Widmer contrasts Rubio ‘great men’ theme with founders’ equality ideals
Rubio delivered the address outdoors at the foot of the Acropolis on October 7, with the Parthenon illuminated by the setting sun. In passages quoted by Widmer, the secretary of state argued that the United States and Europe face a choice between rediscovering “the values of exploration and conquest that once drove centuries of expansion” or accepting decline and irrelevance.
Widmer described the speech as “an exercise in nostalgia, lamenting the decline of western civilization as if this were a seminar at Hillsdale College or the Claremont Institute.” Rubio told the audience that history offers “an arena for great men to test and prove themselves,” where they can show off “fierce individuality and relentless ambition; daring exploration and invention; a yearning for discovery, for adventure, risk and glory.” Widmer noted that Rubio “almost seemed to be writing out text for a video game (Super Mario?).”
To be fair, Widmer added, “there was some elegant writing in the speech, displaying actual historical knowledge (for example, that the authors of the Federalist Papers cited Plutarch more than any other author).” Widmer characterized Rubio’s central argument as a “haunting vision” and concluded that Rubio “seemed to be pointing out a path that will be difficult and mostly uphill for the US’s allies.”
The critique turned on Rubio’s use of Greek and Roman antiquity. Widmer argued that the American founders read classical sources to justify “a democracy of equals — not a civilization of conquest.” He cited Thomas Jefferson’s debt to Cicero, who wrote that “Citizens of the same republic ought to have equal rights,” and Abraham Lincoln’s regard for the Greek mathematician Euclid, “precisely because he defined equality as an inviolable concept.”
Widmer also questioned who qualifies as part of “the West.” He noted that Russians claim descent from Greece and Rome, asking whether Vladimir Putin would be invited to this party. He quoted Adolf Hitler’s celebration in Mein Kampf of the “higher culture” that arose from “the hardships of the Persian War” — passages he said might easily have fit into Rubio’s speech.
Widmer pointed out that a great deal of knowledge flowed into Greece and Rome from elsewhere, including writing from ancient Sumer in present-day Iraq and mathematics from Arab scholars. He noted that a young Pythagoras probably traveled through the Levant, and that even as the Persians and Greeks fought, they also influenced each other.
The Athens address, Widmer wrote, came during a difficult week in the war against Iran. He reported that the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln was limping into San Diego, that 12 B-1 bombers were hastily evacuated from a base in England from fear of a drone attack, and that Iranian attacks on shipping had risen. He wrote that “the price of oil remains sky-high.” Widmer added that “this is not a war that the speech’s heroes — Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne and Hernán Cortés — would rush to claim as a conqueror’s legacy.”
Rubio’s speech drew on the theme of striving for greatness and avoiding the fatal weaknesses that cause empires to vanish. Decline was much on the mind of the founders; John Adams wrote that “there never yet was a democracy that did not commit suicide.”
Later presidents sounded similar themes. In 1910, Theodore Roosevelt described the virtues of the “Man in the Arena,” “whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds.” Similarly, John F. Kennedy promised in his 1961 inaugural address that “we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
Roosevelt and Kennedy were legitimate military heroes, Widmer wrote, with the authority to discuss the waging of war and the even more important waging of peace. They were deeply read historians, too, who used the bully pulpit to celebrate intellectual excellence. In each case, they also paused to define the democratic ideals they believed in, and Kennedy went out of his way to mention human rights and the aspirations of the vast parts of the world that are not the west.
The Athens address extended an olive branch to Europe that was less dismissive than Rubio’s February speech warning of “civilizational erasure.” In Athens, Rubio said: “We believe that Europe can awaken from its long slumber and rekindle the fire that was here millennia ago.” But still, Widmer wrote, “as he stood below the Parthenon, he seemed to be pointing out a path that will be difficult and mostly uphill for the US’s allies.”
Widmer argued that Rubio’s claims about American achievement rang hollow against recent administration actions. He noted that the Kennedy Center — which he described as “the chief monument to Kennedy” — is “currently shuttered, its fate uncertain,” and sits a short distance from Rubio’s State Department. He wrote that Rubio’s argument that Americans share the Greeks’ “insatiable curiosity about the world and the principles by which it operates” sounded “a false note” given cuts to scientific research, particularly climate science. Widmer reported that the United States withdrew from the World Health Organization “on the second day of the administration” and that “nearly every day brings another story about funding cuts for research.”
He quoted Arati Prabhakar, a former director of the White House office of science and technology policy, as saying the cuts are leading “less to the ‘golden age’ than to the stone age.”
In Widmer’s assessment, “there were no new policies advanced, and no ideals expressed, beyond the right to exploit resources and dominate others.” He described the Athens address as “a beautiful photo op” that amounted, “at the end of the day,” to little more than that. The address, Widmer concluded, was “a long distance from the Enlightenment that inspired Jefferson and the other founders.” Instead, it provided “more evidence of a moment that is darkening, despite Rubio’s efforts to capture the fading light of a sunset on the Acropolis.”
Ted Widmer, a former White House speechwriter, is the editor of the Library of America’s American Speeches volume and The Living Declaration: A Biography of America’s Founding Text.