‘J.D. Vance was right’: Is Europe finally waking up? | The Spectator - "As some lose faith that the US would defend Europe under Article 5, European armies are ill-equipped to protect it themselves. Donations to Ukraine over the past four years have hollowed out military arsenals. Defence chiefs in Germany and Britain warn that the failure to replace this materiel has left us with insufficient means to defend ourselves. Can Europe re-arm and reduce its dependence on America? During the conference, Merz pointed out that, despite having a collective GDP nearly ten times the size of Russia’s, ‘Europe is not ten times as strong as Russia today’. Germany’s foreign intelligence agency has estimated Russia’s military expenditure is now roughly 10 per cent of GDP, or about half of total state spending. Meanwhile, European members of Nato face a major struggle to balance budgets in pursuit of their 5 per cent target. Within this figure, it’s been agreed that 3.5 per cent must be spent on core defence needs, with the remaining 1.5 per cent spent on defence-related infrastructure. Only six of the 30 European countries in the alliance – Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Norway – are currently spending more than 3 per cent of GDP on core defence contracts. Apart from Germany, few Nato members have publicly set out roadmaps for raising defence spending... Despite the lagging spending, at least seven European countries have reintroduced military service... One solution European leaders discussed was the idea of creating their own nuclear deterrent that could operate independently of Washington. Unlike Britain, France has nuclear weapons that are not reliant on the US for maintenance or deployment. Some leaders have asked France to consider extending its nuclear umbrella to protect Europe. Emmanuel Macron is expected to give a speech in the coming weeks outlining his approach to the country’s nuclear doctrine. Teasing that speech in Munich, Macron said: ‘The French nuclear deterrent has, what I would call, a European inspiration’. How realistic is all of this, given the Europeans’ love of squabbling? Just look at the joint European defence projects already under way. Plans to build a new class of fighter jet, agreed between France, Germany and Spain, are dead in the water. The two companies involved in the plans, Airbus and Dassault, couldn’t agree on which would lead the project. Meanwhile, talks to allow Britain to participate in the EU’s €150 billion defence fund broke down at the end of last year because the French want us to pay a joining fee of up to £2 billion. Bickering is an inherent part of European politics, even as the Continent’s protector pulls back and its eastern border is threatened. Despite all the talk of deep chasms and elephants in rooms, Europe seems unwilling to face this reality. The US Secretary of State Marco Rubio flattered delegates, speaking of America’s European inheritance and the values shared by the two continents. But his core message was much the same as Vance’s. America had no interest in continuing to be the ‘polite caretakers of the West’s managed decline’, he reiterated. There was little indication that Europe’s political elites realised that the central message had not changed. Nor, judging by their lacklustre approach to rearmament, have they yet realised the magnitude of the task they face."
Melissa Chen on X - "Been living in London for 3 years and every time I come back to the US, I have to recalibrate. When you're overseas, you tend to forget what real abundance feels like, so much so, I just stood there in the granola aisle, mouth open, brain completely short-circuited as I stared at a ridiculous wall of infinite choice. Bajillions of brands, flavors, and innovations - chocolate peanut butter banana crunch, maple pecan espresso, keto, paleo, collagen-packed, probiotic, gluten-free, protein-loaded, you name it. I was straight-up paralyzed by options. The French call it “embarras de choix” - embarrassment of choice. That overwhelming feeling when there are simply too many great things to pick from. It’s usually used positively or neutrally (the options are desirable), but the “embarrassment” highlights the mild frustration, guilt and indecision it causes. But Americans don’t get embarrassed by it. At all. Because they don't feel guilt about having MORE. It is the Land of Plenty for a reason. It’s easy to start a food company here, it's easy to build brands, and it's easy to just employ / fire people. That freedom unleashes relentless innovation and variety, feeding an unstoppable demand for better, tastier, healthier, crazier options. No wonder Europeans lose their minds the first time they step into a Costco. American abundance is a policy and cultural choice."
