The Trump administration seems awfully serious about this “Western civilizational” thing.
If you somehow hadn’t caught on to that fact before this weekend, chances are you’ve gotten the memo now. On Saturday, America’s top diplomat strode up to the podium at the annual Munich Security Conference and waxed poetic about the bonds of history and culture uniting the New World with the old continent.
“We are part of one civilization—Western civilization,” Marco Rubio said early in the speech, which featured 12 uses of the word “civilization.” Whether you love or hate the Trump administration’s civilizational turn, the fact of its happening has been undeniable for months. And no, you can’t dismiss it as some Rubio-driven project.
Vice President J.D. Vance’s own speech at the same conference last year also gestured to a Western civilizational worldview, as I argued at the time, although it garnered a more hostile reception. Since then, President Donald Trump, Vance, Rubio, mid-level officials, and official strategy documents have repeatedly propounded a civilizational vision of America and Europe. That’s why I was able to report and write a feature-length magazine article on the topic and file it in January.
What, then, was the point of Rubio’s big speech?
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