The Call Is Coming From Inside the House
Vice President JD Vance melted the minds of the West in February when he spoke at the Munich Security Conference and suggested that Europe’s greatest threat was not in Moscow… but within. If you haven’t seen the video, do it now. Vance’s remarks were some of the most memorable I’ve ever heard from an American politician.
Star Wars fans will get this, but it’s like when Obi-Wan Kenobi tells his fallen student, Anakin, that he’d “become the very thing [he] swore to destroy.”
His question to Europe was simple. What good is it fighting back against the tyranny and totalitarianism of China and Russia if, in the process, we slide into the same dystopian 1984-style governance that we supposedly have agreed to oppose?
Well, Europe didn’t like that very much. Shocker.
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We’re losing touch with who we are in the West, so I went to a conference in London dedicated to reminding the democratic nations of the West who they are, where they come from, and where they must be going if freedom is still the goal. That was the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference—basically an anti-Davos gathering founded by Jordan Peterson and others.
One of the central concerns of the summit was the shifting dynamics of global power between authoritarian states (Iran, China, Russia, Venezuela, North Korea) and liberal democracies (America, Germany, Britain, France).
It very much feels like the autocrats have wind in their sails lately. They’re hungry for a sea change in the post-World War II global order.
Our side, it seems, is tired and divided. We can’t agree anymore on what a woman is, much less what it means to have free speech and open discourse.
In Germany, authorities now conduct raids under the cover of night against individuals accused of posting "hate speech" online. They’re seizing devices and imposing severe fines. Did you see the 60 Minutes (CBS) report? Prosecutors in Germany argue that online speech must be policed to maintain social order and that fines should be higher for online insults than insults made in person…
By the way, what kind of “democracy” imposes fines on slinging insults in person?!
These are supposedly our friends in the ideological battle against Chinese and Russian Diet Communism.
This is now common across Europe, as seen in Britain’s prosecution of a man for silently praying outside an abortion clinic. The expansion of such measures even can cover private prayer in one's own home.
Persuasion and peaceful protest are being criminalized in Europe. That’s why Vice President Vance had to tell the Europeans to stop fearing their own people. He might as well have been the hero in V for Vendetta, encouraging Europeans to remind the powerful who they work for.
This deterioration is happening all across our society, especially in the institutions that keep the house of cards standing.
Newsrooms, academia, and courtrooms. All corrupted.
Consider that NPR leadership has even framed the First Amendment as a challenge to modern governance. A challenge to be overcome. That is scary and not normal.
Intelligence agencies and the federal bureaucracy are waging a new form of warfare—not with guns, but with narrative control. That’s what led to the gutting of USAID, which has funneled resources to manipulate media coverage across the world and in many cases, advance political narratives that are anathema to the survival of the West…
We are funding our own opposition and paying for messaging that is opposed to our own existence. Think about that. Imagine hiring a math tutor who’s actually spending the lesson encouraging your son to emancipate himself ASAP.
That’s quite literally what we’ve been doing with taxpayer dollars through the NGO industrial complex.
You should watch my full breakdown of my experience at the ARC Conference. The urgency of this moment cannot be overstated. If free speech is lost, so is every other liberty we enjoy.
The First Amendment stands as the ultimate check on government power, and its erosion is an existential threat to the Western way of life.
It’s not Russia and China who are trying to take away our right to speak freely and self-govern. No, that is coming from within, just as Vance said.
The next generation must be taught not just history, but moral discernment—the ability to recognize right from wrong in an era of institutionalized misinformation. They will need to be taught about the goodness of their cultural inheritance or else they won’t defend it.
Without this foundation, the West will just become what it has historically sought to destroy. It will stand as a hollowed out shell of a civilization, wearing “democracy” like a skin suit to disguise its new nature.
We can’t let this happen. Our trajectory must change, or else this ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’ thing is over.
Interesting that nobody said civics. We desperately need it. It's been a neglected subject in US schools for decades, and it shows in our society. Citizenship doesn't come naturally. It has to be taught, and learned, and it's not the same as being a consumer.
I am interested to hear what real teachers, and professionals at state and local areas are hoping for. But we all need to be involved in support of education including civics, culture, economics, geopolitics, literature and history. After a basic education of match, reading, writing, sciences, research and thinking and practical problem solving.