Then and Now
The America First Committee
I’ve spent the day writing a few remarks—more than a few—about Vivek Ramaswamy’s extraordinarily bad foreign policy proposals. I haven’t finished them, but I thought I’d send this to you first. I think you’ll find it fascinating. Do you find it as striking as I do to see how much the new America First movement resembles the old?
I would guess that the vast majority of Americans who now echo these sentiments literally have no idea that there was such a thing as the America First Committee, or why it’s associated with shame and ignominy. They think they’re the first Americans to find that slogan compelling. Yet they know. At some pre-verbal level, they know.
It can’t be a coincidence, can it?
I find this fascinating, this process by which ideas go dormant for generations and then come back to life. How does this happen? We don’t understand the mechanism, but clearly it does happen.
Read this and tell me if you find it as striking as I do.
I’ll send the rest of my thoughts tomorrow.
I think that the current iteration of America First is even worse than the original, even with the latter's vivid streak of antisemitism.
Today's isolationists start from the assumption that America is a bad country, the focus of evil in the modern world, whose global interventions invariably bear poisonous fruit. In reality, though, it's their preferred policies that sow death and destruction. These people were all for the abandonment of Afghanistan, and their criticism of the debacle engineered by our ridiculous current president was based on the risible claim that Trump would have administered the stab in the back more efficiently. Afghanistan's subsequent descent into chaos and darkness bothers them not at all. Who cares what happens to a bunch of creepy foreigners in a faraway country? And faced with the consequences of that abandonment, they have the damned impertinence to complain about all the US weaponry that fell into the hands of the Taliban after Biden's skedaddle. Well, what did they expect?
The isolationists also decry what happened in Iraq. But the truth is that for all the mistakes made by successive American governments, Iraq is better off today than it was when Saddam Hussein was running the show.
Now, regarding the Russo-Ukrainian War, the isolationists have become apologists and enablers of V. Putin. They parrot his propaganda and fake history, branding America and NATO as the true aggressors. What choice did poor, put-upon Vlad have? He had to invade Ukraine so as to protect Mother Russia from soulless globalism. I can't count the times I've gotten this comeback from natcon isolationists. It's enough to gag a maggot.
In all this, the natcons have become indistinguishable from the radical Left, who also revile "American imperialism."
I have a post upcoming on how stupid Ramaswamy’s candidacy is. He’s a joke. So unserious. I’ve been listening to his hour-and-a half long appearance on Bari Weiss’s podcast. God he’s ridiculous. Looking forward eagerly to your analysis