Marco Rubio gave a magnificent speech this week in Greece. He recalled the virtues of thumos in service to the democratic polity and the value of Western civilization. As David reported in his brilliant analysis, it may be the most important speech in decades of decline in the Western world, and Rubio followed it up with pointed rebuttals to the media and others who attempt to push narratives rather than truth.
However, that leaves us with this question: Is it already too late to reverse the self-harm that the Wormtongues of the Left have wrought? Has its Long March Through the Institutions – especially Academia, but certainly in the media – sapped whatever thumos might remain in reserve?
In today's Free Press, Douglas Murray takes pessimistic stock in the remnants of Western thought. Thumos has run short, thanks in no small part to decisions that have allowed non-Western populations to flood into Europe and undermine confidence in its cultural and philosophical foundation. What's left has become an abject surrender, Murray notes:
Today, Britain and Europe still slumber. And worse than slumber, they are busily engaged in submitting to their enemies.
At the United Nations General Assembly last month, the UK’s foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, made sure to have a meeting with the highest representative from what remains of the terrorist government in Tehran. The UK’s domestic security service, MI5, said last year—in a highly unusual public statement—that the UK has foiled several Iranian terrorist plots in Britain in a short period of time. But Miliband mentioned none of this. As he shook hands with the Iranian terrorist representative, he condemned attacks and attempted attacks on British soil, but did not suggest that the UK would retaliate. Meanwhile, Miliband declared that preventing violence in the West Bank—only when directed against Palestinians by Israelis, and not the other way around—is a priority for the UK government. He later declared himself “humbled” by the presence of a Palestinian Authority representative in the UK.
It seems to be the attitude of the UK government that terror is caused by Israel and brought to the United Kingdom by the U.S. The reality is that terror has been repeatedly brought to the UK by Iran and its various terror proxies, and that they have been allowed to operate there effectively unpunished. They are allowed to enter the UK illegally. They are allowed to plan attacks that are thwarted at great expense of time and money, and they are not even berated by the UK government.
And the United Kingdom is hardly the worst European nation in this regard. Violent Muslims and leftist radicals have practically seized France this month in street fighting that the French government either cannot or will not quash. Germany has been so transformed by its mass immigration policies that the conservative AfD has actually begun to win elections based on nationalism. The freak-out by European media over those outcomes is also notable, casting it as some sort of return to Naziism when it is actually a predictable response to the intentional eradication of Western values and mores under the lie of multiculturalism, in a continent that has only barely begun to get along with each other, historically speaking.
Nations in Eastern Europe that survived Soviet occupation have more thumos for traditional Western values, having endured their opposite for decades. Unfortunately, the mass-migration policies of Western Europe now have them surrounded by entrenched populations hostile to Western thought and values.
Murray doesn't express much hope for Europe, and especially not his native UK, even while the US succeeds in eliminating the greatest threat to the West:
America and Israel are winning their war against the mullahs. Their victory is one of the least bloody, shortest, and most effective campaigns in military history. However, it is being achieved—once more—not thanks to any help from the Europeans but in spite of them.
That in itself tells us a very pessimistic story about the future of the West.
Marco Rubio's magnificent speech will endure for decades. Unfortunately, it may be an epitaph more than a rallying cry – especially if American voters choose surrender to the same forces to which Europe has submitted.
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