J. D. Talked about Freedom of Speech. But Did He Mean What He Said?

J. D. Vance

Maybe he should have lectured himself. Without a trace of irony, newly minted United States Vice President J. D. Vance instructed European leaders about freedom. Downplaying Vladimir Putin’s saber-rattling in Eastern Europe, and ignoring his own administration’s attacks on free expression, Vance castigated European governments for alleged free-speech violations:

“We shouldn’t be afraid of our people, even when they express views that disagree with their leadership.”

Yes, in his forceful February 14, 2025 speech at the Munich Security Conference, Vance boldly defended the right of populists and conservatives to express unpopular opinions. He also blithely ignored the Trump-Vance administration’s own malicious attacks against liberals’ free speech rights.

Clue: in a free society, if your side has rights, the other side shares those rights. Sadly, Vance evinced no awareness of that great principle – the exact doctrine that his speech purported to support. Let’s look at that speech.


Vance Defends Free Speech

Vance berated the stunned European leaders for allegedly violating freedom of speech:

“I look to Brussels, where EU commissars warn citizens that they intend to shut down social media during times of civil unrest, the moment they spot what they’ve judged to be ‘hateful content.’”

And...

“I look to Sweden, where two weeks ago, the government convicted a Christian activist for participating in Quran burnings that resulted in his friend’s murder.”

Also... 

“A little over two years ago, the British government charged Adam Smith-Connor, a 51-year-old physiotherapist and army veteran, with the heinous crime of standing 50 meters from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes.”

Furthermore, amplifying on Scotland:

“This last October, just a few months ago, the Scottish government began distributing letters to citizens whose houses lay within so-called Safe Access Zones, warning them that even private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking the law.”

The Scottish government promptly refuted Vance’s last claim, emphatically denying that anyone restricted private prayer: “The Vice President’s claim is incorrect. Private prayer at home is not prohibited within Safe Access Zones and no letter has ever suggested it was.” Vance has yet to document his accusation. Indeed, that Vance needed to fabricate an accusation suggests that he offered a weak case.

Anyway, continuing, Scotland pointed out that rights must balance:

“People continue to have the right to protest and to free speech, however, no one has the right to harass women, or to try to influence without consent their decision to access healthcare, or to impede their access to it in any way.”

So, overlooking the obvious truth that every right carries responsibilities, Vance may have missed the point. By way of analogy, I have a right to pray for peace, but I do not have a right to pray for peace while standing on Interstate 95 during rush hour. The Scottish man clearly could have prayed outside the designated safe zone. The only reason for him to pray inside the safe zone was to intimidate women as they entered. One right balancing against another?


Practice What You Preach

More telling against Vance’s credibility, however, is the political context. While Vance arrogantly preached for absolute freedom of speech, the Trump-Vance administration and their Republican Party continue to stomp on free speech in Vance's own country. Trump’s executive orders forbid public schools from teaching about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Should schools and teachers in the United States not have freedom to teach whatever they think students need to learn? The Trump administration banned Associated Press reporters from the White House briefing room because they refused to join Trump in renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. Additionally, Trump’s strict rules against federal DEI programs quickly resulted in the government concealing a museum exhibit that celebrated the work of minority group members and women in our national defense. Do they not have free-speech rights?

And across the United States’ more conservative regions, school libraries too often find that conservative censors are driving Toni Morrison books and literature about civil rights off their shelves. If populists have rights, so does everyone else. 

Trump's Speech at the Social Media Summit: Free Speech Isn't Free Speech?

The Problem

Public speaking teachers have known since ancient times that the speaker’s credibility is the most powerful mode of persuasion. That is where Vance failed. Yes, we all eagerly defend our own free speech rights. That is not the point. The point is to respect everyone’s free speech rights. As long as Vance’s own political movement callously suppresses freedom of speech in the United States, he has discarded his credibility to condemn censorship elsewhere.

