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J.D. Vance’s speech to last week’s Munich Security Conference was a masterpiece of MAGA rhetoric. In his own way, the Vice-President’s boss is a powerful speaker who connects with his fans. But Vance was addressing European journalists, bureaucrats and politicians who, by and large, despise President Trump and the MAGA agenda.

It was a tough gig, but he succeeded. His theme was that “there is a new sheriff in town” who doesn’t give a damn what you stuffed shirts think. Vance has the eloquence and the soundbites which have been missing in American politics since Barack Obama left the White House. I must admit that I agreed with nearly everything he said.

Yes, European governments intimidate alternative viewpoints. Yes, European governments are suffocating democracy with bureaucracy. Yes, European governments are not listening to voters. Yes, European governments are hostile to pro-life activists.

It is true that a virulent anti-Christian virus has infected the heartland of Christendom. Vance even treated his European listeners to some disturbing examples. And there are many more. The Observatory on Intolerance & Discrimination Against Christians in Europe, a think tank, has documented 2,444 anti-Christian hate crimes in 2024.

However, he was making a fundamentally dishonest argument.

Unjust Exclusion

Vance was speaking at a conference whose main concern was Russian aggression in Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe. On this point, the Trump Administration is vulnerable to criticism. It seems likely that Russia and the United States will talk in Saudi Arabia about the future of an independent and democratic Ukraine. And Ukraine will not be invited.

The parallels with the 1938 Munich Conference are unmistakable. At that nadir for Western democracy, Hitler, Chamberlain and Daladier dismembered Czechoslovakia – and the Czechs were not invited. “The exclusion of Ukraine from the proposed initial meeting in Saudi Arabia flies in the face of any natural justice,” says historian Sir Antony Beevor. “It is the most flagrant example of might is right’ since the Second World War, and if the US goes ahead in this direction, then it should hang its head in shame.”

O nás bez nás! O nás bez nás! said the Czechs and Slovaks on the brink of the immolation of their democracy: “About us, without us”. Now the Ukrainians must take their turn at eating the ashes of independence, a meal served up by, of all countries, the United States of America!

Preaching to the Choir

Under these circumstances, Vance could hardly make a credible frontal assault to defend Trump’s foreign policy. So he pivoted and made a flanking manoevre which routed the enemy. He set the internet on fire with a savage attack on European anti-democratic weakness and wokeness – and sidestepped the odium of backing his boss’s anti-democratic approach to Ukraine.

It was a brilliant tactic. In his handbook on rhetoric, The Art of Always Being Right, the 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer called it, “Persuade the audience, not the opponent”:

If you have no refutation whatsoever, you can make one aimed at the audience; that is to say, you can start some invalid objection, which only an expert sees to be invalid. Though your opponent is an expert, those who form your audience are not, and accordingly, in their eyes, he is defeated, particularly if the objection which you make places him in any ridiculous light.

In any case, Vance’s real audience was not the grim-faced luminaries at the conference, but American voters. Historically contemptuous of European milquetoasts, they probably leapt to their feet as they listened to his blistering words on YouTube.

This speech is a disturbing omen of the years ahead. Trump and Vance appear to believe that Making America Great Again (MAGA) necessarily means Making Everyone Else Kneel (MEEK). It’s a time-tested formula for failure. Napoleon tried it. Tojo tried it. Mussolini tried it. Hitler tried it. Stalin tried it. In the long run, it never works.

Clean Up Your Own House

If Trump and Vance are serious about making America great again, they should do some home renovations first.

Vance is right to insist that free speech is essential for the survival of democracy. But it is not the foundation of democracy. The family is the bedrock of civic life in a democracy. And in the 20th century, Americans were in the vanguard of its destruction. In every social pathology, it was the United States which led the way: no-fault divorce, abortion on demand, the contraceptive pill, euthanasia… America lectured and Europe listened.

The touchstone for the success of the MAGA agenda should not be humiliating America’s allies abroad, but turning around those dismal statistics on deaths of despair, loneliness, divorce and drug abuse back home. Fix those, and America will be a City upon a Hill and a Light for the Nations. Then the world will listen. And listen gladly. Not before.

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Republished with thanks to Mercator. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.