Keeping the West’s flame burning

At the outset of Marco Rubio’s tenure as secretary of state, his department introduced a new paradigm for U.S.-European relations: civilizational alliance.

Rubio and his aides have persistently sought to remind Europe that our relationship is based not merely on trade deals and defense agreements, but ultimately on a shared Western anthropology and history.

The real objection is not so much to any national interest but to the assertion of American national interest.

Rubio’s July 4 message declared:

[America’s] seeds were planted by the philosophers of Athens, the imperial majesty of Rome, the monks and kings of medieval Christendom — centuries of European exploration, science, faith, and restless ambition finally unleashed from every constraint on the boundless American frontier. America was the destiny of an entire civilization.

These overtures, though