By Suzanne Maresca of GAoG on February 15, 2025
Suzi’s Notes:
The Vice President is a brave man. He joked at the beginning of his speech that he hoped he wasn’t hearing the last of any applause from his audience, and he didn’t take long to launch into why he might say such a thing. It was a cold and stony audience for JD as he basically called out Europe’s leaders for The Great Replacement.
One of his great concerns has been “the threat from within: the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values…values shared with the United State of America.”
He brought up the various cancelled elections across Europe. “We must do more than talk about democratic values, we must live them.”
Vance commented on rampant censorship: “Free speech, In Britain and across Europe I fear, is in retreat.”
“Under Donald Trump’s leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer it in the public square, agree or disagree.” [Smattering of applause]
“If you’re running in fear from your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you.”
“I believe there is nothing more urgent than mass migration.”
“We know this situation didn’t materialize in a vacuum. It’s the result of a series of conscious decisions made by politicians all over the continent, and others across the world over the span of a decade.”
JD references the all-too-common “asylum seeker, often a man in his mid-20’s and who already knows the police, rams a car into a crowd and shatters a community. How many times must we suffer these appalling setbacks before we change course and take our shared civilizations in a new direction?”
“No voter on this continent went to the ballot box to open the floodgates to millions of un-vetted immigrants. But you know what they did vote for. In England, they voted for BREXIT.”
The Vice President continued:
“More and more all over Europe, they’re voting for political leaders who promise to put an end to out-of-control migration. Now, I happen to agree with a lot of these concerns, but you don’t have to agree with me. I just think that people care about their homes, they care about their dreams, they care about their safety and their capacity to provide for themselves and their children, and they’re smart.
I think this is one of the most important things I’ve learned in my brief time in politics, contrary to what you you might hear a couple of mountains over in Davos, the citizens of all of our nations don’t generally think of themselves as educated animals, or as interchangeable cogs of a global economy.
It’s hardly surprising that they don’t want to be shuffled about or relentlessly ignored by their leaders. It is the business of democracy to adjudicate these big questions at the ballot box.
I believe that dismissing people, dismissing their concerns, or worse yet, shutting down media, shutting down elections, or shutting people out of the political process protects nothing. In fact, it is the most surefire way to destroy democracy. Speaking up and expressing opinions isn’t election interference.
Even when people express views outside your own country, and even when those people are very influential.
Trust me, I say this with all humor, if American democracy can survive 10 years of Greta Thunberg’s scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk. [They weren’t amused.]
But what no democracy, American, German, or European, will survive is telling millions of voters that their thoughts and concerns, their aspirations, their pleas for relief, are invalid or unworthy of even being considered. Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters. There’s no room for firewalls. You either uphold the principle or you don’t.”
“We do not need to be afraid of the future.”
“Each of our citizens has wisdom and a voice, and if we refuse to listen to that voice, even our most successful fights will secure very little.”
