Marco Rubio’s Moment

Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s speech Thursday decrying left-wing terrorism was superb, but it only grows in stature when placed alongside two other recent addresses — his speech at the Munich Security Conference in February and his polemic against the International Criminal Court earlier this week. Together, the trilogy fleshes out Mr. Rubio’s view of the world and America’s place in it. It puts him in the van of presidential contenders.At Munich, Mr. Rubio insisted that America and Europe “are part of one civilization” and that we “are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share.” The Old World, our top diplomat reflected, “produced the genius of Mozart and Beethoven, of Dante and Shakespeare, of Michelangelo and Da Vinci, of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.” He drew applause from a skeptical crowd by declaring “we will always be a child of Europe.”Mr. Rubio mixed in plenty of hard truths — about immigration, security spending, and a “broken status quo.” The vision, though, was one of an alliance that would “restore to us a clearer sense of ourselves” and “rebuke and deter the forces of civilizational erasure.” Its dour notes, though, were made compelling by the chiaroscuro contrast with sunlit invocations of the “imagination of a our pioneer nation.”Mr. Rubio’s song of sovereignty hit another chord with his broadside against the ICC, which he accused of “waging a war against our country, not with bullets or missiles,” but with “the force of so-called international law.” He reckons that “more polite and compliant nations could make their peace” with the court’s brazen jurisdiction but that America is unwilling to kowtow to a “self-appointed priesthood of ‘international law.’”That “priesthood,” headquartered at what Mr. Rubio calls a “distant global court,” has issued arrest warrants against Prime Minister Netanyahu and one of Israel’s most decorated generals, Yoav Gallant. It is also, as Mr. Rubio notes, investigating American forces. This despite neither Washington nor Jerusalem having signed on to the ICC’s charter. His call to “dismantle the ICC — brick by brick, if necessary” puts America on the right side.Mr. Rubio this week followed up those speeches with a humdinger delivered to some 60 countries at a gathering devoted to violence emanating from the far left. He rejects a conventional wisdom that asserts that the “very idea that far-left terrorism could be a serious threat is treated as a right-wing fever dream.” Instead, Mr. Rabio calls the violence of the left a “distinctive and unique evil” that is driven by a “hatred for civilization itself.”The secretary called the rise of leftist terror a “revolt of the worst against the best, a revolt of the weak and the cowardly against the strong and the good.” He declares that the world communism “envisions for all of us is small, flat, grey, leveled of all exception, drained of all that is good and noble in the human soul. The world it envisions is a world without courage, a world without creativity or ambition, a world without heroes or glory or great causes.”Those who think that criticizing communism is the equivalent of beating a dead horse need only look to the surging success of socialists, some of whom appear to be Trojan horses for the kind of Marxism that Mr. Rubio decries. The worldview that Mr. Rubio has limned in these speeches — lyrical and hardheaded in equal measure puts in sharp relief Vice President Vance’s cramped and conspiratorial bent. Mr. Rubo is proving a figure to watch.It wouldn’t surprise us —to run the risk of speculating — if Mr. Rubio were to continue his speeches, expanding his canvas to domestic policy and social issues and his views on economics, his most important challenge. What we’ve heard so far in these three speeches could be the start of a dozen or more, or a book at the end of the day, giving us a full and considered worldview as we head into 2028. We think it would be logical and inspiring, at home and abroad.

Marco Rubio’s Moment

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