BY PAUL E. FORTE
Vice President J. D. Vance shocked the Munich Security Conference in February of this year by leveling serious charges against German government officials and others who he alleged are suppressing free speech.
Paul Forte
It was hypocritical, said Vance, to do so and talk about saving democracy. The suppressed speech he had in mind was that of the Alternative for Germany (AFD), a right-wing group that uses Nazi slogans and symbols illegal under current German law. Professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington University called Vance’s performance “truly Churchillian.”
While it is not surprising that Professor Turley should wish to invoke the name of Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965), who was twice prime minister of Great Britain and is recognized worldwide as the greatest leader of the 20th century, his ascription to Vance of “truly Churchillian” is utterly erroneous except perhaps with respect to audacity.
For Churchill understood before others the menace that Nazi ideology posed to the security of Europe, even as he was among the first in the post-War era to challenge Stalin’s brutal communist dictatorship.
Were he alive today, Churchill would defend free speech, but he would point out that unlike the U.S., whose First Amendment enjoins content neutrality, Germany rejects certain forms of speech due to its past conduct, conduct to which he worked to put an end. Efforts at censorship must therefore be viewed in context.
German officials are rightly concerned that giving AFD free reign could strip away everyone’s right of free speech. This was the hard lesson they learned from Alfred Hugenberg, the German minister whose control of the media in the 1930s buried the Weimar Republic, and later Joseph Goebbels, who built on Hugenberg’s initiatives to give Hitler absolute power in the 1940s.
Vance’s Munich address was in truth part of an agenda that is distinctly un-Churchillian with respect to the principles and values set forth in Churchill’s voluminous writings, speeches and radio broadcasts. Churchill would not have supported the following actions, all taken by the administration of which Vance is a part.
Abandoning Ukraine
This has aligned the U.S. with Russia against the Western Alliance and NATO, which Churchill fought so hard to establish 80 years ago and which has since brought peace, stability and prosperity to Europe.
Churchill would note that Russia has not honored 180 agreements with Ukraine and the international community, that it is intent on recreating its czarist empire, and that it continues to incarcerate many of its own citizens in the gulag system exposed by dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn in the 1970s, while it draws material support from unfree states like Iran, China and North Korea.
Churchill would not make threats against Greenland or longtime ally Denmark, much less disparage Canada, a member of the British Commonwealth of Nations, as better off if it were to become the 51st state.
Rationalizing racial attacks
Churchill would acknowledge that changes need to be made at our southern border, the result of failed governments in Central America and elsewhere, but would not condone snatching a man from his home in the presence of his wife and children, deporting him against court orders to a prison in El Salvador, and then washing its hands of him even though it has placed him there by mistake.
Nor would he have approved taking a woman off the street and putting her in chains in a Louisiana prison for expressing a contrary political opinion. Churchill was the friend of Chaim Weizmann and a champion of the state of Israel, but he was also the friend of T.E. Lawrence, who defended the rights of Arabs, Turks and other minorities displaced by European powers.
Gutting federal departments
Churchill would repudiate the actions of DOGE, which has not simply cut costs but has put at risk our government’s ability to function.
He would object to the serious reduction in personnel at Justice, FBI, IRS, HHS, Education, IRS, and CFPB, because these departments and agencies have protected civil rights, maintained law, increased knowledge, advanced medical research, provided a safety net for the poor and disabled, and ensured equity.
Nor would he approve the decimation of the U.S. Agency for International Development and other independent agencies which have performed critical outreach to foreign nations.
These agencies both support economic development in impoverished countries by teaching skills that foster self-determination and facilitate trade and save millions of lives in war-torn and famine-stricken districts by delivering health care and nutrition.
Moreover, they disseminate American culture, a source of soft power that offsets the propaganda of authoritarian regimes, strengthening democracy and making the U.S. dollar the world’s reserve currency. He would say that is foolish to speak of expense where global leadership is at stake, because the consequences of losing such leadership are incalculable.
Consulting the world’s richest men
Churchill would not set his course, industrial or otherwise, by the compass of billionaires. He was a capitalist, but he never put money before everything else. Nor did he worship those who had it. “To hunt wealth,” he said in 1934, “is not to capture commonwealth.”
Disregarding the rule of law
Churchill regarded these American institutions, along with Magna Carta, the British Constitution of 1688-89, habeas corpus and trial by jury, as sacred, the source of the power and majesty of English-speaking peoples.
He respected the separation of powers and would have rejected the notion that the executive function could defy a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. In Britain, no one is above the law, not even the king. That is not its weakness; that is its strength.
Professor Turley has privileged free speech as means of whitewashing the façade of an administration with which Churchill would have had nothing to do. Churchill was one of the greatest leaders in history, not in spite of his belief in liberty but because of it. His example, like his image, belongs not in the current White House, where it will be used to screen questionable motives, but in the mental space of every person everywhere who cherishes liberty, understands its fragility, and wishes to protect the grounds on which it stands.
Paul E. Forte is the former chief executive officer of FedPoint, a federal government contracting firm headquartered in Portsmouth, a historian, and a longtime member of the International Churchill Society.