Thomas Jefferson

My blog’s faithful readers have long known that I am a free-speech libertarian. Yet, every freedom does come with responsibility – a principle that conservatives once supported. Still, governments themselves also have a responsibility - to prevent freedom from being abused. That line is hard to draw, and people reasonably disagree about it. My readers surely also know that the purpose of liberty is not to defend the powerful, but to protect the weak. Not to promulgate what is popular, but to give voice to people on the margins. As Thomas Jefferson said, “error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.”

Free Speech on Campus Needs to Apply to Everyone

So, yes, let us have freedom of speech. Still, until the Trump administration and the Republican Party exhibit more respect for liberals’ free speech rights, Vance needs to stop pontificating. And he needs to stop now.

by William D. Harpine

Copyright @2025 by William D. Harpine

Image of J. D. Vance, official White House photo, public domain

Image of Thomas Jefferson, Library of Congress

 

How Not to Be Fooled: America, Protect Yourself from Elon Musk!

Donald Trump, official WH photo

Did Donald Trump just call himself a “radical leftist?” In a recent social media post, Trump said:

“DOGE: Looks like Radical Left Reuters was paid $9,000,000 by the Department of Defense to study ‘large scale social deception.’ give back the money, now!”

However, elementary investigation finds that this program dates to 2018, under the first Trump administration. Furthermore, the grant did not go to Reuters News, but to an entirely different Reuters company. A headline in The Independent gleefully stated: “Trump demands ‘Radical Left Reuters’ return a $9 million government contract. He’s the one who paid it out in the first place.” Further, the actual contract centered on preventing cyberattacks. The facts, with the complete story, were easy to find.


What Is DOGE?

DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency, a semi-mythical government agency), headed by multi- billionaire Elon Musk, purports to examine government fraud and waste. Unfortunately, they seem to pursue that laudable goal with neither skill nor integrity. The program in question investigated cyber hacking, not social deception, and was a product of Donald Trump’s first administration. That is, like most conspiracy theories, the Musk/Trump social media exchange began with a speck of truth – in this case, an itty-bitty, tiny speck – and then spun out a far-reaching, complicated, and utterly paranoid spiderweb of speculation. All encapsulated into cryptic social media posts.


This Isn’t the First Time

Yesterday, I noted how a reporter corrected Musk for wrongly claiming that a USAID grant had spent millions of dollars sending condoms to Hamas terrorists. Even when Musk’s claim turned out to be wrong, he hedged but didn’t back down. This new conspiracy theory proves that they still have not learned to check their facts.

Earlier Post: Elon Musk, DOGE, and the Art of Squirming

 
DOGE dominates the news with endless stories alleging government fraud and waste. Although I lack time to investigate all of them, I have yet to find even one of Musk’s major accusations that stands up to even elementary scrutiny. Now, granted, fraud and waste do occur in the federal government. Probably plenty. It’s less clear that Musk and his inept team will uncover any of it. Instead, they rely on what I have called the “jackhammer method of persuasion”—to unleash more deceptions than anyone can hope to track. 

Earlier Post: Conservatives, Public Health, and the Jackhammer Method of Persuasion

Yet, deception often works. Over the years, many gullible voters uncritically and angrily respond to every wild accusation: the FBI shot JFK, Nelson Rockefeller was the leader of the world communist party, the government created HIV, millions of immigrants are lining up, fake IDs in hand, to vote without ever being caught. Millions of people believe that the COVID vaccines are deadly, sadly leading to thousands of well-documented but needless Republican deaths. We must sort the silly from the true. So: can we engage in critical thinking? Is critical thinking even that hard?

And, Now, a New Dubious Claim

With that in mind, let us look at the Reuters claim. Citing DOGE, President Trump claimed on social media that:

“DOGE: Looks like Radical Left Reuters was paid $9,000,000 by the Department of Defense to study ‘large scale social deception.’ give back the money, now!” [italics added]

Since this program dated to 2018, when Trump was president, it seems that Trump was calling himself a radical leftist. 

Proudly responding on X, and undaunted by any mundane details like dates, Musk added:

“Reuters received far more money than this from US government organizations, but via various subsidiaries and intermediaries to hide how they were getting it. This is just what @DOGE has found so far.”

