February 8, 2025

America First Means America Last

IMMEDIATE RELEASE 6 January 2025
WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND
Today’s Events in Historical Perspective
America’s Longest-Running Column Founded 1932
              America First Means America Last
By Douglas Cohn and Eleanor Clift         
 
WASHINGTON – In his victory speech after winning reelection, Speaker Mike Johnson intemperately spoke in his temperate tone:
“The path of prosperity has long been paved with policies that put America and Americans first, and that was shown in the election cycle. The people want an America First agenda.” The people are wrong.
America First sounds good, and it lines up nicely with the MAGA mantra, Make America Great Again.
Yet, what is the opposite of America First? America Last? No, America First would make America Last, and nearly did when aviator Charles Lindbergh a mouthpiece for the pro-fascist, anti-Semitic America First Committee, successfully led the opposition to America entering World War II – at least until Japan attacked Pearl Harbor more than two years after the war had begun and nearly was lost. The America Firsters seemingly then vanished; they were only hibernating.
America First is a dangerous and radical agenda rooted in military, economic, and scientific isolationism, the opposite of which Thomas Jefferson described as “The world’s best hope.” Neither he nor any other president until now envisioned that hope would prevail through isolationism and disengagement from the world.
              When President John F. Kennedy delivered the Commencement Address at American University in 1963, he spoke of world peace and said, “We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal. . . . We are bound to many nations by alliances. Those alliances exist because our concerns and theirs substantially overlap.”
Those who have adopted America First as a rallying cry may not be aware of the historical echoes of the phrase, particularly failing to realize it is merely a euphemism for isolationism.
After the war in Afghanistan finally ended in 2021 with a messy withdrawal, Americans had it with faraway wars, giving candidate Trump another constituent group’s grievances to tap into. People regarded isolationism as the opposite of engagement because not all interventions worked out or should even have been commenced. But failures cannot justify unilateral disengagement.
         On the other hand, with Trump threatening the possible use of force to take back the Panama Canal or using the threat of high tariffs against Denmark to force the sale of Greenland, he may claim that an interventionist cannot be dubbed an isolationist. But the opposite is true because the interventionist is ignoring world opinion and the sovereignty of nations.
Land grabs are not what the Hope of the World would do though three presidents succumbed to the lure. Madison attempted to annex Canada during the War of 1812. Polk initiated the Mexican-American War in 1846 to realize the sea-to-sea vision of Manifest Destiny. And McKinley stripped away The Philippines, Puerto Rico, and other lands during the Spanish-American War.
         These expansionist land grabs were not taken from allies such as Denmark and Panama, although the United States did support Panama’s secession from Colombia in 1903.
         Such expansionist actions – the displacement of Native Americans being especially grievous due to broken treaties – do not represent the best of America. Like people, nations are imperfect. And like people a nation such as the United States should attempt to emulate the better angels of its history, not our worst.
         Yet here is President-elect Donald Trump openly dredging up the ultimate land grab euphemism, Manifest Destiny and appropriately tying it to the bad ideas embodied in the misbegotten concepts of isolationism and Make America Great Again.
              Like so many other nations, America expanded in the bathed blood of others which it whitewashed in victor’s history. But that is not what America and most of those other nations represent today. Nuclear weapons and two world wars displayed as never before mankind’s tendency toward self-destruction, prompting the creation of solid alliances such as NATO as well as what could be derived from the benevolent reconstruction of defeated nations.
              This now is the world we live in. America Firsters would return us to that previous world on the way toward Armageddon.
 
See Eleanor Clift’s book Selecting a President, and Douglas Cohn’s latest books The President’s First Year: The Only School for Presidents Is the Presidency and World War 4: Nine Scenarios (endorsed by seven flag officers).
 Twitter:  @douglas_cohn
          © 2024 U.S. News Syndicate, Inc.
          Distributed by U.S. News Syndicate, Inc.
END WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *