Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) did a better job explaining ideologically driven lawfare than I have managed in years. Speaking at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics on October 13, she said she wanted “signature cases” going after not just President Trump but “the people who enabled him.” Then she explained who the message was really for:

I want young people coming out of school to say, “Should I go work for the Trump administration? Like, that sounds like fun. I might get an opportunity.” I want them to be like, “Lord, that might be buying myself a ton of problems that I don’t want, and so let me avoid participating in that.” I want that deterrence message sent.

That is quite an admission from a sitting U.S. senator.

Slotkin just gave future targets reason to question what a congressional investigation is really for.

Her defenders now insist she meant only people who break the law. But nobody needs a “deterrence message” telling graduates not to commit crimes. We already have one. It’s called the criminal code. What Slotkin described was making the job itself radioactive. The people she wants to deter are prospective employees, not convicted criminals.

And an investigation can punish someone long before a court finds any wrongdoing. Subpoenas arrive. Lawyers start billing. Careers stall. A young staffer who did nothing wrong could emerge vindicated and still be bankrupt. Too often the only help on offer comes from a well-connected lawyer who says, “I’ll take your case once you raise a legal defense fund that covers my $1,500 an hour.”

Slotkin is a former CIA analyst, and I interpret her comments as part political bombast and part psychological preconditioning for what she hopes comes next. The latter is the CIA’s specialty. As I have written here before, many on the left treat MAGA as a cult. That framing widens the circle of culpability until it reaches rank-and-file staffers whose only offense was service and association. Slotkin is preparing the public for the prospect of going after those people. Now that she has drawn condemnation, she wants to explain away the implications of her own words.

RELATED: The right is building its own lawfare defense machine — finally

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This is where we come in.

The public-interest law firm we are building at the Oversight Project Foundation, with Jeff Clark leading the litigation effort, exists to meet that moment. This country cannot function when the legal system is used to harass innocent Americans out of serving their country or associating with whom they choose. Lawfare takes disputes that belong in politics and drags them into court. That’s wrong no matter who holds power.

Slotkin didn’t just hurt the public case for lawfare. She may have hurt the legal one, too.

In Watkins v. United States, the Supreme Court said Congress has no power to “expose for the sake of exposure.” Congress is not a law enforcement or trial agency. Its investigative power serves a legislative purpose, not the punishment of political enemies. Those limits exist for a reason.

Slotkin just gave future targets reason to question what a congressional investigation is really for. She said she wants the threat of cases to frighten young people away from government service. If her allies later use subpoenas to harass people for association rather than investigate wrongdoing, every defense lawyer will have her own words to quote back to her. No press office clarification can make that admission disappear.

If her colleagues were wise, they’d ask her to walk it back. They won’t. I’m glad she said it.

​President trump, Supreme court, Trump administration, Young people, Subpoenas, Elissa slotkin, Lawfare, Deterrence, Intimidation, Cia, Maga, Cult, Oversight project, Watkins v united states, Opinion & analysis 

France’s riots, looting, and destruction may look like a political crisis, but BlazeTV host Steve Deace believes the problem goes far deeper than that.

What’s happening, Deace argues, is the result of “social contagions the West unleashed upon itself” and are “all now assembling in France.”

While he notes that Islam is a reason, it’s not the reason. Rather, Deace says, “It’s a galvanizer here.”

“We’re a country founded, remember, on 12 vestiges of the Christian church. And the 13th was meant to be an ecumenical colony where all the vestiges of the Christian church could feel welcome at the same time,” he explains.

“Christianity is literally the mother’s milk. Who are the people that founded the country? The Puritans founded the country. Much of what you know of it today, founded by Puritans,” he explains, noting that Puritans “were a deeply devout Christian religious sect.”

“Now, what changed was the counterculture,” he says. “And what when we talk about a counterculture, what is it countering? Christianity. That’s what it’s countering. It’s countering Christianity. New gender ethics, new sexual ethics, new criminal ethics, new child rearing ethics,” he continues.

“We’re countering the Christian ethic. That’s the culture we’re countering,” he adds.

And France is currently the most up-to-date example of what happens when you counter the Christian ethic.

In data from 2023 to 2025, it’s revealed that the spiritual state of France is abysmal.

“Over 40% of France self-identifies as Catholic. Yet only 5% attends mass monthly or more. Since your particular sect of Christianity is heavily driven by liturgical practice,” Deace explains.

“So essentially 95% of the Catholics in France are not actually Catholic,” he says, noting that even “worse,” only “1.1% of the French population is evangelical.”

“This is a nation of nearly 70 million people. Some of the most beautiful sanctuaries ever built in the history of Christendom are from there in France. So what happened? They let go of the rope,” he says.

But it’s not just France, it’s all of Europe.

“Everything’s changed in Europe as well,” Deace says. “And why? Revelation 2:5. This is what happens when the lamp goes out. And this is what will happen here if the lamp goes out as well.”

“Revival or bust,” he adds.

Want more from Steve Deace?

To enjoy more of Steve’s take on national politics, Christian worldview, and principled conservatism with a snarky twist, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Christianity, France, Islam, Riots, Blazetv show 

Silicon Valley’s self-appointed gods have money and power. They also have an almost religious faith in their own genius. They want to hack human biology, outsmart aging, and, in ever-growing numbers, cheat death. They seem less interested in the possibility that human beings need more than fancy technology and an inflated sense of their own importance.

The average tech billionaire looks in the mirror and sees an immortal deity trapped in a temporary meat suit. Some of these guys are borderline insane, even pumping their teenage son’s blood into their veins. They pop 50 custom supplement pills before breakfast and drop $35,000 on rather questionable boutique longevity clinics. They treat the human body like a dodgy software update that they can fix with enough cash and constant hacking. They are terrified of the one thing their wealth simply cannot buy: death and departure from this earth.

Good health shouldn’t be a luxury status symbol.

Enter Mark Wahlberg, the Catholic actor and fitness fanatic. A self-made businessman, he offers a markedly different vision: faith, discipline, hard work, and the belief that ordinary citizens deserve access to better health without having to sell a kidney to afford it. While the tech elite indulge their deluded fantasies of human perfection, Wahlberg is building a gym. Unlike fashionable cultural tastemakers who lecture people on how to think, speak, and live a “better” life, he forged a remarkable career doing things his own way and makes no apologies for it.

Wahlberg approaches the problem from a completely different angle. He wakes up at four in the morning to pray, hit the weights, and get a head start on an almost always hectic day. He credits his Catholic faith and a Boston priest who pulled him out of a tailspin for saving his life. The tech gurus believe they are their own creators. Wahlberg knows he answers to a higher power, which automatically makes him far more realistic about human limits.

Keeping health human

That grounding shapes his whole business model. His Municipal Gym initiative aims to bring the high-end perks of elite wellness clubs — like detailed blood analysis and high-tech recovery treatments — to regular Americans at an affordable price. Today, the modern wellness industry operates like a country club where the initiation fee is a down payment on a house. Everyday working families are left with overpriced processed food and memberships for crowded, often unsanitary gyms. Wahlberg’s setup tries to bridge that gap. Good health shouldn’t be a luxury status symbol reserved exclusively for hedge fund managers and tech CEOs who drink green juice from a gold chalice.

This whole effort comes from a guy who actually knows what it means to start at the absolute bottom, with absolutely nothing to his name. Long before he starred in blockbuster movies or built multimillion-dollar business empires, Wahlberg was a troubled kid on the dangerous streets of Dorchester. He racked up criminal charges as a teen and easily could have ended up dead or behind bars for life. He didn’t blame others for his problems, nor did he turn his life around through a government handout. Instead he took personal responsibility. He sought out mentors who refused to sugarcoat reality and set out to rewrite the entire narrative. He has been married for 17 years, has four children, and is worth about $400 million. Wahlberg embodies the American dream in every way imaginable.

RELATED: Seattle votes to ban grocery ‘surveillance pricing’. Your data shouldn’t set your food bill.

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Modern culture loves to give people permanent excuses for truly terrible decisions. Wahlberg’s life story rejects the victim mindset entirely. He proves that past mistakes don’t have to dictate a person’s future destination. Instead of preaching to young kids from the back of a limousine, he designs physical spaces where at-risk youth can show up and build self-respect through real effort.

The brand’s name might not be the catchiest, but it points back to the public basketball courts and golf courses of his youth. Those sacred spots were the original equalizers in American life. You showed up and played hard. Whether you won or lost, you shook hands and were thankful for the opportunity to socialize and meet like-minded people. Nobody cared who your daddy was or how much money sat in your bank account. The Silicon Valley crowd seems to have forgotten that basic principle, or deliberately rejected it. They prefer gated communities. They absolutely adore private islands and exclusive medical labs designed to keep the general public far from their impregnable bubble.

The contrast grows when you look at how both sides view basic biology. Tech moguls want to spend billions chasing a digital fountain of youth while ignoring the simplest daily habits. Wahlberg’s advice is far more practical. Get off the couch, put on pants, and start lifting heavy stuff regularly. Sure, his gym concept uses advanced testing and modern supplements, but he isn’t selling miracles that ultimately end in misery. He is sensible and brutally honest.

No excuses

That lesson hits particularly hard for young men today. Society spends an inordinate amount of time telling young men what they shouldn’t be, while offering almost no positive outlets for their natural drive. A weight room is an unforgiving environment where excuse-making gets you nowhere. As someone who spends a lot of time in these training areas, I know how intense they can be. If a man doesn’t do the work, the barbell stays on the floor, and everyone else takes note.

It helps that Wahlberg isn’t presenting himself as some genius who has all the answers. He took a massive financial beating when his investment in the F45 fitness chain went south and got delisted from the stock exchange in 2023. Most Hollywood celebrities would have buried the story under a mountain of PR spin and fake news. Wahlberg took the hit on the chin. He admitted he learned hard lessons about choosing the right business partners, and he immediately picked himself up to launch his next project. That is admirable, and it is very much the American way.

That willingness to dust off and try again is what makes his message resonate. It’s simple and effective: Go to bed early, wake up early, say your prayers, stay fit, and do your utmost to ensure your loved ones have the best life possible. While the self-anointed wizards of Silicon Valley spend billions trying to live forever, Wahlberg is giving regular people both the opportunity and a place to live better right now.

​Lifestyle, Mark wahlberg, Silicon valley, Health, Lifting weights 

Do you ever notice … how people who insist words are violence can get awfully violent with their words?

And those self-righteous ones so eager to scream and shout about diversity? Some of them have a terrible time sitting next to it.

The WNBA cannot keep presenting itself as a model of inclusion while women who disagree with its prevailing politics are treated as intruders.

Not diversity of shirts. They’re fine with shirts.

Until you wear the wrong one.

Why is it that George Carlin’s NIMBY comes right to mind?

Shirt shrift

At Game 1 of the WNBA Finals, Jen Sey and three friends wore XX-XY Athletics shirts.

Sey, a former national gymnastics champion who founded the company, believes women’s sports should be reserved for females.

Up front. So do I.

Now, I’ve sat near people wearing things I didn’t like. Most of them said, Michigan Wolverines.

We don’t say the “M-word” in our house.

But somehow, we made it through the afternoon. Even had a beer and some laughs.

But apparently, four women wearing XX-XY shirts presented a situation that could not be resolved by watching a basketball game.

Jen and her friends wore their shirts where other people could see them. On their body.

At a public event in a sports coliseum.

How dare they?

The audacity.

Apparently, they should have worn their shirts inside their purses.

As security escorted Sey’s group up the stairs, video captured the insults and obscene gestures from many tolerant fans.

Screamed at.

“You’re disgusting!”

Several flipped them off.

Fashion fascists

Sey says some spectators told her to kill herself and said they hoped she would die. Real class.

In San Francisco.

The city of love and peace.

Security questioned the group about complaints that they were provoking other fans. How you might ask?

By wearing the shirts.

OutKick reported that the guard affirmed the shirts did not violate the Fan Code of Conduct. Duh.

They were allowed back to their seats.

According to Sey, they also received a security escort out after the game for their protection.

Of course, the league and the Valkyries both declined to comment when USA Today reached out.

I remember when the difficult part of leaving a basketball game was finding your car.

Ah, the good old days.

Quite an evening celebrating women. At a women’s basketball game.

Buy a ticket. Wear a shirt.

Receive a complimentary demonstration of why more women are afraid to speak up.

Flag fouling

Before that same game, Commissioner Cathy Engelbert condemned people using social media to “spew vitriol and hate and racism and misogyny at our players.”

She also discussed investments in player security.

Good.

Protect players.

But while you’re making your goodwill rounds, commissioner, there are a few women in the stands who could use some of that concern.

You won’t need to search their social media accounts.

Just follow the screaming to the section where women are being verbally assaulted over their clothing choice.

Meanwhile, both the Atlanta Dream and Golden State Valkyries left the floor before the national anthem and returned after it ended.

By the way, both teams walked off again before Game 2 and before Game 3. So let me try to understand this.

Players can make a disgraceful public statement through their absence.

But paying customers make a statement with a shirt and suddenly we need to discuss whether they’re antagonizing people.

Fine print

The league hadn’t answered questions about the teams walking out three games in a row. This column posts Saturday, just before Game 4. Will they continue their streak?

