ROGER KIMBALL: America’s free-speech war on the EU.

I think Musk is correct: “The EU should be abolished and sovereignty returned to individual countries, so that governments can better represent their people.”

The EU is desperately attempting to preserve its undemocratic prerogatives by clamping down on free speech and extending its regime of censorship. Meanwhile, the White House just released its 2025 National Security Strategy report. Europe’s economic performance and military posture are dismal. But that is the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Economic decline, the report says, is

eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure. The larger issues facing Europe include activities of the European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence. Should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less.

All of which means that the odds favor Elon Musk. The question is not whether the EU will collapse but when. My book has good odds that it happens before the end of Trump’s second term.

Faster please, because the striped trousers crowd in Belgium are getting far too big for their britches:

Utterly insane but it would make it beyond debate that the EU is a rapacious repressive statist technocracy.

— Perry de Havilland 🇬🇧🇺🇦🇨🇿 (@cthulhupotamus) December 15, 2025