Invited to speak at the annual Munich Security Conference last Friday, Vice President Vance didn’t feel much Valentine’s Day love from the audience as he issued an invitation of his own: “Just as the Biden administration seemed desperate to silence people for speaking their minds, so the Trump administration will do precisely the opposite, and I hope that we can work together on that.” Applause from the crowd sounded like it was coming only from Mr. Vance’s wife, Usha, and the CEO of Telegram, Pavel Durov, who was accompanied by a rogue AfD (Alternative for Germany) party member who somehow slipped past German security. 

It didn’t seem like many of the leaders in attendance were ready to “work together” with someone who in the same speech said, “When political leaders represent an important constituency it is incumbent upon us to at least participate in dialogue with them.” 

The comedic irony of Mr. Vance’s appeal for free speech falling on deaf ears at a conference with the motto “Peace through Dialogue” could not have been scripted better by comedian Bill Maher. Yet, as with many of the absurdities Mr. Maher has been willing to point out lately about the way leftist government works (or doesn’t), the laughter ends with the uncomfortable realization that most people still don’t get the joke.

It didn’t appear that anyone at the Munich Security Conference was willing to reconsider Britain’s buffer zone laws, which wrap abortion clinics in 150-meter radiuses of prayer-free safe spaces enforced with threats of prison sentences. It definitely didn’t look like anyone was going to stand up and retract his or her support of the Romanian government’s decision to save democracy by recalling its results, which those in power determined could have only been produced by “misinformation” and not the actual will of the people. 

The vice president began his remarks by offering prayers and condolences for the dozens of victims of Germany’s most recent car-ramming attack, perpetrated by an Afghani asylum-seeker. The tragic irony of the attack and many others like it that fueled the rise in popularity of the AfD party, which in turn has fueled exactly the kind of censorship and cancellation in the German press, government, and polite society that Mr. Vance identified as the West’s greatest security risk, basically wrote the vice president’s speech for him.

 He was imploring Germany and all of Europe not to do what America has spent the last four years doing: restricting the speech of citizens who point out that failed policies on everything from immigration and health to over-regulation and education does more to kill Western Civilization than Islamists and gain-of-function practitioners combined.

“I’ve heard a lot about what you need to defend yourselves from … but what has seemed a little bit less clear to me and certainly I think to many of the citizens of Europe is what exactly it is that you’re defending yourselves for — what is the positive vision that animates this shared security compact that we all believe is so important?” the vice president asked. It was the most important and moving line of his very important and moving speech. 

“I believe deeply that there is no security if you are afraid of the voices, the opinions, and the conscience that guide your very own people,” he continued. That would have been the big applause line had he been speaking to a room full of people who weren’t afraid of those very things.