The league’s rulebook clearly directs players, coaches, and trainers how to conduct themselves during the national anthem.

But apparently, screw the rules.

Perhaps the commissioner is still looking for the page. Here, let me help you.

It can be found on page 75 under the “Comments on Rules” section, specifically under Section H (“Player/Team Conduct and Dress”), subsection 2.

“Players, coaches, and trainers are to stand and line up in a dignified posture along the sidelines or on the foul line during the playing of the national anthem.”

Those are fairly specific locations.

I’ve looked at a basketball court. Neither one is in the locker room.

Which raises the question.

Why is the WNBA so hostile to America and patriotism? The teams can leave during the anthem.

The commissioner can leave the questions unanswered.

But four women in the wrong shirts require immediate attention. And by the way, this wasn’t the first shirt emergency.

Storm warning

Earlier this season, Seattle Storm minority owner Celeste Keaton berated two teenage fans supporting Sophie Cunningham.

The league fined her and suspended her from five home games. But consider how far things have gone off the rails.

An owner of a women’s professional sports team confronting teenage girls for supporting a female player.

There’s a youth outreach program that could use some work.

In Atlanta, a mother and daughter at an Atlanta game were told to cover their XX-XY shirts or leave.

Notice a pattern here?

The WNBA later acknowledged that the demand should not have happened. How many times do they have to keep saying that?

You’d think that would be a fairly easy instruction to pass along to employees. “Don’t do that again.”

Four words. Fits on a Post-it.

You could put it right next to the employee schedule.

Mixed message

Meanwhile, Minnesota coach Cheryl Reeve wore a shirt supporting trans kids while coaching against Indiana.

Her supporters celebrate that as advocacy. Sey’s shirt gets treated as provocation. Same method of expression.

Different politics.

Very different reception.

Apparently, the problem isn’t putting a message on cotton. It’s failing to get the message approved.

Then there’s Cunningham herself, booed and subjected to protests after speaking up for female sports.

She also took a brutal foul from DiJonai Carrington that resulted in Carrington’s ejection. While that doesn’t establish a political motive for the foul, it does belong in any honest discussion of player safety.

Where is all that celebrated room for strong, outspoken women when the outspoken woman is Sophie?

The WNBA cannot keep presenting itself as a model of inclusion while women who disagree with its prevailing politics are treated as intruders.

That is hypocrisy.

And a pregame statement condemning hate doesn’t fix it when paying customers encounter hate inside the building.

RELATED: WNBA sends shocking letter to Congress about men playing in the league — but leaves out one huge detail

Michael Reaves/Getty Images

Stuck in the middle

Instead, here we are again, at the Finals, discussing whether women supporting female sports have dressed appropriately to attend female sports.

Players, coaches, owners, and fans are entitled to political opinions. So is the woman sitting beside them.

Even if hers comes in a different font.

That’s what people do with shirts.

We’ve been putting opinions on cotton for decades.

Half the people at the airport seem to be delivering a statement from their stomach. Most of us manage to read it without summoning security.

But in the stands trying to watch an WNBA game, it’s agitating.

If your response to a shirt is to scream obscenities at the woman wearing it, I’m less interested in what’s printed on her chest than what’s coming out of your mouth.

To borrow from Stealers Wheel … clowns to the left of me.

Jokers to the right. And here we are … stuck in the middle.

With the baffling WNBA and women wondering why a league built around their sex has such trouble tolerating their opinions.

​Wnba, Lifestyle, Sports, Transgender, Lgbtq, Wnba finals, Jennifer sey, Xx-xy athletics, Gender ideology 

If the economy is as bad as everyone says, why are Americans preparing to spend nearly $1 billion on Halloween costumes for their dogs?

That’s the question BlazeTV hosts Stu Burguiere and Dave Landau are asking as headlines warn of financial strain while consumers continue to spend on nonessential purchases.

“I’m a bit confused about the economy overall,” Stu says.

“Because, you know, when you have an economy, you have millions and millions of people participating in it. Some people are going to be doing very well,” he continues.

“Some people are going to be doing very poorly. That is the situation with every economy,” he adds.

And the attitude surrounding the economy “is very negative.”

“People are very upset about the economy, stuff costs too much. Now, I would argue when you look back at the data that almost all of this rise occurred during the Biden administration, like that’s when all the prices went up,” Stu says.

“At the same time, we’ve got stock market near all-time highs. We’ve got companies going through the roof. Obviously, AI being the main function there,” he continues.

