Shawn Fleetwood of the Federalist assesses the Trump administration’s vocal support for free speech around the globe.
Since its founding, the United States has long been considered a champion for basic natural rights throughout the civilized world. Not content with simply guaranteeing these principles at home, America has sought to use its reputation and influence to pressure foreign leaders to ensure such principles for their own peoples.
But in recent years, U.S. leadership’s commitment to upholding God-given rights to free speech and religion has fallen by the wayside. Under President Joe Biden, America was no longer a defender of natural rights, but an assailant of them.
In addition to weaponizing the legal system to target his political opponents (including Christians), the 46th president and his administration undertook what was arguably the largest attack on free speech in modern U.S. history.
The administration colluded with Big Tech companies to censor Americans whose views ran counter to the government’s preferred narratives and funded censorship tools to achieve similar goals. Biden’s untoward desire to stifle free speech was so potent that he spent his final days in office lamenting decisions by social media entities to stop using manipulative left-wing “fact-checkers” to throttle disfavored speech on their platforms.In the span of four years, the Delaware Democrat morphed the United States from the world’s leading champion for natural rights into a knock-off version of an increasingly despotic Europe.
Which brings us to Vice President J.D. Vance’s monumental speech at the Munich Security Conference.
America’s vice president could have easily used his address to regurgitate the same worn-out platitudes about diplomatic “cooperation” and “improving relations” routinely espoused by Washington and European dignitaries. Instead, he took a much bolder approach.
Throughout his nearly 20-minute remarks, Vance gave a full-throated defense of free speech. While acknowledging the Biden administration’s censorship practices, Vance eloquently explained the importance of maintaining open discourse in civil society and lambasted self-professed “democratic” European states for deploying authoritarian tactics to silence their own peoples.
