Don’t worry, those increased vapor trails you saw in the skies last weekend were not part of an alien invasion. It wasn’t a secret government plot to seed the atmosphere in an attempt to control the weather. It was just all of the elite billionaires flying home from the World Economic Forum in Davos in their private jets.
Yes, Davos ’23 is in the books, and thank God for that. But little nuggets of soundbites continue to emanate online like gold from the Yukon River. And not all of the fun stuff has to do with climate change, though that was certainly the main course served up on this year’s menu.
Granting a little cutout interview outside of a Davos meeting to Euro News, Vera Jourova, the EU’s Vice President of Values and Transparency, addressed her concerns about the conduct of eclectic billionaire and Twitter boss Elon Musk. Her message was pretty clear and stark: Start regulating speech now or face sanctions, and yes, we have the ability to institute sanctions.
It took a little bit to identify her, because she’s dyed her hair as of late from her natural brunette locks. But even with the new look, this is indeed the Czech Republic’s representative to the European Union. I guess the old adage is true – blonde authoritarians do have more fun.
Ms. Jourova has a colorful past, and when you talk about issues like freedom of speech, so does the Czech Republic writ large. The region in and around the Czech Republic has been a flashpoint in world history for centuries. In its current form, the country is actually highly-ranked in terms of individual freedoms, considering its legacy of being a communist Soviet bloc state for much of the 20th Century and only having sported a free democratic government for the last 30 years.
Reporters Without Borders back in 2015 ranked the Czech Republic 13th out of 180 countries, which is outstanding when you compare it to the United States, which came in 49th that same year. Why? Because escaping communism often, yet unfortunately not always, tends to focus the mind of celebrating liberty. Their charter, which is their equivalent to our Constitution, includes these five basic tenets.
(1) The freedom of expression and the right to information are guaranteed.
(2) Everyone has the right to express their opinion in speech, in writing, in the press, in pictures, or in any other form, as well as freely to seek, receive, and disseminate ideas and information irrespective of the frontiers of the State.
(3) Censorship is not permitted.
(4) The freedom of expression and the right to seek and disseminate information may be limited by law in the case of measures necessary in a democratic society for protecting the rights and freedoms of others, the security of the State, public security, public health, and morals.
(5) State bodies and territorial self-governing bodies are obliged, in an appropriate manner, to provide information on their activities. Conditions therefore and the implementation thereof shall be provided for by law (Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms).”
One through three are laudable. It’s number 4 that comes along and provides the predicate to undo the first three, so long as the right person is in place to regulate speech for morality’s sake. Enter Vera Jourova.
Engaged in Czech and EU politics since 1995, Jourova was a monthlong resident of the Graybar Hotel on a bribery charge. She was accused of accepting two million Czech korunas from the mayor of Budisov in return for arranging for EU subsidies to rebuild a chateau in that town. The police suddenly came forward halfway through her trial to claim that the bribe never happened, and the case against her evaporated instantly. What did Ms. Jourova do next? No, not Euro Disney. She went into deeper into politics, eventually hitching her wagon to Czech billionaire and former Czech PM Andrej Babis.
Jourova was appointed in 2014 by the three national parties of the Czech Republic to become their next EU commissioner. Her eventual portfolio at the EU? Values and transparency. Twitter apparently falls under her purview now that Elon Musk is ensconced at the headquarters of the little blue bird and is allowing speech to thrive less censored than it was when Twitter was helmed by the Silicon Valley leftists that started the platform. This actual transparency put into practice cannot and will not stand with the EU/Davos crowd, and sanctions are to follow if Musk doesn’t toe the line and return Twitter to the good old days of social media censorship.
Now mind you, I’m not pro-Musk or anti-Musk. I haven’t met him, interviewed him, nor do I think I agree much with his political or social worldview. But it’s been hard not to cheer him on after upsetting the apple cart at Twitter and leaving legacy media and American, as well as global, leftists with a case of the vapors. I obviously cannot speak on Musk’s behalf, but judging by past performance, his reaction to the threat of sanctions from a sub-committee of the European Union would probably be a forceful and immediate extension of a centrally-located appendage on his hand with a strong letter to follow.
My advice would be for Musk to call her bluff. What sanctions are they going to levy? Fines? What happens if he doesn’t pay them? Who’s going to collect it? Banning the platform from EU member states? Good luck with that and then standing for election in these EU bureaucrats’ home countries. We’re still struggling to get create the political inertia to ban TikTok in the United States, and that’s an entity run by and for the intellectual data gathering of the Communist Chinese Party.
Vera Jourova is nothing but the latest incarnation of the ‘exception clause’ built into many Western-style democracies. It all sounds innocent enough. Language like freedom and liberties are of course to be protected at all times…unless there’s an extreme case, in which we can then suspend everything for the public well-being, that kind of stuff. It all reads as though they sincerely meant well when they wrote it, but did not foresee how easily it could be hijacked by clever authoritarians in the making. These exception clauses inevitably lead to big questions. Who gets to be in the position to decide what extreme is speech is? Whose values are to be placed at the top of the food chain, and what happens to those who don’t share those same values? I didn’t elect Ms. Jourova to be my values czar. Neither did anyone in France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, or anywhere else on the old continent. Yet she has her values, even if they don’t necessarily true up with the spirit of the Czech Republic’s charter, and she’s not afraid of imposing them on anyone who isn’t ideologically attuned to that of the rest of the global leftist elites.
We in the West should increase transparency by the continual exposure of people like Ms. Jourova who want to ultimately use the power of the state, or even a union of states, to make a mockery out of your valued freedoms. Trust the people, not the regulators.