Melissa Chen on X - "The sheer number of snide remarks about cheese in a can in response to this post is striking. It seems many feel compelled to mention it simply to reassure themselves of the inherent superiority of their European cheeses. Which no doubt I'm sure is true to some extent, but it's severely missing the point. Yes it's somewhat gross and terrifying that cheese can come out of a can the same way whipped cream can. But while it is about cheese in a can, it's not really about cheese in a can. It's about the sheer, glorious American instinct to look at something ordinary and ask: What if? What if we could keep cheese in that perfect, gooey, liquidy consistency - shelf-stable, ready at a moment's notice - and then invent an aerosol can to dispense it? It needs no refrigeration. You may thumb your nose down at the product but it's actually the same spirit that said, “what if we could fly to the Moon?” The invention of sprayable processed cheese is about a mindset of irreverence, optimism, and a culture that is unafraid of looking silly if it means pushing boundaries. Aerosolizing the cheese isn't easy. Any culture that can do that will start asking bigger questions without fear. What if we cure diseases with mRNA in months instead of decades? What if reusable rockets land themselves like something out of sci-fi? What if ordinary people can access computing power that once required government labs? The pretentious twats who roll their eyes at Easy Cheese simply don't get it. It’s not about sophistication; it's about agency. A people who refuse to accept “that’s just how it’s always been.” A culture that iterates, experiments, commercializes, and yes, sometimes sprays a neon orange dairy product from a can because...... why the hell not? That’s the moonshot mentality in its essence. Playful on the surface, revolutionary underneath. And it's why the European mind struggles so hard to grasp it. As long as Americans keep this fire, whether it's cheese or the cosmos, they will keep surprising the world."
Daily Romania on X - "1,000 German lawyers and judges sign petition to ban AfD, the largest party in German opinion polls, in order to "protect democracy""
Gad Saad on X - "We need to end democracy in order to protect democracy."
German police threaten to defy AfD orders if party takes power - "Germany’s police union has called on officers to defy any “unconstitutional” orders if the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party comes to power... However, the largest state branch of the police union, in North Rhine-Westphalia, criticised Mr Hüber’s intervention and distanced itself from his article. It said: “We expressly and fully dissociate ourselves from his choice of words, his comparisons and the legally problematic conclusions drawn from them”, adding that “the oath of service doesn’t remove the right to vote”. The Bavarian branch said: “Our uniforms don’t have a party colour. We don’t do party political training in the ranks of the police.” Hubertus Knaube, a historian and former director of the Berlin Hohenschönhausen memorial, which commemorates the crimes of the former East German communist regime, said Mr Hüber’s article amounted to “a call for a coup against a democratically elected government”... It won 20 per cent of the vote in last year’s federal elections, taking second place, and is now polling at almost 30 per cent nationwide – far ahead of Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democrats."
Left wingers claim that the US Constitution is outdated and must be amended, but they love the unamendable bits of the German Constitution, which they can use to push the left wing agenda and ban political opponents
How the anti-AfD firewall broke German politics - "the AfD has been blocked from power everywhere by a Brandmauer, or firewall, that other parties have erected around it. The most important firewall is that maintained by the CDU, Germany’s ruling party and traditionally its largest. It formalised the policy in 2018 with an “incompatibility resolution” banning co-operation with both the AfD and Die Linke... Yet the Brandmauer has failed to arrest the AfD’s rise. In 2018 Friedrich Merz, now the CDU leader and Germany’s chancellor, vowed to halve the AfD’s vote. He hoped tacking right on immigration and governing well could win back voters seduced by the AfD’s narrative. None of this has worked... in Saxony-Anhalt and other AfD strongholds, the Brandmauer is already struggling to hold. Armin Schenk, Bitterfeld’s CDU mayor, found lurking on the edge of the protest, says the “right-wing extremist” AfD should be kept from power in the country that perpetrated the Holocaust. But in Bitterfeld, he adds, “the Brandmauer is not a reality,” because “in most cases decisions cannot be taken without the AfD.” With 15 of the city’s 40 council seats, it is the largest party. Even when the Brandmauer holds, it forces other parties to contort themselves around it. Thuringia and Saxony, two other eastern states, assembled incoherent or unstable CDU-led minority governments after a strong AfD performance in elections in 2024. They are held together by strong leaders. But they serve the AfD’s narrative that the mainstream outfits are indistinguishable Kartellparteien (“cartel parties”). Saxony-Anhalt threatens to push the strategy to its limits. If the AfD wins on