Kev Bourne. Public domain. Via Wikimedia Commons.
On October 7th, Secretary of State Marco Rubio stood at the Pnyx [NICKS]— the ancient hill in Athens where Greek citizens once governed themselves. With the famous ruins of the Parthenon rising behind him, Secretary Rubio delivered a speech that deserves to be heard by every American.
It wasn’t simply a foreign policy address — it was a diagnosis of what Western Civilization has lost. It was a declaration that America intends to get it back.
Rubio began with the Greeks, not as ancient history but as a mirror for us all. He said, “The civilization that built what stands behind me captivated the imagination of the Western world.” Greece is literally carved into the architecture of our government — in the columns, the domes, the monuments across our capital. Philadelphia itself is a Greek name. For the Greeks, Rubio reminded us, the pursuit of excellence was the very principle of man’s existence.
That spirit built the West. And we have been walking away from it for decades.
In 1987, Jesse Jackson led students through the entrance to Stanford University chanting that Western Civilization had to go. The protest succeeded. Stanford dropped its Western Civ requirement. The Great Books gave way to cultural relativism and intersectional ideology. What followed was exactly as Rubio described — we began building downward. We designed standards to ensure the exceptional would be hostage to the average.
Over time, Rubio said, we came to feel ashamed of the very things that made us exceptional. Our prosperity became a source of guilt. We no longer believed we had earned our greatness. So we tore down our monuments, condemned our history, opened our borders, outsourced our industry, and allowed our military to decay.
Look at the streets of Paris this fall: riots in the streets, fueled by an unholy alliance of the revolutionary left and Muslim organizations whose stated goal is the political conquest of France. The same alliance is visible today in Michigan, Minnesota, New York City, even parts of Texas. This is not coincidence, but a strategy.
The West is at an inflection point, Rubio warned. We will either choose to act now or lose the choice to act at all. Under President Trump, America has made its choice: an unapologetic pursuit of national power, the rebuilding of our defenses, and the reclaiming of our sovereignty.
Building the American civilization or managed decline — the choice is ours. Stay informed and engaged with us PhyllisSchlafly.com, and join us again for the Phyllis Schlafly Report.