Wow! Did DOGE discover that the federal government was trying to stomp out social deception? Heaven forbid! What Trump supporter could tolerate that? After all, Trump thrives on deception…but I digress.


Lessons to Learn

Musk and his team obviously exercised little effort to learn the facts about the program in question. My impression is that they usually do not. Therefore incumbent, the viewer or reader must check the facts. Since the facts, in this case, were effortless to find, there is really no excuse – none at all – for Elon Musk to be fooling people.

We live in the Information Age. Almost everyone over the age of two has a computer. Yes, I know that it is easy, and tempting, to believe whatever these paranoid con artists might want to tell you. It is, however, almost as easy to check the facts.

I am sure that we all want to stop government waste, fraud, and abuse. To do so, however, we need to have the facts. You don’t need to be a genius to learn the facts. It makes no difference whether you like or dislike what people say. The only thing that matters is the truth. Unfortunately, sometimes the people who scream “fraud” the loudest turn out to be the guiltiest. Musk and Trump have repeatedly proven themselves to be unreliable. That puts the burden on the rest of us. We do not need to plow through the archives at the Library of Congress. We do not, however, want to start by getting angry and shouting, “How do radical leftists get away with this fraud?” Instead, we must delay the anger for a moment. Ask yourself, “Is this even true? Am I getting the whole story?” If, and only if, the accusations turn out to be right, then, yes, go ahead and get angry. Wise people think first, and only after thinking do they rage.

To this point, Musk, Trump, and DOGE have spewed out various wild claims without checking the details. Nor do they back down when corrected. Given their track record, the public would be unwise to trust them. If their next accusations turn out to be inaccurate, don’t be gullible. Remember that at least two people are at fault in every confidence game: the con artist, and the gullible mark. Don’t be a mark. Don’t be naïve. Take a moment to check the facts. Check the facts first, and get angry later. America depends on it. Thank you.

by William D. Harpine

Earlier Post: Critical Thinking on the Cheap

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P.S. There is a reason that conservatives tell people not to trust the mainstream media. That is because they only want you to hear one viewpoint. The idea that you might check up on them – that you might examine their claims – terrifies them. Whenever they tell you not to check them out, well, take that as a warning. Always.

P.P.S. Do liberals tell lies? Of course they do. Seriously. Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky? Lyndon Johnson and the Gulf of Tonkin incident? Unfortunately, I see no sign that Trump, Musk, or anyone currently on Fox News has either the moxie or the talent to catch them. Once again, that job falls to you as the reader, the listener, the audience – seek the truth and don’t be gullible.

Copyright @ by William D. Harpine

Elon Musk, DOGE, and the Art of Squirming

I suppose that all politicians sometimes play confidence games, and the number one trick of confidence artists is the Squirm and Shift. Known in the business world as Overpromise and Underdeliver.

Such was the travesty of a news conference held yesterday, February 11, 2025, by United States President Donald Trump and his supervisor, billionaire Elon Musk, who heads a semi-mythical government agency called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which supposedly uncovers fraud and waste. As his young son clung to him, entertaining the TV audience while distracting everyone from the issues, as only an adorable child can, Musk slithered around the issues.

The central theme behind DOGE’s fallacies is equivocation about words like “fraud” and “abuse”. Or the phrase, beloved by politicians, “fraud and waste.” Fraud and waste are, although both bad, not the same. The public most often thinks that fraud is an illegal act in which money or services are obtained by trickery. However, if we bunch “fraud and waste” together, we can use the word “fraud” (or even “treason”) to describe any expenditure of which we disapprove. Note that it is often hard to prove fraud in the usual sense, but it is easy to prove that someone is spending money in a way we disagree with. Nevertheless, “fraud” sounds terrible – indeed, illegal – whereas “I don’t like the way we are spending money” might be more accurate, but fails to create the same blood-curdling chills. Fraud sounds terrible, while misplaced priorities come down to value judgments.

