Thumos and a Touch of Swaggart

With each passing wild week in the West, it can feel like a tall order to request an unequivocal defense of it. But when there's a meme, there's a way, and if Marco Rubio has taught us anything, it's that he's always up for the job. James, Steve, and Charles celebrate his statesmanship displayed on Wednesday's Acropolis speech; wonder about the wisdom of the proposed live streaming of the firing-squad execution of the Fort Hood shooter; and bristle at Abdul El Sayed's response to being confronted with "dumb questions" about who our friends and enemies are. Despite it all, they find much to look forward to in our living, breathing, loud-talking and fast-walking civilization on a hill.

Sounds from this week's open: The late televangelist Jim Bakker advises against self-pity; Marco Rubio "testifies to a debt that no lapse of time, no distance of space, can ever extinguish."

Closing Music: "Reverie," composed by Robert Schumann, performed by Bruno Freitas