A Speech for Free Speech – and for Civilisation
Shortly before Christmas, the Director of National Intelligence of the United States, Tulsi Gabbard, delivered a remarkable speech at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest Conference. It was a speech in defence of free speech, of the West, and of the duty to fight for ourselves and our values. She briefly mentioned what many call “the Deep State” as a threat to freedom — but that was not her main concern this time. According to Gabbard, the central threat to our liberty and to freedom of expression today comes from Islam. What she described was nothing less than a clash of civilisations.
She opened by thanking Erika Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk, for showing “the courage and the strength that you and I know can only come from God.” God(!). It could hardly be more ultimate than that. The ultimate weapon — and now, she said, was the time to use it.
“We hear a lot of talk about unity,” she continued, “a word that is used loosely: ‘we must stand united’, ‘we must come together’. But far too often we don’t stop to think about what that actually means.” For we can unite around all the wrong things, she warned, before offering her own answer to the question of what should unite us across left and right, across faiths and beliefs.
“Fundamentally, as Americans, we must unite around our God-given freedoms, enshrined in our Constitution,” she said, “freedoms that each and every one of us has a duty to defend.”
The Price of Free Speech: Fallen Soldiers
She spoke of what Charlie Kirk himself had symbolised and lived by — and of what she herself had lived by as an officer deployed in Iraq. Her defence of free speech was framed by memories of fallen comrades.
“I may disagree with everything you say,” she quoted, “but I will defend your right to say it.”
Charlie lived and died by the principle that no matter how offensive, how appalling, how repugnant other people’s speech may be, it is our duty to defend their right to speak — and, as he did, to defeat weak and dark ideologies with a superior ideology focused on freedom.
From the Censorship-Industrial Complex to Islamic Ideology
Gabbard then spoke matter-of-factly about the threat posed to free speech by the previous administration under Joe Biden, through what she called the censorship-industrial complex: the systematic suppression of especially conservative voices on social media, carried out in cooperation with the American intelligence community.
But then she turned to what she called the greatest threat of all.
“The greatest threat, in the short term and the long term, to both our freedom and our security,” she said, “is the threat from Islamic ideology.”
The hall erupted in applause.
This ideology, she continued, is spread by people who do not merely reject freedom, but whose fundamental worldview is the direct antithesis of the foundation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence: that our Creator has endowed us with inalienable rights — life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
11 September as a Civilisational Turning Point
When we look back at the attacks of 11 September, she said, they changed so many of our lives. Thousands of Americans were murdered by Islamist jihadists. We were confronted with how far they are willing to go to destroy the very foundations of who we are as a nation.
That day, she said, changed her life. It was what motivated her to join the military — to fight in defence of freedom and against those who attack it.
An Ideology That Seeks to Replace Freedom with Sharia
When we speak of this Islamist ideology, she said, we are speaking of the ideology that fuels groups such as Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Al-Shabaab, Hamas, Boko Haram, and others. These must be defeated militarily as they continue to attack us. They are a threat to our security.
But they are also a threat to our freedom. For at its core this ideology seeks to establish a global caliphate, governed by sharia law, threatening Western civilisation itself.
They rule by what they call Islamic principles. And if you refuse to submit, if you dare to exercise your God-given right to free speech, they will not censor you — they will use violence, or whatever means they deem necessary, to silence you.
Europe as a Warning
If we do not take this threat seriously, she warned, Americans will soon “find themselves in the same situation that many European countries are already in.”
She referred to cases in Europe where people are arrested for praying quietly on the pavement, or for online posts someone finds offensive; where Christmas markets are cancelled because of terror threats — the very logic that free speech advocates have described for years.
She also spoke of Islamic enclaves in the United States where demands for sharia law are growing louder. “They are working to implement these Islamic principles in their own local governments, enforced by law or by violence,” she said. “And that is incompatible with the foundations of freedom in the United States.”
When we understand that our freedom comes from God — and from no one else — we understand the seriousness of this threat. For they deny that God is the source of our liberty.
Free Speech as a Religious Duty
Free speech, she argued, is not merely a convenient principle or a nice ideal for after-dinner speeches. It is a duty. A religious duty. A duty to defend what God has given us.
This is not our God and their God merely as metaphors. It is, in her worldview, a real spiritual struggle.
Vance in Munich: The Threat Comes from Within
The current American administration under Donald J. Trump, she said, shares this focus on democracy, free speech, prosperity, and security as inseparable.
The same theme, she reminded her audience, had shaped Vice President J. D. Vance’s major speech at the NATO summit in Munich last year. There, Vance stunned European leaders by declaring:
“The threat I worry most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any external actor. What I worry about is the threat from within.”
By this he meant, above all, the importation of large numbers of people from predominantly Muslim backgrounds — and the consequences for Europe’s security, freedom, and economy, consequences now increasingly concealed through restrictions on Europeans’ own freedoms, especially free speech.
Right-wing parties are banned or treated as security threats. Elections are annulled. Censorship is justified in the name of combating “misinformation” and “disinformation” — especially when it allegedly comes from Russia.
“The crisis this continent faces right now,” Vance warned, “is one of our own making.” And he cautioned Europeans against “running in fear of your own voters.”
To believe in democracy, he said, is to believe that ordinary citizens have wisdom and a voice. Populism, he argued, simply recognises that people care about their homes, their dreams, their safety, and their children — and that they are not fools.
Europe’s Response: Denial and Delegitimisation
European leaders reacted with outrage. Comparing the EU to totalitarian regimes was “unacceptable”, declared Germany’s defence minister. EU Commissioner Guy Verhofstadt asked sarcastically whether this was the United States speaking — or Russia.
Supporting the European right, he said, stripped Vance of all legitimacy. In other words: the right has no legitimacy.
The Collapse of Liberal Hegemony
What we are witnessing, in truth, is the collapse of the liberal hegemony that Europe still clings to.
Francis Fukuyama once called it “the end of history”: the belief that Western liberal democracy and free markets would inevitably triumph everywhere after the fall of the Berlin Wall. If not, then perhaps they could be helped along by regime change and endless wars.
But people are not cogs in a global machine. They are shaped by history, culture, and faith. Western “universal values” are, in reality, Western values. The rest of the world will remain itself.
This illusion led to carefree mass immigration and, in many places, to what now resembles demographic replacement.
Islam as a Civilisational Counterforce
No civilisation stands further from Western ideals than Islam. Fundamentally hostile to compromise, it allows no Westphalian peace. It is a direct threat to both our security and our freedom.
This is what Gabbard speaks of — even if she uses the milder term “Islamist ideology”.
Trump, Pipes, and What May No Longer Be Said
Already in 2017, in his first foreign speech in Saudi Arabia, Trump openly named the problem. The scholar Daniel Pipes praised him for doing what previous administrations had refused to do: to name Islam, not merely “extremism” or “fanaticism”.
Trump said plainly: “There is still much work to do. That means honestly confronting the crisis of Islamic extremism and the Islamist and Islamic terror of all kinds.”
No euphemisms. No evasions.
Trump even reminded his audience that Egypt had been a great civilisation long before Islam. Earlier, he had told CNN bluntly: “Islam hates us.”
A Holy War for Free Speech
Tulsi Gabbard has declared a holy war for free speech.
And it seems unlikely that the Trump administration will be introducing a “blasphemy law” any time soon.
