Vice President J.D. Vance said he believes mainstream culture in the U.S. is attacking masculinity and, as a result, is creating large numbers of “androgynous idiots.”
At the Conservative Political Action Conference gathering in National Harbor, Maryland, on Thursday, Vance was interviewed on the main stage by conservative activist Mercedes Schlapp.
When Schlapp asked Vance what message he had for young men in America, the vice president responded that he believes “our culture sends a message to young men that you should suppress every masculine urge.”
“My message to young men is, don’t allow this broken culture to send you a message that you’re a bad person because you’re a man,” said Vance. “Because you like to tell a joke, because you like to have a beer with your friends, or because you’re competitive.”
Vance added that he believes mainstream American society “wants to turn everybody, whether male or female, into androgynous idiots who think the same, talk the same and act the same.”
“We actually think God made male and female for a purpose,” he continued. “We want you guys to thrive as young men and as young women, and we’re going to help with our public policy to make it possible to do that.”
Schlapp also asked Vance about his highly publicized speech at the Munich Security Conference in Germany, in which he denounced curbs on free speech in various European nations.
Regarding the speech, Vance reiterated his position that “the greatest threat in Europe” is European governments sending “millions and millions of unvetted foreign migrants into their countries.”
“We cannot rebuild Western civilization; we cannot rebuild the United States of America or Europe by letting millions and millions of unvetted illegal migrants come into our country,” Vance stressed. “It has to stop.”
Vance considered it a “related issue” that governments in Europe “have to allow” their people “to raise issues about it,” adding that “you have to allow free speech to debate this stuff.”
“You have to stop doing things to the populations of the world; you’ve got to give the populations of the world the opportunity to speak up and say, ‘no more of this BS,’” he said.
Vance accused former President Joe Biden of being opposed to free speech, claiming that “the Biden administration did more to destroy free speech, not just in the United States but also in Europe, than any administration in American history.”
“I’m not even blaming the Europeans,” he added. “I’m actually saying, you followed the lead of Joe Biden into censorship and mass migration. Follow the lead of Donald J. Trump, and that’s free speech, borders and sovereignty.”
Vance emphasized that while he does consider the Western European powers to be “friends” of the U.S., he also believes “friendship is based on shared values.”
“You do not have shared values if you’re jailing people for saying ‘we should close down our border,’” said Vance. “You don’t have shared values if you cancel elections because you don’t like the result.”
Vance and Schlapp also talked about other issues, including ways to improve the economy, the importance of changing hearts and minds to advance pro-life policies, the need for young people to be more involved in politics, and the importance of border security.
Vance’s remarks opened the first day of CPAC, a large, annual gathering of conservative politicians and activists organized by the American Conservative Union and usually held in the Washinton, D.C., metropolitan area.