Anyway, citing fraud and abuse, Trump introduced Musk’s presentation:

“And we’re going to be signing a very important deal today. It’s DOGE and I'm going to ask Elon to tell you a little bit about it and some of the things that we’ve found which are shocking, billions and billions of dollars in waste, fraud, and abuse. And I think it’s very important.” [italics added]

Now, later in the news conference, one reporter, having discovered that DOGE had made a factual error about condom purchases, asked this reasonable question:

“Mr. Musk, you said on X that an example of the fraud that you have cited was $50 million of condoms was sent to Gaza, but after fact check[ing] this, apparently Gaza and Mozambique and the program was to protect them against HIV. So, can you correct the statements? It wasn't sent to Hamas, actually. It was sent to Mozambique, which makes sense why condoms [were] sent there. And how can we make sure that all the statements that you said were correct so we can trust what you say?”

That is, the reporter caught DOGE making a careless error, and gently asked Musk whether DOGE’s findings are trustworthy (which they obviously are not). Musk responded:

“Well, first of all, some of the things that I say will be incorrect and should be corrected. So, nobody's going to bat a thousand. I mean, we will make mistakes, but we'll act quickly to correct any mistakes.”

After tentatively and quite vaguely admitting that he made a reckless mistake, Musk immediately squirmed and shifted his argument to a question of policy values:

“I'm not sure we should be sending $50 million worth of condoms to anywhere, frankly. I'm not sure that's something Americans would be really excited about. And that is really an enormous number of condoms, if you think about it. But if it went to Mozambique instead of Gaza, I'm like, ‘Okay, that's not as bad. But still, why are we doing that?’”

Let us simply unpack that exchange. First, Musk did not specifically admit that he had made a silly mistake. From the standpoint of dialectical honesty, he should have said something like, “Well, it sounds as if I made an error, and I guess I should have been more careful about that.” He didn’t. Instead, he fidgeted.

Second, Musk continued to promote his case even though his premise turned out to be factually false. Now, the condoms had not gone to Hamas, which United States considers to be a terrorist organization. Instead, they went to the more peaceable nation of Mozambique. Furthermore, the purpose of the condom shipment was to reduce the spread of a deadly disease – not to support vicious terrorists. With the wind totally taken out of his argument, Musk stated: “I'm not sure we should be sending $50 million worth of condoms to anywhere.” He could have admitted that he was wrong but that he wanted to give a different argument against the condoms. However, he did not. Instead, Musk admitted that “That’s not as bad,” but nevertheless persisted. He plowed right past his mistake.

The aura of government mismanagement, the implication that the condom shipment was tantamount to treason, had been utterly refuted. Did Musk back off? No.

I think that many American voters would label a program that supplies sexual aids to a terrorist organization as fraud and abuse. I suspect that many Americans would consider it a good thing to reduce the spread of HIV. Shifting and squirming, wriggling and writhing, DOGE had created the impression that a basically healthy program was tantamount to fraud, or gross mismanagement, or something like that. The reality of humanitarian aid was besmirched by the false aura of fraud, sullied by a careless but momentous factual mistake. Most critically, Musk totally ignored the reporter’s punchline: “And how can we make sure that all the statements that you said were correct so we can trust what you say?” That was the real question. If DOGE’s wild accusations turn out to be factually false, or even fabricated, why should the public give the slightest credence to anything that DOGE or Musk has to say? Musk never answered! Instead, slippery as a California rattlesnake, he slithered away from that real issue.

And that, dear readers, is the black magic of ambiguity. Equivocation. Shifting and squirming. Refusing to debate openly. Politicians practice those evil tactics all the time. Nasty Democrats have done it, but this time it was a contemptible Republican. And it is my job, as a specialist in argumentation and debate, to call out this kind of sneaky argument whenever I see it.

Oh, what a better world we would have, what a happier nation, if politicians would debate honestly!

by William D. Harpine

 

Earlier Posts:

Elon Musk's 2016 Mars Speech: A Speech and a Vision

Debbie Lesko, Anthony Fauci, and the "Illusion of Proof"

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P.S.: Thanks to rev.com, a commercial transcription service, for providing a prompt verbatim copy of the press conference. 

Copyright @ 2025 by William D. Harpine

Image from DOGE.gov's rapidly changing website