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.

The Athens speech only indirectly addresses the biblical pole that has also profoundly 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.