Time and again, the 19th-century works of Fyodor Dostoevsky foretell the 21st-century problems we now face. One of his most famous and relevant observations comes from The Brothers Karamazov: “The more I love humanity in general the less I love man in particular.”
It’s easy to love people in the abstract. It’s far harder to love flawed, flesh-and-blood individuals. Our leaders face the same challenge – it’s easy for politicians to love a country and serve its interests as an abstract geopolitical entity, but difficult to love its citizens and serve their day-to-day interests above all else. To paraphrase Dostoevsky: “The more they love America in general, the less they love Americans in particular.”
This is the problem the America First movement must address. We cannot sacrifice the interests and will of Americans for the vague gains of America as a player on the world stage. We cannot allow America First to become the enemy of Americans First.
Any right-wing influencer or intellectual worth their salt sees the writing on the wall, or rather, the posting on the timeline: young Americans in particular are fed up with leaders abandoning the domestic policy agenda and instead prioritizing foreign interventionism to win favor with so-called allies. The enthusiasm and momentum behind Trump and his America First movement are dying as a result.
Americans don’t see tangible improvements to their lives when we engage in regime-change wars, weapons sales, and black ops around the world. They just see higher prices, increased threats, and more money appropriated by Congress to the Pentagon instead of American families.
There are benefits to hegemony, no doubt, but the detriments are felt ever stronger as we stretch ourselves thinner and thinner in the name of perpetuating the Pax Americana. We do have the greatest military on Earth, and we do have the greatest economic potential of any nation out there. Why are we squandering our treasures and the vision of our Founding Fathers to bomb people halfway around the world? We need not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy when we have monsters to slay here at home.
Our leaders and their advisers have lost sight of what “America First” really means. It’s not about keeping America in first place among all our rivals; it’s about improving the lives of American citizens above all else. When you pursue the latter, the former will happen naturally.
We deserve leaders who put Americans first, not just America in the abstract. Americans care about immigration, not intervention. They care about lower taxes and higher wages, not lower restraint and higher deployments. Americans want tax dollars spent on American families, not enriching the families of the global elite.
If the America First movement wants to remain relevant, it must return to its anti-war, domestic-focused roots. Populism is about doing what’s popular among citizens, not what makes you popular with foreign leaders and investors. It’s time to put Americans first in the equation instead of relegating them to an afterthought.
Ethan Charles Holmes is an experienced reporter with an academic background in Russian culture, history, and politics. He is a regular commentator on foreign policy and advocate for non-interventionism. You can follow him on X @the_posts or email him at ethan.ch.holmes@gmail.com.”
