Rubio in Athens

Rubio's speech at the Pnyx in Athens contained some interesting observations about the ancient Greek intellectual inheritance, along with the expected nods to his audience. Massaging national egos pays off everywhere. What is more interesting, however, is where he chose to place his emphasis. He spoke of ambition, honour, duty, glory, military strength, loyalty to the state and national power. He spoke of civilisational danger and external enemies. Toward the end of the speech, among his examples of the Western spirit he specifically named Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne and Cortés. But what exactly is distinctively Western about conquest and military glory? Countless other civilisations have their own great conquerors, imperial ambitions and sanitised national myths.

What *is* distinctive about Western civilisation is the development of principles that challenged the arbitrary exercise of power: individual liberty, freedom of conscience, equality before the law, limits on political authority and, perhaps most importantly, institutionalised self-criticism. The ability of a society to question its own assumptions, traditions and institutions, and recursively improve upon them.

John Stuart Mill famously argued in *On Liberty* that even if all humanity agreed on something except one individual, the majority would have no right to silence that person. The Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment further established that no authority, however prestigious, should be beyond scrutiny. This principle underpins both scientific progress and liberal democracy.

Of course none of these ideas emerged fully formed, nor were they exclusively Western or consistently applied. Western history is full of conquest, slavery, persecution and imperial domination, but it also produced powerful intellectual and institutional mechanisms for challenging these injustices. And that particular intellectual and institutional development is a distinctive Western achievement, shaped in part by centuries of intellectual exchange with other cultures. Its successful adoption in countries as diverse as Japan and South Korea, demonstrates that the principles themselves are universal, not some exclusive Western inheritance.

The obvious irony here is that Rubio stood at the birthplace of Athenian democracy, praising Western civilisation on behalf of an administration seeking to concentrate executive power, challenging judicial constraints, pressuring independent media, imposing political conditions on universities, disparaging democratic allies and proposing drastic cuts to scientific research. What exactly is he asking us to defend here?

He spoke of the need for a strong military. Fair enough. Military strength matters for deterrence. A society must be able to defend itself and its values. But military strength is a means to an end, not a measure of civilisational greatness. And we should be particularly wary when military expansion goes hand in hand with the erosion of democratic checks and balances. The greater the concentration of power, the stronger the institutions needed to constrain it. Not weaker. Otherwise, what distinguishes Rubio's vision of Western greatness from that of any other empire throughout history?

So yeah, absolutely, Western civilisation's finest achievements are worth defending. But we should first be very clear about which achievements we are actually talking about. And we should recognise that some of the most serious threats to these achievements today come from within, from the very people who most loudly proclaim themselves their guardians.