The West’s achievements are the result of a distinct character shaped by ancient Greece, Rome, and Christianity, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday, urging Western nations to defend that inheritance while warning against open borders and declining national pride.
Speaking from the Pnyx in Athens, Rubio described Western institutions as the “outward expression of more fundamental qualities we see in the Ancient Greeks — qualities that can’t be reduced to any particular political system or theory.”
Rubio said ambition, invention, curiosity, individuality, and exploration are characteristics that ultimately helped create the West.
“They were the characteristics of a people — expressed in their traditions, their stories, their imagination; in the qualities they demanded of their citizens; in the things they lived and fought and died for,” Rubio said.
Among those qualities, Rubio said, was the idea that the universe had an inherent rational order that humans could discover. He then connected that understanding to Western science, philosophy, and, most importantly, Christianity.
“It paved the way for the Gospel of Jesus Christ to find fertile soil in Europe and flourish into the empire of Christendom. It was the foundation of the riches of Christian theology — of Augustine and Aquinas and the whole tradition of natural law,” he said. Rubio highlighted that civilization had a “common view of man and his place in the universe,” a “distinctive understanding o virtue,” and “objective standards and ideals to strive towards.”
Rubio traced that inheritance through European Christendom to the United States, describing our forefathers as “born in Athens, formed by Rome, baptized in Christendom,” and “endowed with the English genius for liberty.”
The Founders also connected self-government to moral character, with John Adams and George Washington frequently stressing that the Constitution — and our institutions — were made only for a moral and religious people and would be inadequate for any other kind.
Rubio also described a distinctly Western understanding of what sacrifice means — thanks to the Greeks — and compared it to how Third Worlders view sacrifice. Christian martyrs and patriots who were loyal to their principles were willing to sacrifice their lives for if needed, whereas Iranian rulers who glorify death worship death itself.
“Our heroes may be willing to die for their cause; but our heroes do not worship death,” Rubio pointed out. “We take the West’s conception of these things – heroism, honor, duty – we take these things for granted. We assume that these somehow are universal to all people in all times and in all places. They are not. They are the product of a distinct character, a distinct character which arose here and shaped the whole story of the civilization that came after it.”
Rubio’s distinction underpins the greater problem facing Western nations and their immigration policies. A people make a nation, and western values are not universal. Therefore, importing people who do not share Western values risks the nation.
Rubio warned that Western nations increasingly denounce their inheritance and linked that repudiation to declining national confidence.
“The word ‘nationalism’ became a dirty word. And so we tore down our monuments; we condemned our own history. And in too many places, we taught our children to be ashamed of the countries they would inherit,” Rubio said. “In the process, we opened our borders and outsourced our industry, and allowed our militaries to wither and to decay.”
And those open borders have had serious consequences throughout the West. Western leaders have stopped considering whether newcomers can fully assimilate into Western culture, which has now led to societal friction across the West. The Casey Review found in 2016 that Britain failed to integrate the Third World migrants it welcomed, and as a result there were areas in Britain where women were subjected to abuse due to cultural and religious differences, isolation, and other anti-Western “norms.” The study recommended integrating newcomers to British values, history, and laws.
In France, Islamist gunmen slaughtered 12 people in the 2015 Charlie Hebdo attack after the magazine published a depiction of Muhammad. While the attackers were born in France, the attack proves that extremist, Third World beliefs don’t just disappear upon entering Western soil.
Meanwhile, right here at home in Dearborn, Michigan, Americans have watched Third World foreigners chant “Death to America” and say America deserved 9/11.
Politicians and so-called intellectuals who think Western civilization is something to be apologized for or ashamed of see no reason to protect their inheritance and culture from the mass migration of people whose own culture will destroy Western people’s inheritance.
It’s an inheritance that Rubio and the Trump administration take seriously. It’s why Trump has closed the southern border, deported more than 600,000 illegal aliens, and even convinced nearly 2 million illegal aliens to self-deport. In fact, it’s estimated that net migration in 2025 was negative, meaning more people left the country than came to it. The findings show that immigration trends that Americans were told to accept can be reversed, and with it, the country can be saved.
In order to save the West, and in this case, lead the West to saving itself, the Trump administration is putting our inheritance first and using that inheritance to shape its policies, including immigration.
