In front of the legendary Acropolis in Greece on Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio gave a stirring defense of Western civilization — and why we must fight to defend it.
asserted
we → give → it
The Greeks of antiquity have an almost mystical hold on our memory.
asserted
Greeks → have → memory
They call us back to them again and again.
asserted
They → call → them
Four-hundred-and-eighty years before Christ, the armies of Xerxes arrived in this city, and they put its sanctuaries to the torch.
asserted
they → arrive → torch
Most Athenians had by then evacuated by ship to a nearby island.
asserted
Athenians → evacuate → island
But there was a handful of them that refused to leave their home.
asserted
that → be → home
So instead they barricaded themselves in the rocky fortress of the Acropolis to fight an extraordinary last stand, heaving massive stones down the cliffs onto the Persian invaders and holding the greatest empire of that age at bay.
asserted
empire → barricade → bay
They were eventually overwhelmed.
asserted
They → overwhelm → ?
The Persians plundered the temples, burned the shrines and razed the Acropolis to the ground.
asserted
Persians → plunder → ground
But when the Athenians returned, they gathered the broken remains of the old Acropolis and buried them in the hill where it had stood, and decades later, under Pericles, they raised the Parthenon.
asserted
they → return → Parthenon
For 25 centuries since, the Parthenon has stood.
asserted
Parthenon → stand → centuries
Empires have risen and fallen beneath its shadow, and the progeny of the men who built it, the sons of Athens and Rome, have carried their civilization with them to the ends of the earth — two and a half centuries after the founding of the American republic, halfway across the world from where I stand now.
asserted
I → rise → world
Athens gave us democracy.
asserted
Athens → give → democracy
Plato and Aristotle gave us Western philosophy, our ideas of law, of virtue, of citizenship and republican government were shaped in the Greek city-states.
asserted
ideas → give → states
Even much of our political vocabulary — words like “democracy,” “tyranny,” the word “politics” itself — found its origins here.
asserted
much → find → origins
But the things we owe to this place as Americans and as Westerners are actually far, far deeper.
asserted
we → owe → Westerners
These institutions and ideas were the outward expression of more fundamental qualities we see in the ancient Greeks, qualities that can’t be reduced to any particular political system or theory.
asserted
that → see → system
Here in Athens, we found the first full realization of all the essential traits that would come to define the West: fierce individuality and relentless ambition; daring exploration and invention; a yearning for discovery, for adventure, risk and glory; an insatiable curiosity about the world and the principles by which it operates, a hunger to know the mysteries of nature and grasp the secrets of the cosmos; an impatience with the notion of impossibility, chafing at all boundaries, at all limits, straining to peer into the depths of the unknown.
asserted
it → find → unknown
The Greeks did not just shape history.
asserted
Greeks → shape → history
The Greeks gave us history itself.
asserted
Greeks → give → history
Much of what we know about many ancient civilizations comes almost entirely from the records of Greek explorers and historians, explorers and historians who didn’t just chronicle the histories of their own people, but ventured outward to observe and record the sagas of foreign peoples and cultures all across the world.
asserted
who → know → world
It paved the way for the Gospel of Jesus Christ to find fertile soil in Europe and flourish into the empire of Christendom.
asserted
Gospel → pave → Christendom
It gave birth to a civilization marked not just by a common culture.
asserted
It → give → culture
It was marked by a common anthropology, a common view of man and of his place in the universe.
asserted
It → mark → universe
Its descendants would share not just the idea of a natural order but a distinctive understanding of virtue, of destiny, of fate, of truth, goodness, and beauty, of a code that dictates how men ought to live, of objective standards and ideals to strive towards.
asserted
men → share → standards
The ancient Greek city-states were filled with intense passion and rivalry and faction and conflict.
asserted
states → fill → passion
But from that constant struggle for distinction, from that came the great flowering of art and philosophy, and political and intellectual energy that would transform a collective of Mediterranean cities to the birthplace of the greatest civilization in the world.
asserted
that → come → world
The thumos — as the ancient Greeks called it, the fire of passion, strength, courage, pride — is the heart of great civilization.
asserted
Greeks → call → civilization
Without it, nations lose their will to fight, the will to strive, the will to survive.
asserted
nations → lose → will
Ashamed of legacy
Today, too much of the West has forgotten this quality.
asserted
much → forget → quality
Over time, we in the West came to feel ashamed of the very things that made us exceptional.
asserted
us → come → things
We felt embarrassed that our achievements set us apart from the rest of the world.
asserted
us → feel → world
Our prosperity somehow became a source of guilt.
asserted
prosperity → become → guilt
We no longer believed we deserved and had earned our greatness.
asserted
we → believe → greatness
“Nationalism” became a dirty word.
asserted
Nationalism → become → ?
And so we tore down our monuments.
asserted
we → tear → monuments
We condemned our own history, and in too many places, we taught our children to be ashamed of the countries they would inherit.
asserted
they → condemn → countries
In the process, we opened our borders and outsourced our industry and allowed our militaries to wither and to decay.
asserted
militaries → open → industry
And with every passing year, we seemed to outsource more of our sovereignty, transferring our decisions to global bureaucracies far beyond the reach of our control.
asserted
we → pass → control
But others were all too happy to fill the vacuum left behind by our weakness.
asserted
others → fill → weakness
…and 25 more, not listed.
The Aporia