September 6th, the Brandmauer is irrelevant. If it falls just short, the CDU will probably need support from every other party, including Die Linke, to take office. Confronted with that prospect, some CDU members might defect: one AfD candidate in Saxony-Anhalt reckons five are ready to jump. If not, the strains of buying off the hard left would test Mr Merz’s authority so sorely that some think it could end his career. And if, as polls suggest, the AfD wins twice as many seats as the CDU yet remains locked out of power, it will not only be AfD supporters who ask whether German democracy is working. It is dawning on the CDU that it has painted itself into a corner. “Anyone still talking about firewalls has not recognised the signs of the times,” said Michael Kretschmer, the CDU premier of Saxony, recently. The Brandmauer in effect obliges the party to seek coalitions only to its left, especially with the SPD, which has been in power in Germany almost without interruption since 1998—despite these days barely polling in double figures. CDU members’ frustration with concessions to the SPD inspires occasional calls for a minority government that could, on certain issues (such as migration, tax and energy), seek a “conservative majority” with the AfD. Voters are shifting, too. Support for the anti-AfD Brandmauer has dwindled from a clear majority to 41%. Yet the CDU has no easy way out. Tearing down the Brandmauer would split the party down the middle and trigger a voter exodus. Even minor violations have caused trouble. In 2020 the CDU voted with the AfD to elect a (short-lived) premier in Thuringia; the ensuing furore toppled Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the party’s national leader. In January 2025 Mr Merz ordered his party to vote with the AfD on symbolic anti-migration measures in the Bundestag. This sparked protests across Germany and boosted support for Die Linke at the subsequent election. The chancellor is said to be traumatised by the experience. To avoid these dilemmas, some in the CDU quietly hope for an AfD majority in Saxony-Anhalt. But this does not amount to a strategy. “There has never been a reasonable debate about how to handle the AfD in the CDU, just a reflex to exclude them as the new Nazis,” says Andreas Rödder, a professor who in 2023 resigned as head of the CDU’s fundamental-values commission over his calls for openness to minority governments rather than a rigid Brandmauer. As for the AfD, it once railed against the Brandmauer as a gross violation of democracy. But these days many in the AfD look forward to governing alone. “We don’t think about how to make ourselves nice so that the CDU asks us for a coalition,” says Malte Kaufmann, an AfD MP. The party’s deputy chairman in Saxony-Anhalt has said their voters want them to “finish off” the CDU rather than co-operate with it. In some countries populists have moderated to gain power. But behind the Brandmauer, the AfD has had no incentive to do so. Torben Braga, another MP, says those in the party who would like to tack to the centre have lost the argument for two reasons. First, “our election results are getting better and better without us being forced to change.” Second, the party fears that moderating its positions and ejecting hardliners would alienate some voters. “The Brandmauer protects us from having to deal with very difficult questions,” Mr Braga says... Behind the Brandmauer you can promise anything, says Christian Stecker, a political scientist at the Technical University in Darmstadt. “It protects them from the disappointment that accountability in a democracy implies.” In despair, some mainstream politicians, including Ms Winter in the CDU, now look favourably on calls to ban the AfD, something explicitly allowed under Germany’s constitution. But even if parliament approved that proposal, which seems unlikely, the constitutional court would take years to rule on it... a growing number sympathise with Mr Stecker’s gloomier view. “It’s too late for the CDU to turn around, and too late for the AfD to accept any turnaround,” he says. “Some things will tumble down, new things will emerge—and we don’t know what it will all look like.”"
More than 40% of the German electorate are far right extremists and they need to be sent to re-education camps and replaced with migrants, who are enlightened and will vote Correctly and Protect Democracy
Maybe there will be a military coup to Save Democracy
Left wingers love proportional representation. Probably because incoherent and weak governments are the aim
@levelsio on X - "The EU is now for the 6th time trying to force Chat Control through which lets them scan ALL your private messages, photos and emails without a warrant. Implictly showing the EU is not democratic and not about what the people of Europe want, because once a law is rejected, you just re-submit it until nobody is watching and it's passed
November 2023: Chat Control is rejected
June 2024: Chat Control is rejected
October 2025: Chat Control is rejected
November 2025: Chat Control is rejected
March 2026: Chat Control is rejected
July 2026: Chat Control is back
Even the EU's own lawyers stated Chat Control is unconstitutional: "generalised message scanning is incompatible with Article 7 of the EU Charter" You have to wonder why the EU is so adament about reading your private chats, right?"
