Speaker 1: What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to
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smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for
your support. So people think, oh, Pete, you get off
the air at three o'clock, that must be nice. Your
day ends at three o'clock. Haha, it does not, No,
it does not. For example, on Friday, well I do
the hangover with Brett Winterble, so it doesn't even end
at three. But at like three point fifteen, I left
the studio and I went home, and I started listening
to the speech that jd Vance, Vice President jd Vance
delivered at the Munich Security Conference where the previous day
like thirty blocks away and Islamis ran over a whole
bunch of people. We may not ever know the reason.
I think he was shouting something like a Loha snack bar,
so we may never know the motive. But Yeah. The
Munich Security Conference was the site for JD Vance's trip
to the wood shed with the European leaders, and he
delivered it not in some stern, angry way, but to
the woodshed they did go. 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
Union during the Cold War, right free society versus an
authoritarian society. And now, having you know, dispatched the USSR
to the dust bin 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.
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 on
the left, they hear the terms free speech and they
associate that with right wingers that somehow or another, the
concept of free speech is something that those evil, nasty
conservative right wingers are talking about, and and and they
just 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,
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
and then the people go and murder people like then
there are going to be penalties for that kind of speech.
But over in Europe they have begun to take and
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. There are a lot of people,
particularly on the left, the political left, that looked 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. 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. But for
some reason, this growing appetite to clamp down on dissension
among your own citizens. It is a it's a force.
It has gathered a lot of momentum, and I think
it was most acute we saw during the American elections
in twenty sixteen twenty twenty 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,
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'm thinking about. I think
I have about twenty minutes left of the three hour
interview that Mike Ben's did on the Joe Rogan Show,
and honestly, Joe Rogan, I think didn't even really speak
at all. It's like the whole three hours is Mike
Ben's 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 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. So Vice President JD. 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. I'm 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. It was a good run.
I had a good run. It was like fifteen twenty minutes.
I had it up that I had my moment. 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. 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. 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 events. 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 Like, maybe maybe you're not
the best person. Now, I'm just saying, given the German history,
I'm just saying, you might not be the best person
here to be the uh, 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, and
I know you do too, And you've probably heard me
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News as they make the media landscape more transparent. So
Vice President JD. 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 the historical dominant leader of the globe,
he said. He worries about, yes, threats from outside, but
also threats from within.
Speaker 2: The retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values,
values shared with the United States of America. 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.
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. And I say ourselves, because I fundamentally
believe that we are on the same team.
Speaker 3: We must do more.
Speaker 2: Than talk about democratic values.
Speaker 3: We must live them.
Speaker 1: He went on to say that he is concerned about
the slide in Western civilization since the Berlin Wall fell
in nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 2: 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. And consider the side and
that fight that censored dissidents, that closed churches, that canceled elections.
Speaker 3: Were they the good guys? Certainly not?
Speaker 2: And thank god they lost to 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. 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.
Speaker 1: Boom yeah. Mike Ben's 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 one, world War two. Right,
things moved into political warfare and the things that the
United States and the other Western countries did in order
to undermine autocratic governments and and you know, communist governments,
And there were all these different avenues. And that's why
USAI D, for example, is involved in so many different
operations including music. He yeah, apparently, like there are connections
with so many of our musical acts he mentioned by name,
dua lipa. Have you heard this of this performer? Yeah,
and there's another one. Remember that Russian punk band that
was another one bono from you two. Yeah, like it's
they're in everything and they were supposed to never turn
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memories that'll last a lifetime. JD. Vance went over to
Munich and told those Europeans what for? But I mean
it 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, 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, I just actually I just saw well I
didn't well, I don't know if I don't know if
I flagged the tweet, but I saw 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. L Passo seventy five. This is for the
first like what six weeks of the year, seventy five,
rgv Rio, Grand Valley eighteen, Laredo thirteen, Del Rio thirteen,
Big Bend seven. Total border crossings two hundred and thirty.
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 sold us, we have
to pass this border bill. 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. It
is a more humane approach to border security than to say, hey,
everybody downloaded an app and then if you can pay
the five thousand dollars to some rapist coyotes, then you
can get in anyway. You'll hear some of JD. 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. This is from the National Review. A majority
of French, German, Dutch, Italian and Portuguese citizens believe that
their country, their countries should have stricter border security measures
to curb illegal immigration. Most respondents to a Tyson Group
EU dash US Forum. It's a nonprofit of some kind.
I'm sure they're getting our money to 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.
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 find you.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 3: In Britain and.
Speaker 2: Across Europe, free speech, I fear is in retreat and
in the interests of comedy, my friends, but also in
the interests of truth.
Speaker 3: I will admit that.
Speaker 2: 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 so media companies to censor
so called misinformation. Misinformation like, for example, the idea that
coronavirus had likely leaped leaked from a laboratory in China.
Speaker 3: Our own government encouraged.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 3: So the Trump administration will do.
Speaker 2: Precisely the opposite, and I hope that we can work
together on that.
Speaker 1: So you mentioned in that clip safe access zones. 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. That's it's
a safe access zone. And then they just sent out
in Scotland, 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. 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
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five and online at create avideo dot com. Jd 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. And this brings
us back, he said, to this conference, that we're at
right here in Munich.
Speaker 2: Where the organizers of this very conference have banded 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, 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, 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,
when 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 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. But let
me also ask you, do 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.
Speaker 1: 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, 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 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. 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, 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 seventy thousand
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. 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. He says, but what are these nations
defending themselves for.
Speaker 2: What is the positive vision that animates this shared security
compact that we all believe is so important.
Speaker 3: And I believe deeply that there is no security if
you are afraid of.
Speaker 2: The voices, the opinions, and the conscience that guide your
very own people. 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. You need
democratic mandates to accomplish anything of value in the coming years.
Have we learned nothing that thin mandates produce unstable results?
Speaker 3: But there is so much of value that can.
Speaker 2: Be accomplished with the kind of democratic mandate that I
think will come from being more responsive to the voices
of your citizens.
Speaker 1: Right, this is very basic, elementary stuff. 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 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. I could not do
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