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Article by Rebel News staff.

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Tonight on The Ezra Levant Show: Marco Rubio stood beneath the Parthenon and told the West to stop apologizing for itself, and in the two weeks since, Canada has made his point for him.

Rubio spoke on Oct. 7 at the Pnyx in Athens, the hill where the citizens of the ancient city met in assembly 2,500 years ago. His roughly 3,500-word address, widely summarized as a call for Europe to "awaken from its long slumber," contained no apology and no land acknowledgment. He opened with the Persian sack of the Acropolis, after which the returning Athenians buried the rubble and later raised the Parthenon.

Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, described himself as an heir testifying "to a debt that no lapse of time, no distance of space can ever extinguish." He praised the Greek inheritance of "risk and glory," of reason and natural law, which he said "paved the way for the gospel of Jesus Christ to find fertile soil in Europe." The contrast with Canada's recent leadership is stark. Justin Trudeau told the New York Times in 2015 that "there is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada," and called it the first postnational state. After Rubio mentioned Christianity in a speech in Munich in February, Prime Minister Mark Carney answered by saying the Trump administration "talks about Christian nationalism," while Canadian nationalism is civic. Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms nonetheless opens by recognizing "the supremacy of God."

"Too often these days, we build downwards," Rubio said, warning against holding "the most exceptional things among us hostage to the average, the ordinary, the mediocre." The OECD projects Canada will post the weakest growth in living standards of any advanced economy through 2060. In 2024, Bank of Canada senior deputy governor Carolyn Rogers said "it's an emergency, it's time to break the glass."

Rubio said the West came to feel "ashamed of the very things that made us exceptional." In June 2019, Trudeau accepted findings that "what happened amounts to genocide." Rubio's list of what followed reads like a Canadian ledger. Monuments came down: Sir John A. Macdonald was removed in Victoria, Kingston and Charlottetown and beheaded in Montreal, and Egerton Ryerson's statue was torn down. In 2021, at least 20 towns and cities cancelled Canada Day. Borders opened, with population growth of 1.27 million in 2023 and 3.15 million temporary residents by the fall of 2024. Industry left, as Stellantis moved Jeep Compass production from Brampton to Illinois and GM shut BrightDrop in Ingersoll. And the military withered: an internal Department of National Defence briefing reported by the CBC found only 58 per cent of forces promised to NATO could respond.

Rubio warned of nations outsourcing sovereignty "to global bureaucracies far beyond the reach of our control." A month ago, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proposed making Canada the European Union's first "associate member," and Carney replied in Strasbourg that "Europe and Canada are stronger together." He warned too that rivals would "fill the vacuum." In January, Carney cut Canada's tariff on Chinese electric vehicles from 100 per cent to about six per cent and told Xi Jinping the partnership "sets us up well for the new world order."

On energy, Rubio pledged to "unleash" American supply. Canada's record runs the other way: Northern Gateway killed by cabinet in 2016, Energy East abandoned in 2017, then Bills C-69 and C-48. On Oct. 1, Carney listed a Pacific pipeline as a project of national interest, which is short of approval, with conditions not due until next September. On power, Rubio said credibility requires the willingness to use force. When Washington asked allies for warships in the Strait of Hormuz this spring, Canada's defence minister said Ottawa had not been consulted, and Carney offered help after a ceasefire.

Rubio held up Greece as "a model ally." NATO figures put Greek defence spending at about 2.8 per cent of GDP last year, rising toward 3.65 per cent, against Canada's 2.03 per cent, its first time at the alliance minimum since 1990.

The Secretary of State also extended a hand to Europe, citing the new Greenland agreement, in which "all three partners in that deal emerged victorious." Carney, by contrast, told a Calgary rally last week that "some outside our borders are working to break us so they can own us." Rubio's warning against "prioritizing the global community over one's own people" fits a former Bank of England governor and UN envoy, and his line between heroes and a "cult of death" sits awkwardly beside Canada's recognition of a State of Palestine in September 2025.

Rubio closed by urging the West to be "intensely proud" of where it comes from. Canada shares that inheritance, from Westminster and the common law to Magna Carta. What it lacks, the argument goes, is a Prime Minister willing to say so.

Also tonight, an interview with Hugh Fagan, a Wexford man charged with a public order offence over the handmade signs he displays silently in his town square. His trial is set for Tuesday, Oct. 27, in Wexford District Court, and a campaign to fund his legal defence is under way at IrishFreeSpeech.com