In "Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis," J.D. Vance wrote, “I don’t believe in epiphanies. I don’t believe in transformative moments, as transformation is harder than a moment."

Despite that profound point, on Feb. 14, Vance found that transformative moment.

Speaking to European leaders at the Munich Security Conference, he shocked his audience by confronting them over their attacks on free speech in the West.

For the free speech community, it was truly Churchillian — no less than the famous Iron Curtain speech in which Churchill dared the West to confront the existential dangers of communism.

Roughly 80 years after Churchill's speech, Vance called our allies to account not for the growing threat from countries like Russia or China, but from themselves. To a clearly shocked audience, Vance declared that he was not worried about "external actors" but "the threat from within the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America."

Vance then pulled back the curtain on the censorship and anti-free-speech policies of the European Union and close allies ranging from the United Kingdom to Sweden. He also chastised one of the most vehemently anti-free speech figures in Europe, Thierry Breton, who led the EU efforts to control speech with draconian measures under the infamous Digital Services Act.

Vance called out the hypocrisy of these nations asking for greater and greater military assistance "in the name of our shared democratic values" even as they eviscerate free speech, the very right that once defined Western Civilization.

The point was crushing.

Before we further commit to the defense of Europe, he argued, we should agree on what we are........

© The Hill