Let's hear no more about America First! It's a fraud, a cover for collectivist nationalism, and a distraction from what matters. (It also looks like camouflage for Trump Family First, but let's take it at face value for now.)
On foreign policy, America First does not exclusively describe the supposed noninterventionist side of the public debate. The openly interventionist side supports meddling because, in its view, that's in "America's interest." That view is wrong and needs to be refuted, as it has been often. But that does not mean the interventionists don't believe it. Doubt their sincerity if you wish. I can't read their minds. The point is this is not a debate between those who want to promote the "national interest" and those who want to promote something else. Rather, it's a debate over what constitutes that interest and whether unilateralism or multilateralism best promotes it.
That's one problem with America First. The deeper problem is the belligerent nationalism of the movement led, but not founded by, Donald Trump. This flows from its anti-individualism. The nation is the irreducible unit, and conflict must happen. See how Trump picks fights with Canada, Mexico, Europe, China, and others with whom we have no reason for conflict. Look at his incoherent, destructive trade policies. For as long as anyone can remember, Trump's shtick has been that America has been "ripped off" and that only he can change this. What's he talking about? Since when is offering desirable goods at affordable prices a rip-off? But seeing trade as it really is would deprive Trump of his cherished trademark grievance politics. Narcissistic demagogues thrive on grievances. They don't gain votes by promising to stop the U.S. government's global bullying of others.
America is an abstraction, which means different things to different people. In one sense, it's a country but not a single organism. It's an association of individuals who have different interests built on their fundamental interest in peace and freedom. Government tampering with freedom always favors some over others. One person's subsidy is another person's burden. Which one represents the real America? Steel tariffs help steel producers (in the short term) but harm steel users, who far outnumber the producers. This is an old story. Does it have to be pointed out?
So, what is America First? It's putty in the hands of a demagogue.
"American interests" are interests as seen by the people who run the government, that is, America's rulers. They are a filter, an interpretation by interested parties. This affords abundant opportunities to pursue narrow and even personal agendas. Rulers need not have any common interest with regular people. They need votes, however, so rulers will strike the required poses, especially in election season.
America First is about power and devotion to the ruler, without whom we cannot prosper. You know the song and dance. When John F. Kennedy said, "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country," he was properly rebuked by Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, and other advocates of individual liberty. Rand called Kennedy's program of self-sacrifice "the Fascist New Frontier." They said that Americans should ask neither question. Nationalism is anti-individualism and antithetical to the ideas that motivated many people at the American founding. Trump doesn't openly ask for self-sacrifice, but it's subtly built into his agenda. He requires self-sacrifice while promising to make us rich. Fat chance.
Where is the individual in a vision of national greatness? The individual is a tool, a servant, and even a hostage—but little more. The everyday lives of regular people are expendable because, it is said, something bigger matters more. Greatness is not really for them.
Nationalist intellectuals—MAGA and otherwise—like to say that America is more than a marketplace. No one denies it, but people live a good part of their lives in the market, and its openness or closeness makes a big difference in their lives. As for the other parts of life, what makes the nationalists so sure that people cannot take care of themselves through voluntary association? Community is a good, but it should be a freely chosen community. People need meaning, but for it to be real, they need to make their own meaning. The last place to find it is in the words of a demagogue who believes his word creates truth.
When nationalists say America is more than a market, they mean the nation is more than a free association of individuals cooperating to pursue their own interests. We should reject that view. "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" is not a collectivist slogan. It's impeccably individualist. Jefferson didn't write "life, liberty, and the pursuit of American greatness." A contemporary of Jefferson's, Abraham Bishop, understood:
A nation which makes greatness its polestar can never be free; beneath national greatness sink individual greatness, honor, wealth and freedom. But though history, experience and reasoning confirm these ideas; yet all-powerful delusion has been able to make the people of every nation lend a helping hand in putting on their own fetters and rivetting their own chains, and in this service delusion always employs men too great to speak the truth, and yet too powerful to be doubted. Their statements are believed—their projects adopted—their ends answered and the deluded subjects of all this artifice are left to passive obedience through life, and to entail a condition of unqualified non-resistance to a ruined posterity.
Here was a prophet.