To Protect Democracy, you need to let the government read your messages at will
Chubby on X - "Today is a dark day for freedom and democracy in Europe. General chat surveillance has been implemented in Brussels. A disgrace. The so-called Chat Control 1.0 cleared a crucial hurdle in the European Parliament today. This means platforms may once again be allowed to scan private messages, officially on a “voluntary” basis, but in practice this marks the return of indiscriminate monitoring of private communication. What makes this especially bitter is that a majority of the MEPs who voted were reportedly against it. According to Patrick Breyer, 314 MEPs voted against the regulation, 276 voted in favor and 17 abstained. And yet the rejection failed because it was not enough to have a simple majority of those voting. An absolute majority of all MEPs would have been required. That is the democratic scandal. When a majority of those present votes against a proposal and it still passes because a formal threshold is not reached, it does not feel like democratic decision-making to many citizens. It feels like a procedural trick. And it becomes even more problematic when you look at the context: Chat Control had already been rejected before. Yet the issue was put back on the agenda shortly before the summer break, through an urgent procedure, at a time when absences could become decisive. This is not just some technical regulation. It goes to the very core of private communication. It is about whether digital messages remain fundamentally private or whether platforms may systematically scan content again, without concrete suspicion, without a court order and without any individual cause. A free society must not turn private communication into a potential surveillance zone. Anyone who takes digital fundamental rights seriously cannot accept millions of innocent people being placed under general suspicion. Today, a dangerous signal was sent: fundamental rights can be hollowed out through procedural logic, timing and political tricks. Not through an open, clear and honest majority, but through a system in which absence effectively helps the supporters. This is a dark day for Europe. Not because the fight is over, but because today showed how easily digital fundamental rights come under pressure when surveillance logic, symbolic politics and institutional tricks come together. Anyone who wants a free internet, anyone who wants to protect private communication and anyone who takes democracy seriously should talk about this. Share this issue. Inform yourself. Look at who voted how. And never forget: freedom rarely disappears all at once. It disappears step by step, often in technical details, often in complicated procedures and often exactly when too few people are watching."
Greg Lukianoff on X - "But remember the bad guys of Europe’s past were authoritarian, invasive, and centralized for BAD reasons, whereas today’s bureaucratocracy is motivated by hugs and puppies."
EU considers satellite technology to override speeding motorists - "Since July 2024, all new cars sold in Europe have been fitted with intelligent speed assist (Isa), a system that warns drivers if they are speeding with a sound or a vibration on the steering wheel. Thatcham Research, Britain’s largest vehicle safety body, recently warned that Isa systems failed to identify when a speed limit had changed in about one in four cases."
Damn misinformation and conspiracy theories about electric cars and state control!
Mario Nawfal on X - "Google held 34 meetings with top German government officials to discuss suppressing "hate speech" and "disinformation" online. Most were confidential and some were deemed "not suitable for public knowledge." The meetings, revealed through a parliamentary question filed by the opposition AfD, included then-Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who attended 4 personally. The implications go beyond Germany. Under the EU's Digital Services Act, content removed or algorithmically downranked applies globally, not just within EU borders. If the secret meetings between a government and Google to shape what people can find online aren't information control, what is?"
Merkel urges EU to 'keep regulating' social media, AI - "Longtime German leader Angela Merkel called on Europe Tuesday to stay the course in its push to regulate social media and AI — warning the "foundations of democracy" were at stake. The former chancellor issued the appeal as she accepted an award at the European Parliament -- in a speech urging the bloc to live up to the "promises" made to its citizens on protecting peace, prosperity and democratic values. "Continue along the path of regulating social media," she urged. "Continue along the path of regulating artificial intelligence." "To believe that responsibility for spreading information is no longer necessary — that one will not be held accountable for lies — will undermine the foundations of democracy," warned the German liberal, who served as Germany's chancellor from 2005 to 2021. The 27-country EU has some of the world's strictest rules regulating the digital space and is currently weighing the possibility of banning social media for those under a certain age. Merkel is one of 20 laureates of a newly-created European Order of Merit, bestowed in March to recognise "significant contributions to European integration and unity, democracy and values"."
Too bad, as the Leuven Correctional Court asserts, the truth is illegal in Belgium if it threatens the left wing agenda
Time to ban the AfD to save Democracy!
