This week in Athens, standing in front of the Parthenon, Secretary of State Marco Rubio gave a remarkable speech which I think in time will be considered to have been an historic one. At this link, you can see a video of the speech or read the complete transcript of it.
It reminded me of an afternoon in the 1950s when taking a bus home from junior high school, I looked around and saw the Greek Orthodox kids studying Greek, the Catholic kids studying their Latin, and the Jewish kids studying Hebrew. In those days, and in that cold Wisconsin winter, parents still understood the importance of the ancient history of Western civilization, our heritage, and the great and important lessons to be learned from it. They made efforts to make sure we got it.
Rubio began by emphasizing how much the American Founding Fathers were indebted to our Greek heritage, which, in his view, gave us democracy, Western philosophy, “Our ideas of law, of virtue, of citizenship, and republican government.” Just as important, we learned from ancient Greece “the essential traits that come to define the West.” Things like “fierce individuality and restless ambition, daring exploration and invention, a yearning for discovery, for adventure, risk and glory.”
(The very notion of ancient Greece -- that the unknown can be known -- sets them (and us) apart from the barbarians in much of the world now flooding our cities, who believe everything that can be known has already been revealed and cannot be questioned or improved upon.)
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