I'm an isolationist, an America First type—just like all our presidents up to Woodrow Wilson—or perhaps Teddy Roosevelt, if you want to start an argument—and a couple of presidents since Wilson.
I'd spell that out in more detail, but someone else has done the job for me. This was Josiah Lippincott at the American Greatness website, October 17th—The America First Response to the Israel-Hamas War.
“Democrats and Republicans alike simply cannot keep their hands to themselves. They are constitutionally incapable of staying out of wars they have no business being in.”
— Brian Almon (@gemstatebrian) October 17, 2023
Great piece by Josiah Lippincott.https://t.co/yxN8awp2Io
I'm tempted to just reproduce the entire essay, but that would be overquoting. I'll content myself with just the two opening paragraphs:
Being America First means that instead of spending money and sending weapons into conflicts on the other side of the world, we should focus on our problems here. In case anyone has forgotten in the last week of 24-hour war propaganda: The southern border is a sieve, 100,000 Americans a year die of opioid overdose—from fentanyl shipped from China and Mexico—and homeless encampments dot every major city in America. Before anyone in any position of power begins to think about even commenting on foreign conflicts, they should solve the crises roiling our civic life at home.
This advice, however, is utterly incomprehensible to our rulers in D.C. Democrats and Republicans alike simply cannot keep their hands to themselves. They are constitutionally incapable of staying out of wars they have no business being in.
Who is the author here, this Josiah Lippincott? American Greatness doesn't tell me, but I assume it's the one I turned up by googling: a young Californian, aged about 30, ex-U.S. Marine Corps, currently a Ph.D. student in Politics at Hillsdale College—which, just to remind you, doesn't take government funding. Lippincott has a free Substack account with one-thousand-plus subscribers as of last month.
The fact of his being a young guy is encouraging. The phrase "America First" too easily brings geezers to mind. Pat Buchanan's in the lead there. Pat was 85 just this Wednesday—Happy Birthday, Pat! … assuming "Happy birthday" isn't a racist insult, of course.
In active politics the lead America Firster is Donald Trump, by instinct if not always coherently by spoken opinion. The Donald is 77.
Now here's thirtyish Josiah Lippincott coming up to bat for America First. Welcome, Sir. If you find yourself in Long Island I'll be glad to buy you a drink—heck, a full meal, if you don't mind diner food.
America First-ism may even have become a temptation to some younger neoliberals. The other day I spotted this tweet from Matthew Yglesias. Tweet:
Everyone wants America to do more in the Middle East—more to help Israel, more to restrain Israel, more to promote peace, more something.
My view is we should admit we're not solving this and try to do less.
All right, it's not full-throat isolationist, but it's turning that way. Yglesias is 42.
Could the U.S.A. return to our historical position of not giving much of a damn about the rest of the world? We still have a wide ocean on each side of us, and only Canada and Mexico as immediate neighbors.
Of all the nations that ever were, ours has the least cause to worry about foreign invasion—unless, of course, we were so insane as to leave our borders open.
Sure, ICBMs are worth worrying about; but Mutual Assured Destruction seems to work, so let's just make sure we have more of the darn things than anyone else—better yet, than everyone else.
America First. What's the case against it?