“And we have weird measures of the economy,” he adds, before saying: “Dog parents.”

“Dog parents are going to spend nearly a billion dollars on Halloween costumes this year for their dogs. Now, I got to be honest with you, like there’s definitely pictures of my dogs in Halloween costumes,” Stu explains.

“I don’t care what anybody says,” he continues. “This isn’t the Fauci show where we kill the beagles. We dress them up.”

“Yes, it’s adorable,” Dave says.

Want more from Stu and Dave?

To enjoy more of Stu and Dave’s lethal blend of wit, humor, and insightful commentary subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Dave landau, Dogs, Economy, Halloween costumes, Stu burguiere, Blazetv show 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s thoughtful and inspiring speech delivered at the Acropolis in Athens, Greece, deserves to be remembered for a long time to come, especially in an age increasingly dominated by ideological slogans and short attention spans.

The speech combines impressive erudition and soaring rhetoric with an astute, if inevitably controversial, analysis of the contemporary international scene. More fundamentally, it seeks to come to terms with the foundational virtues and principles that have defined Western civilization since its origins in Greek antiquity.

His critics were not wrong to note what he largely presupposed — that spiritedness must be guided by practical reason.

The Athens speech only indirectly addresses the biblical pole that has also informed and shaped the Western heart, mind, and soul. Given the immediate purposes of Rubio’s speech, it is somewhat understandable that his remarks seemingly set aside the invigorating tensions — but not irreconcilable differences — between Athens and Jerusalem, and between magnanimity and humility, that have given life and purpose to the Western adventure.

But a careful reading of his October 7 address suggests that Rubio is fully aware that one foundational pole cannot thrive today without the other.

In any case, as William Galston wrote in the Wall Street Journal, Rubio’s was a serious speech that deserves a serious response, though Galston overshot in reducing it to unabashed “pagan nationalism.” He spends most of his time giving the secretary of state Thucydidean lessons in the folly of hubris.

Galston cites the disastrous Syracusan Expedition, in which 7,000 Athenian prisoners met their horrible fate in the underground pits of Sicily, and the arrogance displayed by the Athenian ambassadors during the Melian Dialogue as examples of the dangers inherent in the pagan nationalism Rubio supposedly extols.

There is indeed much of value to be discerned in contemplating those timeless Thucydidean lessons. But Galston, like a commentator in Spectator World, mistakes Rubio for the unscrupulous Alcibiades, whose flexibility of soul seemingly knew no limits. One needs to avoid polemics and take Rubio on his own terms.

As Paul Seaton points out in a particularly fine commentary on the speech in the Catholic World Report, Rubio’s remarks, however thoughtful, inspiring, and controversial, serve practical political purposes while also offering a serious analysis of the role of classical Greece in shaping Western civilization.

Speaking in Athens, Rubio understandably accentuated the Greek character of Western civilization. This one-sidedness is appropriate for the exercise of political rhetoric, though perhaps not in a more disinterested historical, political, and philosophical work of scholarly analysis. Still, political rhetoric must also be judged by its plausibility and verisimilitude.

RELATED: Marco Rubio’s spicy Greece speech left out the most crucial ingredient

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We must then be attentive to what Seaton calls the “concentric circle of audiences” that Rubio presumably had in mind. These include contemporary Greeks, whose country is now governed by a conservative government with close ties to the United States. Rubio emphasizes, perhaps inordinately, the Greek origins of democracy without noting the serious reservations the authors of “The Federalist Papers” had about Greek democracies, which too often oscillated between anarchy and despotism.

On the other hand, Rubio is surely right that Plutarch’s “Lives of Noble Greeks and Romans” helped inspire the founders’ admiration for lives lived at the service of liberty and human excellence.

Rubio’s audience also includes Europeans more broadly, particularly Western Europeans who seem to have lost what the French political philosopher Pierre Manent has called “the instinct for political existence.” Perhaps this accounts for Rubio’s rather unilateral defense of power politics, since contemporary Europeans tend to think there can be right without might, liberty without national self-respect, and even self-assertion.

Rubio is right in these circumstances to remind Europeans of the indispensable role of thumos in the life of the soul and the life of a polity worth its salt. He also ably defends the moral legitimacy of the self-governing nation-state and forcefully warns against undue and utterly debilitating Western guilt and self-hatred. He takes pointed and well-deserved aim at “outsourcing more of our sovereignty” to “global bureaucracies far beyond the reach of our control.”

