Virtues, Courage, and Strength—Rubio’s Vision for Greece and the West

While Vice President J.D. Vance is an early 2028 presidential favorite for many in the GOP, the jack-of-all-trades Secretary of State Marco Rubio continues to impress – both with his decision-making and his capacity for statesmanlike performances that inspire and challenge with gravity and finesse.

His speech last week in Athens built upon his similarly well-received Munich Security Conference speech in February this year. Rubio celebrated advances in cooperation between the U.S. and Greece while calling for a renewal of civilizational memory and confidence.

Speaking from the Acropolis, where in 480 B.C. three hundred Athenians barricaded themselves in and held off “the greatest empire of the age”—the Persian Empire led by Xerxes—for days before being destroyed, Rubio recalled how 25 years after their defeat, the great statesman Pericles raised the Parthenon.

Those ancient Greeks, Rubio recounted, gave us “democracy” as well as “ideas of law, of virtue, of citizenship, and republican government” that were all foundational for the great Christian nations of Europe, as well as these United States. The most quoted author in The Federalist Papers, Rubio noted, “was Plutarch, the Greek biographer of Greece and Rome’s great men,” not “an Enlightenment philosopher or political theorist.”

One can see the fear of Rubio in the lame attempt from the Associated Press at a “gotcha,” claiming Rubio asserted “that the founders of the United States had embraced the direct democracy that Athens was known for.” His claim that “Athens gave us democracy” is like his claim that “Plato and Aristotle gave us Western philosophy.” Not everyone is a Platonist or an Aristotelian, nor is our democratic republican form of government identical to that of Athens.

Rubio’s point was that what we find in Greece is not “formulas or precepts of a particular school of philosophy,” but “the essential traits that would come to define the West” that were “expressed in their traditions, their stories, their imagination; in the qualities they demanded of their citizens; in the things they lived and fought and died for.”

Individuality, ambition, exploration, and invention went with “a yearning for discovery, for adventure, risk and glory.” So too “an insatiable curiosity” and “a hunger to know the mysteries of nature and grasp the secrets of the cosmos.”

It was this outward-looking confidence in the power of reason to understand the world that became the “foundation of the Western mind: our math, our science, and our medicine. Our philosophy, ethics, and religion. It even,” Rubio says, “paved the way for the gospel of Jesus Christ to find fertile soil in Europe and flourish into the empire of Christendom.”

What all of this amounted to was the foundation for “a common culture” with a “common anthropology—a common view of man and his place in the universe.” A view in which virtue was both necessity and goal for citizens.

Yet, it wasn’t just the Greek mind that prepared the way. It was “thumos…the fire of passion, strength, courage, pride” that Rubio calls “the heart of great civilization.”

Ideas and the mind must be in the driver’s seat, but without the spirited heart, little can be accomplished according to reason. It is this failure of heart that Rubio identified as the problem facing Europe and the West more broadly.

Rubio noted that “nationalism” has become “a dirty word,” and “children” have been taught “to be ashamed of the countries they would inherit.” Western borders have been opened, industries have been “outsourced,” and “militaries” have been left “to wither and to decay.” Even the sovereignty of nations was seemingly parceled out and transferred “to global bureaucracies far beyond the reach of our control.” The West, he said, “is at a crossroads.”

As with the Europeans broadly at Munich, Rubio’s challenge for Greece in this speech was to side with an America that has chosen “the unapologetic pursuit of national power: to take back control of our critical supply chains, to reindustrialize our economy, to rebuild our defense, to fight for dominance of the technologies and industries of the future.”

Nations, Rubio said, have interests. There is “nothing selfish or wrong about loyalty to your nation, nor anything selfish or wrong about fighting to defend its interests above all else.” Prudent statecraft emphasizing allies that value the same things, attention to the truth, and loyalty to one’s own country can and should be put together.

To “rebuild our institutions and our alliances” is not for the purpose of getting rid of national sovereignty but for defending it. “Common interests” can be pursued without losing nations’ “distinct identities.”

Rubio touted during his visit an information-sharing agreement with Greece aimed at fighting terrorism as well as a new $4 billion military sales agreement. He encouraged Greeks in his speech to help “secure Europe’s borders from the threats of mass migration.”

The final notes of his speech returned to those heroic Greeks of old with whom he began. “From them we can rediscover the virtues, the courage, and the strength to confront the dangers that we face in our time.”

It was a perfect message for Greece. It’s just as good for Americans. Too many of us suffer from the same civilizational sicknesses and loss of confidence as Europeans. We, too, are at the crossroads of which Rubio spoke.

Will we take the road to grateful memory and renewal of spirit? With leaders like Rubio, there’s a much better chance we will.