Don't be loud in ignorance. Study to show thyself approved. If you don't know, ask.
Here are some notable quotes:
1. The threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor. What I worry about is the threat from within: the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values.
2. For years we’ve been told that everything we fund and support is in the name of our shared democratic values. Everything from our Ukraine policy to digital censorship is billed as a defence of democracy. But when we see European courts cancelling elections and senior officials threatening to cancel others, we ought to ask whether we’re holding ourselves to an appropriately high standard.
3. In the United Kingdom… the backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious Britons in particular in the crosshairs.
4. In Britain and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat.
5. In Washington, there is a new sheriff in town. And under Donald Trump’s leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer it in the public square.
6. If your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with.
7. To many of us on the other side of the Atlantic, it looks more and more like old, entrenched interests hiding behind ugly Soviet-era words like ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation,’ who simply don’t like the idea that somebody with an alternative viewpoint might express a different opinion or, God forbid, vote a different way, or even worse, win an election.
8. I’ve heard a lot about what you need to defend yourselves from, and of course that’s important. But what has seemed a little bit less clear to me… is what exactly it is that you’re defending yourselves for.
9. 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.
10. You cannot win a democratic mandate by censoring your opponents or putting them in jail, whether that’s the leader of the opposition, a humble Christian praying in her own home, or a journalist trying to report the news. Nor can you win one by disregarding your basic electorate on questions like, who gets to be a part of our shared society.
11. I believe that dismissing people, dismissing their concerns, or worse yet, shutting down media, shutting down elections, or shutting people out of the political process protects nothing. In fact, it is the most surefire way to destroy democracy. Speaking up and expressing opinions isn’t election interference.
Source: Kurt Mahlburg
#munich #jdvance #trump
