Secretary of State Marco Rubio took aim at globalist actions that have eroded Western values in Athens, Greece, where he provided a defense of the West.
“The word nationalism became a dirty word. And so we tore down our monuments, we condemned our own history, and in too many places we taught our children to be ashamed of the countries they would inherit,” he declared. “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.” He added, “We opened our borders and outsourced our industry and allowed our militaries to wither and to decay.”
He noted that Western countries now find themselves at a “crossroads,” as the course they take “will determine whether the West maintains its place at the head of the world, or resigns itself to a future of atrophy, servitude, and decline. We will either choose to act now, or lose the choice to act at all.”
“Under President Trump, the United States has made its choice,” he declared.
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Rubio also highlighted how the United States drew its civilizational values from those of Ancient Greece. “For twenty-five centuries since, the Parthenon has stood. Empires have risen and fallen beneath its shadow,” he said. “Two and a half centuries after the founding of the American republic halfway across the world from where I stand now, I stand here today – as the Secretary of State of that republic, and as the great-grandson of settlers who arrived in the new world from Spain – I stand here to testify to a debt that no lapse of time, no distance of space, can ever extinguish.”
He went on to express optimism that Europe can “awaken from its long slumber and rekindle the fire that was lit here millennia ago.”
“There are already signs. Across this continent, we are witnessing the beginning of what we hope will be a generational shift,” he said.
Rubio has previously defended the Christian heritage of the Western world. Speaking at the Munich Security Conference in February, he said, “America was founded 250 years ago, but the roots began here on this continent long before. The man who settled and built the nation of my birth arrived on our shores carrying the memories and the traditions and the Christian faith of their ancestors as a sacred inheritance, an unbreakable link between the old world and the new,” he explained, noting that the U.S. and Europe are “part of one civilization – Western civilization.”
This article originally appeared on American Faith and is reposted with permission.
