic of history. Its manifestation in the behavior of the European political commissars needs to be similarly relegated. The most beneficial political system yet devised - representative government overlaid on a framework of protections for individual and economic liberty - is incompatible with a passel of self-anointed Best-and-Brightest ignoring the will - and the welfare - of the masses in favor of their own social engineering policies.

Vance noted that:

We must do more than talk about democratic values. We must live them.

This applies to both the ruling classes and the populace. Leaders must elevate those values above all else, and citizens must both live them and demand others live them. When equality is abandoned in favor of favoritism and elevated status for certain groups, the fundamental values of Western civilization are dishonored.

Such values are aspirational as much as they are foundational. America's own history is an imperfect and irregular crawl toward the ideals set down in the Constitution, and we've seen periods of retreat (most recently during the Biden administration). There will be bumps and setbacks under Trump, but I think there will be net progress in the right direction.

That's more than I can say about the Europeans. Or at least the Western Europeans - many of the eastern and Iron Curtain nations seem to get it. The conference chair, Christoph Heusgen, lamented:

We have to fear that our common value base is not that common anymore.

When we contemplate which nation is suppressing speech, stifling dissent, and locking out opposition parties, Heusgen’s lament is both ironic and telling.

I don't expect Vance's speech to impel the Best-and-Brightest on that side of The Pond to have a come-to-Jesus moment. I've written multiple times that I think Europe is toast. But, if they step up their defense spending in response to the very real threat of having the Pax Americana blanket pulled back from them, I'll consider that a win. And, if they start actually reckoning with the growing illiberalism within their borders - both from the unassimilating migrants and from the entrenched elites - maybe there is hope.

But, iff nations like Germany continue their abandonment of the Enlightenment values that made Western civilization ascendant, American leadership would not be wrong in telling them “don’t expect us to underwrite your defense any more.”