Seldom does a politician deliver a speech with more historical and cultural breadth than Marco Rubio’s recent speech in Greece with the Acropolis standing appropriately in the background. Moving beyond the standard acknowledgement of Greek democracy, Rubio knitted together Plato and Aristotle with the theologically grounded philosophies of Augustine and Aquinas that form the intellectual and spiritual foundation for Western civilization.
But the term around which
his entire talk revolved was the Greek word thumos,
a concept Plato employs to speak about the spirited element of human nature
that fuels, in Rubio’s words, “the fire of passion, strength, courage, [and]
pride” that “is the heart of great civilizations.” Plato saw this function as allied with reason
against appetite and as the source of achievements attained through competition
and struggle, strivings formalized in the Greek agon which revealed excellence in various fields of endeavor. Rubio links this essential trait with the
Western drive to explore, to invent, and to devote one’s efforts to a cause higher
than self. This characteristic, the root
of courage, has come under sustained attack both from within and from without
the West.
Even during World War II C. S.
Lewis denounced philosophical schools and educational materials that viewed
emotion-laden patriotic aphorisms as meaningless propaganda. In The
Abolition of Man he noted that this didactic perspective was destined to create
“men without chests” – “chests”
being Lewis’s word for Plato’s thumos.
Today’s critique of patriotism, by
contrast, comes from highly emotional, one-sided, and irrational condemnations
of a country no one could be proud of.
These portraits omit
everything on the positive side of the national ledger and magnify everything
negative. The Pilgrims with their
biblical virtues and stoic perseverance in the face of death are transmogrified
along with pioneer homesteaders (Giants in the Earth) into genocidal racists who butcher Disneyesque natives. The Founding Fathers who, “with a firm
reliance on the protection of divine Providence,” signed the Declaration of
Independence are disparaged as old white men and slave owners. Visions of legal, material, and scientific
progress are replaced by a Dorian Gray portrait of sexism,
xenophobia, and capitalist oppression that waxes more contemptible with each
retelling.
Beyond legacy media,
university Marxists, and a K-12 education system crafted by leftist union
leaders, popular culture’s incessant messaging tends to produce iPhone-obsessed
couch potatoes for whom instant gratification is regularly touted as a “right” alongside
abortion, health care, and gender-affirming mutilation -- all provided by a government
possessing a prolific money tree. In
short, the “good life” is portrayed as one devoid of struggle where everyone
gets a participation trophy and life’s highest goal is something akin to an
eighty-five year “Life of Julia” vacation.
Of course there are still
millions of Americans who exhibit the courage, inventiveness, dedication, and selflessness
fueled by the same character trait about which Plato and C.S. Lewis spoke. That trait is found most conspicuously in
military service and law enforcement. Unfortunately, those professions have been
debased by DEI politicization and vicious slander. Warriors became pawns in social
experimentation where drag queens were featured to emphasize inclusiveness, the
proper thumos reaction to which would
be revulsion and shame -- an emotional cocktail more difficult to swallow for
disciples of Achilles than insults hurled by cowardly politicians at ICE and
police officers.
The Trump
Administration, to its credit, has attempted to reverse this anti-American,
anti-Western sentiment first promulgated at the Presidential level by Barack
Obama’s “apology tour.” The Secretary of War has touted the martial
virtues of unit-cohesion, strength, and patriotism and has scrapped measures
designed to produce inclusivity and equity. Trump has already reversed Woke erasures of
Columbus Day and patriotic statuary, and now has his sights on the Smithsonian
Institution’s pervasive hate-America leitmotif.
Of course Trump himself with his brash aggressiveness and determination
stands as the personification of a warrior spirit that has overcome unprecedented
conspiracies and media slanders, plus a near
fatal assassination attempt, all for the sake of national revival. Lesser souls would have chosen a luxurious retirement.
A poignant observation in
Rubio’s speech was this statement, “We will either choose to act now or lose
the choice to act at all.” The “we” in
his sentence was directed not only to European allies, whose socialist
secularism has long weakened their resolve, but also to Americans headed in the
same direction. Nations no longer
bolstered by love of country and love of God, populated by leaders incapable of
distinguishing right from wrong or men from women, stand defenseless against
passionate invaders disguised as immigrants and asylum seekers.
It’s possible that the
feminization of America, as Helen Andrews notes in another recent speech, has passed the tipping point so that suicidal empathy will
prevail on a national basis rather than the distinctively masculine virtues of
courage and a willingness to fight for principle. (Among other statistics, Andrews notes that
women now constitute the majority in law schools, medical schools, and college
faculties. They receive the majority of B.A.s and Ph.D.s, and are over 50% of white
collar workers with degrees. The
publishing industry is almost 80% female, and the discipline of psychology is
becoming overwhelmingly female. The same
trend toward majority status applies to the judiciary where 63% of Joe Biden’s
appointments were female.) As Andrews
warns, “The rule of law will not survive the legal profession becoming majority
female.”
In 1962 John F. Kennedy made
this declaration that bristles with the quality Rubio praised:
We
choose to go to the Moon in this decade and to do the other things, not because
they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to
organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that
challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to
postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others too.
Today
it’s a question whether the descendents of those who risked their lives and
sacred honor to found this nation, who died in staggering numbers to free
slaves and maintain the Union, who endured the Great Depression and defeated
the twin evils of fascism and communism will find an increase in the price of
gasoline too great a burden to focus their gaze on opponents who are
“fundamentally transforming” a nation once rooted in Judeo-Christian values. November 3rd will provide a
provisional answer to that question.
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