What’s Wrong with Putting America First?
AUGUST 30, 2020 6:00 PM BY ROBERT SPENCER
My latest in the American Thinker:
The overarching lesson of the triumphant Republican National Convention this week is that America is great, and that it is good and proper for an American president to put America first. In that, of course, the RNC is echoing President Trump’s consistent statements since he began running for president four years ago. But the President’s America-First message remains one of the most maligned, misinterpreted, and misrepresented aspects of his entire program.
In fact, the president’s primary job is clear from the oath of office that every president recites in order to assume office, and it isn’t to provide health care for illegal aliens, or to make sure that Somalia isn’t riven by civil war, or to make sure America is “diverse.” It is simply this: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Or, to put it even more simply, as Rating America’s Presidents: An America-First Look at Who Is Best, Who Is Overrated, and Who Was An Absolute Disaster explains, the primary job of the president of the United States is to put America first.
Nonetheless, this point is hotly controverted. In Donald Trump’s inaugural address on January 20, 2017, he declared: “From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land. From this moment on, it’s going to be America First… We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world — but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first.”
In response, neoconservative pundit William Kristol tweeted: “I’ll be unembarrassedly old-fashioned here: It is profoundly depressing and vulgar to hear an American president proclaim ‘America First.’”
There is much more. Read the rest here. |