Europa.com on X - "Germany’s government is proposing a bill that could block people from buying homes if they’re suspected of “anti-constitutional” views — even without any criminal conviction. The draft would give local authorities first refusal on property sales and allow intelligence agencies to share personal data to vet buyers. It is framed as a way to stop extremism. Follow: @europa"
Matt Bramanti on X - "the German constitution is hilariously funny
"Every person shall have the right freely to express and disseminate his opinions in speech, writing and pictures and to inform himself without hindrance from generally accessible sources. Freedom of the press and freedom of reporting by means of broadcasts and films shall be guaranteed. There shall be no censorship."
whoa based
"These rights shall find their limits in the provisions of general laws"
oh lmao"
Democracy Without Voters - "For decades, the European Union has not just been a geopolitical partner, it has been a political aspiration for a certain Eurocratic wing of the American left. The EU is what modern Democrats imagine government should become once it has fully “evolved”, an administrative system run by credentialed experts, insulated from elections, buffered by layers of bureaucracy, and confident that dissent is less a signal to be heeded than a problem to be managed. When Democrats talk about “protecting democracy,” what they often mean is protecting a system increasingly removed from the voters themselves, one that looks remarkably like Brussels with better branding. There is a profound irony in witnessing “No Kings” protests by people who want to replace individual liberty with the European model of monarchial bureaucracy. The similarities are not subtle. Both systems elevate technocracy, process, and regulation over representation, results, and growth and both rely on a permanent administrative class that persists regardless of election outcomes, ensuring that while politicians may change, the direction of governance rarely does. Each share a quiet but unmistakable belief that ordinary citizens, left to their own devices, cannot be trusted to make the “right” decisions without guidance, nudging, or correction from above... That is why the EU model has always held such appeal. It promises control without the messiness of accountability. It offers the appearance of democracy while steadily migrating real decision-making power away from voters and toward institutions. For American Democrats who find constitutional limits inconvenient and federalism inefficient, Europe represents an end state, a system where outcomes can be managed, dissent softened, and policy insulated from the volatility of elections. The uncomfortable truth for Democrats is that many of the policies they champion, expansive regulation, growing welfare states, centralized authority, and reliance on unelected administrative bodies, are not theoretical. They are already in operation across Europe, and the results are visible in slower growth, structural dependency, a political culture increasingly disconnected from the electorate but perhaps most obvious is the dilution of European history and culture through the importation of third world ideologies, religions and social mores. The European model is not a promise, it is a case study and if elections across the Continent are any indication, people have noticed and are beginning to push back. People are recognizing the cultural destruction and right-wing nationalist parties are making historic electoral inroads. The outrage, the insistence that questioning the model is destabilizing, points to a deeper discomfort with the possibility that the bureaucratic technocrats might be losing their grip on European governance. Trump’s critique, stripped of its rhetoric, lands squarely on this point. The United States has spent decades subsidizing a system abroad that mirrors what many on the left would like to build at home. NATO is the clearest example. An alliance premised on shared responsibility has drifted into a structure where America provides the backbone while European nations allocate resources toward expansive domestic priorities, assuming the security umbrella will remain in place. When Trump demands that NATO members meet their commitments, he is not just talking about defense spending, he is challenging the underlying assumption that America will indefinitely support systems that are increasingly at odds with its own founding principles. That challenge extends eastward as well. Even nations with legitimate security concerns cannot operate under the assumption that American protection is automatic. Alliances require reciprocity, and reciprocity requires shared burden. The leaders of Europe prefer tone over substance, so Trump’s “in your face” style ensures his message will be haughtily dismissed because they prefer nuance and ambiguity. However, leadership is not about comfort, it is about confronting realities that have been politely ignored. For years, American leaders have avoided acknowledging the growing alignment between European governance and the aspirations of the American left. Trump is not avoiding the historical evidence of where the European model leads and that it is profoundly anti-American. The real question is not whether Trump is too harsh, the real question is whether Americans recognize the trajectory. Do we continue down a path that mirrors Europe, centralizing power, expanding bureaucracy, and distancing government from the governed, or do we reaffirm a system built on sovereignty, accountability, and the understanding that freedom, while untidy, is ultimately more durable? Europe made its choice decades ago. The only question for the American people is whether enough will ignore the obvious negative outcomes to give Democrats control."