Our imaginations need to be stirred by Homeric heroes, but in our civilization shaped by Socrates and Jesus, we cannot simply imitate them.

So far, so good. But in articulating the excellences of Greek civilization and its contribution to civilization simply, Rubio goes somewhat astray. His account of Greek life rightly emphasizes its agonistic character, its “fierce individuality and relentless ambition,” its “daring exploration and invention,” its “yearning for discovery, for adventure, risk and glory.” These are genuine goods, but only up to a point.

When confronted by what Tocqueville called “democratic despotism,” in which weak and ineffectual human beings lose any sense of moral agency and active civic life, these Greek virtues seem like inestimable goods.

But an “impatience with the notion of impossibility, chafing at all boundaries and limits” cannot be the final word either. Political wisdom weaves together restraint and possibility, ambition and limits, moral and civic agency with a warning against self-defeating hubris.

The “common anthropology” of the West, rightly lauded on this occasion by Rubio, indeed invokes “the idea of a natural order,” “a distinctive understanding of virtue,” the nonsubjective character of “truth, goodness, and beauty,” and “the whole tradition of natural law” to which human beings must wisely defer. The best of the Greek and Roman philosophers — Plato, Aristotle, Cicero — and a Christian thinker of the rank of St. Augustine taught us how to get this balance right.

Moderation and magnanimity, greatness and an appreciation of limits, must ultimately go hand in hand.

RELATED: This is what existential politics looks like

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In our listless and dispirited age, the secretary of state was not wrong to evoke the indispensability of thumos — “the fire of passion, strength, courage, pride,” which Rubio calls “the heart of civilization.” But his critics were not wrong to note what he largely presupposed — that spiritedness must be guided by practical reason of the kind lauded by Aristotle in Book 6 of his “Ethics.”

Our imaginations need to be stirred by Homeric heroes, but in our civilization shaped by Socrates and Jesus, we cannot simply imitate them.

In “On Duties,” Cicero insists that there can be no worthy human life or political community without a spirited defense of the precious goods at the heart of civilization itself. But in the end, the great Roman orator, statesman, and political philosopher insists that “arms” must “yield to the toga.”

What Cicero called a “spirit lofty and magnificent” values physical courage, but “domestic courage” above all. “Strength of body” must be guided by “strength of mind,” spiritedness by what Aristotle and Cicero called “right reason,” which has a place for the spirited defense of liberty and the full range of the human virtues.

Aristotle, too, amply recognizes a place for spiritedness guided and informed by practical reason. In Book 7 of his “Politics,” he presents the political liberty of the Greek cities as a judicious mean between northern peoples like the Celts, “filled with spiritedness” but “relatively lacking in thought and art,” and Asian peoples of his time who had souls “endowed with thought and art” but were “lacking in spiritedness.”

Aristotle could not be clearer: One needs to be both “spirited and endowed with thought” to be free and to govern oneself “in the best manner.” On a future occasion, this fuller account of the role of spiritedness — and its limits — might be explored by the secretary of state.

RELATED: Keeping the West’s flame burning

Gary Hershorn/Getty Images

In the eloquent and penetrating defense of heroism and duty with which Rubio’s speech culminates, he firmly differentiates the nobility of those who are “willing to die for their cause” from those who “worship death.” The heroism lauded by an older West is, he rightly insists, “wholly different from what we see, even now, for example from fanatics like the radical Mullahs of Iran, whose cult of death hails child suicide bombers as national heroes, and portrays martyrdom as an end in itself.”

There is no heroism without decency, without respect for what Rubio elsewhere calls the “natural law.” He thus points, however indirectly, to the ultimate need to bring Greek and Judeo-Christian wisdom together to do justice to the noble inheritance passed on to us by Athens and Jerusalem (and Rome).

Rubio’s reference in his talk to the “unapologetic pursuit of national power” by the United States, however, risks confusing power as an indispensable means with power as an end in itself, the fatal flaw of machtpolitik or overwrought realism.

In Athens, Secretary of State Marco Rubio returned in a most serious and suggestive way to foundational questions about the meaning of Western civilization that thoughtful citizens and statesmen avoid at their peril. There was no more fitting place to do so than in Athens, with everything it represents. Let us take up his challenge and continue the civic dialogue that can only enrich a free — and spirited — people.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in the American Mind.

​Marco rubio, Athens, Western civilization, Aristotle, Plutarch, Socrates, Judeo-christian, Jesus, Europe, Greeks, Rome, Homer, Tocqueville, Opinion & analysis