When JD Vance stood before European leaders in Munich this past February, warning that free speech was "in retreat" across the West , his remarks were met with audible discomfort in the room. The gravest threat to democracy in Europe, he argued, wasn't external—it was the internal erosion of liberal principles like free expression.

"If you are running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you," the U.S. vice president told a visibly stunned room of diplomats.

At the time, his comments were widely dismissed in both U.S. and European policy circles as either populist pablum or unnecessarily provocative. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius called them "not acceptable." Vance had cited arrests in the UK and restrictions under the European Union 's Digita

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