I’m a fan of Sen. Marco Rubio. He’s an impressive man, and really shines in debates. If he’s the GOP nominee, I’ll relish watching his performances against Hillary Clinton (recall that her only experience facing off with a good debater forced her to run for her first term in this cycle, instead of planning her presidential library at the end of her historic two terms).

Yet, in Tuesday night’s GOP debate on the Fox Business Network, I was struck by what Rubio said about the American Dream, rightly seen as a desire to live in a society of economic and personal liberty:

It’s a universal dream of a better life that people have all over the world.

No, Marco. The American Dream is not universal. Our current moment of liberty is unique in human history, the modern manifestation of the Western Enlightenment, which is 300 years old, but fading fast around the globe. I hope I’m wrong, but I fear Rubio wears the same blinders about the world that George W. Bush once wore as president.

The Enlightenment idea is ensconced in America’s Declaration of Independence: that every human being is endowed by our Creator with “certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” It sprung from a uniquely Western culture, and has only flourished in the West (and, nominally, in former Western colonies). So let’s get right to it: Islamic nations, culturally, do not share those values of liberty. And Islamic culture is on the rise in the 21st Century while Western culture is waning.

Muslims who emigrated to the US and the West in the 20th Century, by and large left their home countries because they personally valued economic and personal liberty over the lives they’ve always known. They chose to embrace a confident Western culture. That does not appear to be the case now — and a big reason for that is the West’s choice to turn its back on its inherited Enlightenment-era culture of liberty.

Japan was culturally and historically not “free” until it was defeated in World War II and re-built by the United States. Other sub-continental and Island Pacific Asian nations only have “free” republics because that political culture was (yes) forced upon them by the West. And the Asian nations with rising Muslim populations are becoming less free (and more dangerous) every year.

Eastern Europe? The former satellites of the USSR — which defined “not free” for most of the 20th Century — have rightly embraced liberty. They were denied personal and economic freedom for generations, but always craved it because it was there, just over the border, or just over the Wall … if only they could escape. The former Eastern bloc may soon have to fight, in a very real sense, to keep their relatively new liberal societies.

South and Central America? A mixed bag, obviously. But their nations had the ability, culturally, to embrace at least the mechanisms of the West’s version of a free republic. So there was something to work with when the Commies retreated and/or the dictator was deposed.

Africa? This this where the academic Left’s endless post-WWII harping about the sins of colonialism guilted the West into completely and unconditionally ceding its political power and influence. Any attempt to “impose” Western values — as had been done in Japan and South Korea — was labeled a continuation of oppression and exploitation. So, the job of leading these nations to the sunny uplands of liberty was left to the corrupt and feckless United Nations. As a result, Africa is the least-free and most-dangerous continent on earth. With a few notable exceptions, the African countries not controlled by Islamic fascists are “republics” that are miserable, kleptocratic, and oppressive oligarchies.

The Middle East? In the 20th Century, the West would purchase “stability” for the people (and, it turns out, the world) through trade and payoffs to strong-men and monarchs with mixed results. See: Egypt, Libya, Lebanon, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia from the end of WWII to 2001 or so. (The common trope: “He’s an oppressive, greedy bastard, but at least he’s our oppressive, greedy bastard.”) But we’ve seen since the Arab Spring — presided over by Obama, who internalized academia’s values and made Western guilt official United States’ policy — that majority Muslim countries tend to choose submission to Islam over liberty when given a chance to vote.

Like George W. Bush in 2001, I once believed that the yearning to be free was “universal.” I once believed that, in the heart of every human being was a desire to live in a liberal and virtuous society in which it is immoral to ask a man to first dedicate his life and labor to an outside authority instead of to himself and his family. But that desire is not inherent in all humans at birth.

Yes, we in the West believe that all of mankind is endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, but that fact must be taught; it must be part of the culture of a people and a nation. If it isn’t, liberty has little chance of success on a societal scale … and it appears to be a harder sell to many societies on the globe than either George W. Bush or I thought it was.

History, and the nature of man, tells me that the peak of global liberty is in our past, not in our future. I don’t expect Marco Rubio to actually say that, but I expect him to know it.