Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street. At last week's Munich Security Conference, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered a statesman-like defense of the West, emphasizing the historic and religious foundations that are shared by America and Europe. He also critiqued a false and misleading view of civilizational history.
The fall of the Soviet Union, Rubio said, led to the dangerous delusion, and I quote here, that we had entered the end of history, that every nation would now be a liberal democracy, that the ties formed by trade and by commerce alone would now replace nationhood, that the rules-based global order, an overused term, would now replace the national interest, and that we would now live in a world without borders where everyone became a citizen of the world. End quote. Here, Rubio was referencing, without naming, political scientist Francis Fukuyama's end of history thesis. Fukuyama had adopted Hegel's philosophy of capital H history as the record of inevitable human advancement from one age to the next. Though Fukuyama's thesis helps to explain why progressive politicians seem so obsessed with being on the quote-unquote right side of history, Rubio soundly rejected such thinking as, and I quote again, a foolish idea that ignored both human nature and the lessons of over 5,000 years of recorded human history.
Such thinking, Rubio then added, has cost us dearly. Like Winston Churchill's 1941 appeal to the U.S., where he rallied the new world to partner with the old world amid World War II, Rubio grounded a similar call in our shared heritage. I quote again: the men who settled and built the nation of my birth arrived on our shores carrying the memories and traditions and the Christian faith of their ancestors as a sacred inheritance, an unbreakable link between the old world and the new. We are part of one civilization, Western civilization. were bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share.
Forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith. Culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common civilization to which we have fallen heir. We want allies who are proud of their culture and of their heritage, who understand that we are heirs to the same great and noble civilization, and who together with us are willing and able to defend it. Rubio's speech appeals to a completely different understanding of civilizational history and stressed two key points. First, that civilizations decline if they're not stewarded and protected.
They have to be protected from threats from within. And second, civilizations conflict with other civilizations that are built on alternative visions. Thus, they have to be defended from threats from without.
Now, in response to Rubio's speech, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stated that Western culture has a thin foundation and that culture itself is an evolving thing that is a response to the conditions we live in. Instead, it is material class-based interests that should prevail.
Now, Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez's views of social Darwinism and neo-Marxism also adopt a Hegelian philosophy of capital H history, all as explained by the economic class struggle between the oppressors and the oppressed.
So after stumbling around a good bit, the congresswoman simply advocated a rehash form of critical theory, which radically misunderstands human nature and historical facts. For quick reference to the terror, the torture, the famine, the massacres, and the atrocities that result when history and culture are reduced down to simple class struggle, see the Black Book of Communism, published by Harvard University in 1999. In contrast, Secretary Rubio spoke to why America was so committed to defending Western civilization. Because doing so was defending a way of life, a way of life that provided more freedom and opportunity than any other civilization in history. While not perfect, Western civilization has every reason to be proud of its history, Rubio said.
And even more, it's the choices we make, not blind historical trends that will shape our future. According to Rubio, quote, our predecessors recognized that decline was a choice, and it was a choice they refused to make. We in America have no interest in being the polite and orderly caretakers of the West manage decline, end quote. Christians in every walk of life should be the first to defend and promote what's good and preserve what is worthy of preserving. And we should always reject the delusion that blind historical forces will bring inevitable progress to the world.
As Osgines and others have articulated so well in the recent documentary Truth Rising, Western civilization is at a critical moment. The question that we face: how will we respond? For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint. Today's Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Andrew Carico.
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