I listened to Marco Rubio’s speech at the Munich Security Conference with profound admiration and satisfaction. Given the predominance of leftist globalist sentiments in Western Europe, it was both rewarding and surprising to observe the standing ovation that followed the speech.
Reminiscing about the first Munich Security Conference in 1963, Rubio remarked:
At the time of that first gathering, Soviet communism was on the march. Thousands of years of Western civilization hung in the balance. At that time, victory was far from certain. But we were driven by a common purpose. We were unified not just by what we were fighting against; we were unified by what we were fighting for. And together, Europe and America prevailed and a continent was rebuilt. Our people prospered. In time, the East and West blocs were reunited. A civilization was once again made whole.
Rubio reminded the audience that the West’s victory in the Cold War had led to a dangerous misunderstanding of history’s lessons. He referred to Francis Fukuyama’s hypothesis that the post-Cold-War world had reached “the end of history” as the endpoint of humanity’s ideological evolution.
That infamous wall that had cleaved this nation into two came down, and with it an evil empire, and the East and West became one again. But the euphoria of this triumph led us to a dangerous delusion: that we had entered, quote, “the end of history;” that every nation would now be a liberal democracy; that the ties formed by trade and by commerce alone would now replace nationhood; that the rules-based global order — an overused term — would now replace the national interest; and that we would now live in a world without borders where everyone became a citizen of the world.This was a foolish idea that ignored both human nature, and it ignored the lessons of over 5,000 years of recorded human history. And it has cost us dearly.
Rubio did not sugarcoat the pitfalls of such ideology and the resulting problems — uncontrolled migration, unsustainable welfare and green policies, and self-imposed de-industrialization, to name but a few. But throughout his oration, he emphasized the common cultural heritage and shared historical values that had defined Europe and America:
We are part of one civilization — Western civilization. We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common civilization to which we have fallen heir….National security, which this conference is largely about, is not merely series of technical questions — how much we spend on defense or where, how we deploy it, these are important questions. They are. But they are not the fundamental one. The fundamental question we must answer at the outset is what exactly are we defending, because armies do not fight for abstractions. Armies fight for a people; armies fight for a nation. Armies fight for a way of life. And that is what we are defending: a great civilization that has every reason to be proud of its history, confident of its future, and aims to always be the master of its own economic and political destiny.
Rubio diagnosed the most significant impediment to future security and prosperity in the West — the cultural suicide that globalist leftist elites have been committing by constantly encouraging shame and guilt for the achievements of Western civilization.
Without cultural self-confidence, the iconic Greek victory at Marathon in 490 BC, which arguably saved Western civilization, would not have been won. When the 300 Spartans willingly sacrificed their lives in 480 BC to delay the Persian army at the mountain pass of Thermopylae, they were driven by patriotism and pride in their way of life. Imagine what would have happened if they had been brought up with a pervasive sense of guilt and shame for the flaws of their civilization. Without civilizational self-assurance, Greece would not have defeated the Persians, and Europe would not have become the bearer of Classical, and subsequently, Judeo-Christian ideals.
Nothing is more pernicious than the enemy within, the self-doubt that erases any confidence in the principles that have made the West uniquely free and prosperous. No one claims that Western civilization is perfect, but it is high time we stopped apologizing for it. We should remind ourselves, and teach our children, that Western values are not a questionable choice from the morally relativistic buffet table of multiculturalism. We should affirm the simple fact that Western values, which reflect universally beneficial ideals as expressed in the American founding documents, have not surprisingly engendered the most magnificent and extraordinary examples of human flourishing.
Rubio concluded:
Together we rebuilt a shattered continent in the wake of two devastating world wars. When we found ourselves divided once again by the Iron Curtain, the free West linked arms with the courageous dissidents struggling against tyranny in the East to defeat Soviet communism….And I am here today to leave it clear that America is charting the path for a new century of prosperity, and that once again we want to do it together with you, … with a Europe that has the spirit of creation of liberty that sent ships out into uncharted seas and birthed our civilization; with a Europe that has the means to defend itself and the will to survive. We should be proud of what we achieved together in the last century, but now we must confront and embrace the opportunities of a new one — because yesterday is over, the future is inevitable, and our destiny together awaits.
Nora D. Clinton is a Research Scholar at the Legal Insurrection Foundation. She was born and raised in Sofia, Bulgaria. She holds a PhD in Classics and has published extensively on ancient documents on stone. In 2020, she authored the popular memoir Quarantine Reflections Across Two Worlds. Nora is a co-founder of two partner charities dedicated to academic cooperation and American values. She lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and son.
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