Rubio picked the wrong Athenian
The Pnyx is a scrubby hill west of the Acropolis where Athenian citizens once crammed together to argue, vote and, now and then, talk themselves into disaster. On Wednesday, as the sun went down behind the Parthenon, Marco Rubio stood there and told the West to rediscover its nerve. It was the best speech a western statesman has given in years, and its diagnosis is right. Europe did spend decades outsourcing its defense and much of its self-respect, and Rubio’s hymn to thumos – “the fire of passion, strength, courage, pride” – is a serious idea, not a slogan. But listen to the virtues he chose. The Greeks, he said, prized “relentless ambition,” “risk and glory” and “an impatience with the notion of impossibility, chafing at all boundaries and limits.
