{"id":38675,"date":"2025-02-18T20:56:16","date_gmt":"2025-02-19T02:56:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=38675"},"modified":"2025-02-18T20:56:23","modified_gmt":"2025-02-19T02:56:23","slug":"nyts-bret-stephens-slams-vances-munich-message-as-a-disgrace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=38675","title":{"rendered":"NYT\u2019s Bret Stephens slams Vance\u2019s Munich message as a \u2018disgrace\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Bret Stephens,<\/u><\/a> a conservative New York Times columnist, called Vice President Vance\u2019s speech at the Munich Security Conference last week a \u201cdisgrace\u201d and criticized Vance for meeting with the leader of a far-right political party in Germany.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe vice president\u2019s speech last week at the Munich Security Conference \u2014 in which the man who refuses to say that Donald Trump\u2002<\/u><\/a>lost the 2020 presidential election lectured his audience about Europe\u2019s retreat from democratic values \u2014 combined with his meeting with the leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, party, has caused a scandal because it is a scandal, a monument of arrogance based on a foundation of hypocrisy,\u201d Stephens wrote in his op-ed published\u2002<\/u><\/a>Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stephens compared Vance\u2019s Munich trip to the failed appeasement efforts of World War II-era British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain,<\/u><\/a> who flew to Munich in 1938 and agreed to let Germany annex the Sudetenland in the hope of staving off a larger war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMuch like a certain British prime minister long ago, an American vice president went to Munich to carry on about his idealism while breaking bread with those who would obliterate democratic ideals. A disgrace,\u201d Stephens wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vance on Friday used his first major speech on the international stage to accuse European leaders of retreating from \u201cfundamental values.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He argued the biggest threats facing Europe were neither China nor Russia, but mass migration and laws that restrict free speech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhile the Trump administration is very concerned with European security and believes we can come to a reasonable settlement between Russia and Ukraine \u2026 the threat that I worry the most about vis-\u00e0-vis Europe is not Russia, it\u2019s not China, it\u2019s not any other external actor,\u201d Vance said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd what I worry about is the threat from within,\u201d he continued. \u201cThe retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stephens, in his column, acknowledged the merit in some of Vance\u2019s arguments about how \u201csome European governments go too far to curtail legitimate free speech\u201d and about \u201cthe many ways that Europe\u2019s supposedly mainstream right-of-center parties, particularly Germany\u2019s Christian Democrats under Merkel, adopted left-leaning positions on migration, domestic security, fiscal policy, energy policy and other issues that drove conservative voters into the arms of the far right.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stephens defended Germany, however, for the way it has grappled with its totalitarian past, describing it as \u201cunmistakably democratic not because it unthinkingly honors a principle of unfettered liberty (no democracy does) but because it vigilantly monitors the enemies of democracy while maintaining a memory of what the nation once was.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

thehill<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bret Stephens, a conservative New York Times columnist, called Vice President Vance\u2019s speech at the Munich Security Conference last week a \u201cdisgrace\u201d and criticized Vance for meeting with the leader of a far-right political party in Germany.   \u201cThe vice president\u2019s speech last week at the Munich Security Conference \u2014 in which the man who refuses […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":38676,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[30850,32364,2488],"class_list":["post-38675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-bret","tag-munich","tag-vance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38675"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38678,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38675\/revisions\/38678"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}