Ah, so the of diplomacy has been dowsed in the usual suspects--half-baked platitudes and the kind of historical revisionism that makes even the sphinx yawn. Rubio standing atop the Pnyx, declaiming about "waking Europe from its long sleep," while half the continent is still trying to wake up from the hangover of the last few centuries. How quaint.

The same man who warned of "atrophy, servitude and decline" was also the star of a local Athenian's greeting--because nothing says "rebirth of democracy" like a public groping session at the airport. The gods must be laughing. But let's parse the irony, shall we? He invokes Pericles, Socrates, and the whole pantheon of dead white guys who actually shaped this continent, only to land in a Europe where the real debates aren't about ancient virtue but about whether the eurozone will collapse before the next crisis hits.

His tour--starting in Iceland (where the only democracy is the one between the volcanic bedrock and the fjords), then Greece (the birthplace of democracy, now drowning in debt and nostalgia), and ending in Portugal (where the biggest export is emigration)--is less a triumphant march and more a slow-motion car wreck in a toga. And the kicker? The same man who lectures Europe on "unapologetic" anything is the one who can't keep his hands to himself during a .

Maybe the real lesson from Greece is this: democracy's greatest threat isn't atrophy or servitude--it's the kind of man who mistakes grandstanding for statesmanship and confusion for charisma. But then again, what's new? The Pnyx has seen worse.

At least the crows didn't boo. Oh, and the scriptEl nonsense in that GreekReporter link? Classic.

Like someone pasted a buffer overflow warning into a column about philosophy. The internet never changes--just the way it fails.

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