“I’m not going to go to some backwoods country and tell them how to live their lives,” Vance added. “But European countries should theoretically share American values, especially about some very basic things like free speech.”
The US ranked 26th in the world when it comes to free speech, with several members of the European Union higher up the list, according to the 2024 Global Expression Report.
😑 I'm going to have to disconnect from the news more often moving forward
most of europe explicitly does not have free speech, because it's commonly understood that harmful speech exists. i don't know what he's trying to convey with that idea but he comes across as misinformed, and not a little bit controlling ("should")
American here! Its because this is all rhetoric for the idiots that follow him. He doesn't care if Europeans see him as an idiot, he cares that the idiots here see him as big brained. And the rubes eat up anything that has "free speech" in it because they generally interpret that as "its OK to be racist and misogynistic, its my right because freedoms!"
The important thing is, that in Europe free speech is normally defined as the freedom to say everything as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else. This is also with a lot of different forms of freedom. Your freedom ends where the freedom of others begin.
Americans always freak out when they hear Canada has hate speech laws and claim they're anti free speech.
Most of us don't ever need to worry about hate speech laws, because most of us aren't going around calling for violence and open bigotry against entire ethnic groups.
Not accepting hate speech, in particularly inciting violence is not contradictory to free speech in my opinion.
We should not follow the US idea, that speech is only free, if any vile poison can be spread. In the context of Musk that is also ironic, as he is using his powers to censor people.
As an American, I agree. Hopefully the Republicans try to go off the rails enough that the public finally gets convinced that the only way to deal with these maniacs is their own language - violence.
I hope you guys can get through it without anything dramatic happening, but I don't think the world can afford to rely on the US being consistently reasonable any more. This is genuinely Russia level stuff.
The people who voted for him unironically ain't the brightest bulbs. I guarantee they'll see Tr*mp blame Dems and run with it.
Even if they do see them going off the rails, there's no guarantees we'll be able to do anything about it. For all we know, he could easily turn the country into a dictatorship where nobody gets to vote for anything anymore. As Tr*mp has said before, He'Ll OnLy Be A dIcTaToR dAy OnE (or something along those lines). In English, I'm positive that translates to "Democracy Is Dead".
Why is that stupid? Europeans are dependent on him now. European leaders will demurely congratulate Trump and him on their victory and hope they won't be hit too hard by what comes next.
To call a bunch of countries that rank much higher than the States on quality of life “backwoods” is a pretty wild statement. The U.S. is the proudly unwiped asshole of the developed world.
Is the US power projection at the long term benefit of the EU though? The consistent destabilization of the Middle East for instance brought more tension to Europe as people had to flee from the region. EU member states getting dragged into US wars didn't help our image in the world either.
When it comes to defense, UK and France have enough nukes for effective deterrent. The EU is also large enough to thwart aggression at its borders and buffer zones like countering the Russian invasion of Ukraine, if the EU chooses to develop and maintain a joint defense infrastructure. Unfortunately that was postponed instead of forwarded after Biden won in 2020 and EU politicians went back to the status quo.
"Power projection" isn't necessary for a strictly defensive alliance.
The fact that a direct attack on one member counts as a direct attack on all members (some of which have nukes) is enough.
"Don't try to get the government involved in the business of billionaires, unless the government is giving them billions more of taxpayer dollars, or making it illegal to compete with them"
Why? If the US withdraws the rest can stay, the framework exists. It's a matter of reciprocity. NATO/the EU would just need to expand her nuclear arsenal
Yes the US is absolutely the 500 pound gorilla in the room, but if the US manages to burn their relations with their allies, and stuff like 5 eyes would cease, they are essentially blind. The US operates it's intelligence network at the behest of countries and relies on information sharing just as much.
And with Iran and a LOOOOONG list of groups and people and countries they fucked over, angered, bombed, etc... the US will not see the next 9/11 coming.
The US has a lot of capabilities, but if a group of radicals manage to hijack several planes and bring down your new York landmark and damage the Pentagon, just imagine what better organized and equipped players can do.
Oh, and NATO operates primarily US weaponry, this also has a reason. If the US withdraws from NATO I think we will see cancelled orders and an orders placed elsewhere.. within NATO member states.
Nah, if they are dump enough to push it that far there will actually be a coup in the USA.
Those guys that are itching to go and coup or invade countries that do not align with US interests are not going to just allow the US empire to crumple because of Democracy of all things.
Domestically things might not be much better though and it's possible that the US will resemble pre-Erdogan Turkey. A democracy with the military as a guardian.