Thierry Breton, the European Union commissioner who tried to bully Elon Musk into banishing free speech from Twitter/X, resigned in shame from his post today and liberty lovers everywhere should rejoice.
Breton, who truly deserves a spot on this long-dormant blog, quit in an open letter where he accused European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen of plotting against him. “You asked France to withdraw my name – for personal reasons that in no instance you have discussed directly with me – and offered, as a political trade-off, an allegedly more influential portfolio for France in the future College,” he wrote.
According to Deadline, Breton has been "at odds with von der Leyen [since] August when he sent a letter to Musk, urging him to ensure that X adhered to EU regulations and moderated content."
In response, Musk told Breton to back-off with an expletive-laden meme on X, taken from the satirical action thriller Tropic Thunder.
The European Commission would not comment on the insult, but a spokesperson stated that “the timing and wording” of Breton’s letter to Musk had not been coordinated with von der Leyen or other commissioners, in a response that was seen as a rebuke to the commissioner.
Translation: Breton embarrassed Brussels and had to be sidelined.
Had Musk caved, Breton would still be hard at work, determining what is "safe" for people to be allowed to read in Europe — and even in this country.
What was the last major innovation to come out of Europe? At least in the consumer space, the most recent one I can think of is the compact disc in 1982, but even that was co-developed by Netherlands-based Philips and Japan's Sony. Yet the CD was based on earlier technology pioneered by Philips, Pioneer (another Japanese company), and Chicago-based MCA.
Europe does come out with new pharmaceuticals, but they tend to be "follow-on compounds" of drugs that were innovated elsewhere. "Whatever you might think about the idea of American exceptionalism," Derek Lowe wrote in that linked Science report, "it's alive in drug discovery."
The reason I started looking into European innovations is the premise — proven again and again in reality — that squelching human freedom has dire consequences for human progress. If there is a once-free economy and political space more regulated than the European Union, it must be too small to have caught my attention.
Can you name the last high-tech innovation to come out of Europe? Large language models, smartphones, computational photography, operating systems... Europe isn't on the cutting edge of any of these things. Europe still manufactures some great stuff but mostly in established fields.
I'm convinced the reason the EU slaps such massive fines on foreign innovators like Apple and Meta is to punish successful innovators abroad like EU overregulation has squeezed them out of existence at home.
Similarly, neither the EU nor its member nations have ever had anything like America's First Amendment protection of free speech. That was fine before Elon Musk bought Twitter and began exporting free speech around the world. Meta could be fined into submission but not Musk, who paid an outrageous sum for Twitter in part because he believes free speech is more important than his net worth.
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