… So, what is America First? It’s putty in the hands of a demagogue. …

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.

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.