Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered a powerful speech in Europe that ended with a massive standing ovation as heritage residents of the once-prosperous continent connected to the Trump official’s call to renew faith and reject modern dogma around globalization.
For context, Rubio was speaking at the Munich Security Conference on Valentine’s Day, February 14th, in Germany as the Trump agenda seeks to expand its influence to make not just America great again, but help restore allies and kin around the world to do the same with their own countries.
Rubio led a verbal assault on globalization, open borders, outsourced manufacturing and trade, and abdication of national sovereignty in favor of international institutions. The entire speech laid bare the neoliberal agenda and exposed it for the rot it has produced, in particular its rejection of Christian teachings and respect for differences among nations and its citizens.
“But the euphoria of this triumph [victory in World War Two] led us to a dangerous delusion that we had entered, quote, the end of history, that every nation would now be a liberal democracy, that the ties formed by trade and by commerce alone would now replace nationhood, that the rules based global order, an overused term, would now replace the national interest, and that we would now live in a world without borders, where everyone became a citizen of the world,” Rubio spoke from the podium.
“This was a foolish idea that ignored both human nature and it ignored the lessons of over 5000 years of recorded human history, and it has cost us dearly in this delusion. We embraced a dogmatic vision of free and unfettered trade, even as some nations protected their economies and subsidized their companies to systematically undercut ours, shuttering our plants, resulting in large parts of our societies being de industrialized, shipping millions of working and middle class jobs overseas, and handing control of our critical supply chains to both adversaries and rivals,” he continued.
“We increasingly outsourced our sovereignty to international institutions, while many nations invested in massive welfare states at the cost of maintaining the ability to defend themselves. This even as other countries have invested in the most rapid military buildup in all of human history, and have not hesitated to use hard power to pursue their own interests to appease a climate cult, we have imposed energy policies on ourselves that are impoverishing our people, even as our competitors exploit oil and coal and natural gas and anything else, not just to power their economies but to use as leverage against our own,” he added.
“And in a pursuit of a world without borders, we opened our doors to an unprecedented wave of mass migration that threatens the cohesion of our societies, the continuity of our culture and the future of our people,” he went on.
Speaking how President Trump is trying to make America great again, he said there was an opportunity for Europe to do the same, and alongside their historical and cultural allies. “For the United States and Europe, we belong together. America was founded 250 years ago, but the roots began here on this continent, long before the men who settled and built the nation of my birth arrived on our shores, carrying the memories and the traditions and the Christian faith of their ancestors as a sacred inheritance, an unbreakable link between the old world.”
“We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common civilization to which we have fallen heir,” he declared.
“And so this is why we Americans may sometimes come off as a little direct and urgent in our council. This is why President Trump demands seriousness and reciprocity from our friends here in Europe. The reason why my friends, is because we care deeply. We care deeply about your future and ours, and if at times we disagree, our disagreements come from our profound sense of concern about a Europe with which we are connected, not just economically, not just militarily.”
“We are connected spiritually and we are connected culturally. We want Europe to be strong. We believe that Europe must survive because the two great wars of the last century served for us as history’s constant reminder that ultimately our destiny is and will always be intertwined with yours,” he ended.
Featured image: Screen shot from embedded video