The Balls of Freedom

JD Vance has thrown down the gauntlet to Europe's autocratic impulse

It’s not often that a politician who isn’t a President makes a speech that is so clear, so honest and so in your face that it will be referenced and hotly debated for as long as we’re still pretending to be a Democracy. Most of us have made our peace with the fact that we probably have not lived in a Democracy in our lifetime. Here in NA, it’s billionaires all the way down. And we’re fine with that. As long as they do not directly limit what can be thought and said publicly, let them do what they do best. Which in NA is build ever greater technical empires that may yet do good but are always on the knife edge between the devil and the deep blue sea of a free society. Sometimes, they even nudge us towards true Democracy. When it suits them. As it does at present.

The thing is, Vance is not your typical billionaire. He’s a guy who came from self-declared ‘hillbillies’, from utter poverty. He is now very wealthy but he hasn’t forgotten where he came from. From any viewpoint, he is the American Dream of upward mobility, incarnate. And that is why his speech is important. This is a man who has a conscience as well as drive and intelligence. This is in fact, a man of the people. Maybe his ideas about listening to we the people, even in corrupted Europe, should be respected if not admired.

And let’s not forget how, during the Covid era, we found out exactly what it feels like to live under the heavy hand of an autocratic regime, Whether in Europe, the USA or Canada, nobody was free to say what they thought of ‘vaccines’, lockdowns, or have any opinions other than the approved ones on where the virus originated. The world had become a totally politicized space; free was over. Kaput. Gone.

Four years later, the US is no longer in the thrall of this terrible event. Indeed, it is doing everything to shake it off and begin again. Under the Trump Team, the US is showing its balls. There is even a young guy on the Musk Dogeteam whose online handle was ‘big balls’. Sometimes the universe makes things up that in your wildest moments you wouldn’t have dared to imagine. Of course, the kid (he’s 19) was fired immediately. There was a storm of ‘controversy’. And then, he was rehired. So now I can say with confidence that the Dogeteam has at least one guy with a big ball.

That they need at least two became obvious yesterday when JD Vance gave this speech at the Munich Security Conference. I believe everybody should read it or better yet, listen to it and decide for themselves if this is a guy they want to speak for our beleaguered democracy or not. It became immediately clear that the audience hated everything he said for the simple reason that he pointed out the current European obsession with ‘saving democracy ‘ by shutting up the voices they deem extreme or simply do not like. It’s like bombing Vietnamese villages to ‘save’ them all over again.

I hope that is enough to whet your appetite. Instead of listening to the speech, here is a transcript for those who prefer to read.

https://thespectator.com/topic/read-jd-vance-full-speech-decay-europe/?utm_source=Spectator%20World%20Signup&utm_campaign=8330625b6d-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2025_02_14_08_42&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-8330625b6d-157081551

And if you are rather on the opposite side of Vance, here is what they think of Vance’s speech in Germany:

https://www.dw.com/en/msc-2025-vance-speech-aggravates-europeans/live-71599568

I rest my case: if you want to tell the truth to people who don’t like you, you’d better have big balls. Like JD Vance.