‘There’s a new sheriff in town’

February 18, 2025 37 Reactions

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. They were not fans.

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.

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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!

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 centuryGerman 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.

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.

Forward this to your friends!

Michael Cook is editor of Mercator.

Image credit: JD Vance at a rally in Arizona in 2024 / screenshot The London Times

Showing 37 reactions

Rob McKilliam commented 2025-02-19 16:53:49 +1100

Emberson: A very good question. Perhaps the answer is that he is a very clever and fundamentally decent person who feels obliged to use his talents to clear the swamp of evil.
Emberson Fedders commented 2025-02-19 11:21:02 +1100

Of come on. JD Vance is all talk. His rhetoric is just about firing up the base and ‘sticking it to the libs.’ He’s not going to make meaningful change. I mean, for a lot of struggling people in America life is about to get much harder, but fundamentally his is a conservative.
He’s not ‘draining the swamp.’ He’s a multi-millionaire. Why would he smash up a system that he has massively benefitted from?
Tim Lee commented 2025-02-19 10:24:20 +1100

JD Vance is smart, charismatic and ambitious. He is at the forefront of a crossroads in history. He can play a pivotal role in turning around decades of decadence in the West.

John F Kennedy was the other charismatic US president at a critical point in history. We speculate about what he could have achieved had his life not been cut short but his moral failings cast a shadow on the extent to which he could have been a force for good.

Our integrity is key to whether we make an enduring difference by being true to our vocation or a what-might-have-been footnote through wilful ambition. JDV needs to guard his integrity if he is to be the JFK that we missed.
Maurizio Fattarelli commented 2025-02-19 07:49:52 +1100

As Chantal says: you have a point.
Coming to Ukraine: to save the world from Hitler, the rest of the world had to start WWII, and win it. And would have been easier if they did it in 1938.
Biden and EU were probably as surprised as Putin when Ukraine didn’t immediately go under.
At that point they could choose: convince Zelenskyy to negotiate a ~~painful~~ agreement, when Ukraine was it’s zenith; or, alternatively, go in with Ikraine to win the war. Both were objectively tough choices, and the old sheriff didn’t have the “cigar” of Churchill…
So they chose to hope that Putin could be worn out by supplying arms to one side and applying economic sanctions to the other one. Slowly increasing both, gradually, making sure that Russians suffered but not too much; playing on the lives of the Ukrainian and Russian soldiers (and civilians), while rhetorically blasting Putin and condemning anyone who dared to talk with him.
A very sad story… Let’s hope and pray that it doesn’t come to WWIII.
At this point the new sheriff can hardly do worse than the old one: at least he seems determined to do something more drastic.
P Gr commented 2025-02-18 22:56:15 +1100

Michael, I am really surprised to read not one, but two hit pieces from you on J.D. Vance, of all people. If you’re going to end the article defending the family as the real bedrock of fixing a society, can’t you really find anything from J.D. regarding that same subject?

Aren’t you happy to see the first real catholic, and real pro-lifer in the top of the White House? Is this the guy you want to attack with talk about the problems America has with abortion? I had to read that twice to believe I was reading it correctly…

And that shot about MEEK? Where did that come from? Comparisons to Hitler and Stalin? Could that be the Reductio ad Hitlerum fallacy right there?

Yes, he was not going on about Ukraine, but if one is against the American involvement in that war, then one doesn’t really have much to say on it… and there are other important things that needed saying. It was the speech of a recently elected American vice-president in his first visit to the old continent. It’s this administration’s “message to Europe”. And it was clear and in my opinion, brilliant. That speech did more to start defeating wokeism in Europe than we could ask for, or possibly do as private citizens ranting in social media.

My take on this brave and consequential speech is simple: it’s a speech to move the Overton window in Europe, just like it’s being moved in the USA. To the benefit of so many of the causes that Mercator supposedly supports… and to an extent that we couldn’t dream of, only months ago…
Chantal Epié commented 2025-02-18 21:17:41 +1100

You have a point, Michael. Still, the points Vance made are vital for the life of ordinary citizens in most countries. Europe (not to talk of Canada) is decadent and something needs to change. I am glad I don’t live there. Africa has serious problems, but at least Africans are still decent, normal people on the whole – a decent, common-sense society that Europe and the woke side of America are unfortunately trying to demolish.
Michael Cook published this page in The Latest 2025-02-18 13:54:23 +1100