Veritas et Sapientia-The Real Meaning of ‘Murica First

“America First” received its most sophisticated postwar interpretation in the fin de siècle campaigns of Pat Buchanan, whose themes, in coarse and erratic form, have been picked up by Donald Trump.

Mandeville, LA – The phrase [‘Muricah First] sank after Pearl Harbor, though in the 1970s, strangely, it shows up on campaign pins for the internationalist Republican Richard Nixon as well as Gerald Ford, who had been a cofounder of the America First Committee at Yale before resigning in fear that a public attachment to peace might cost him his position as assistant football coach. “America First” received its most sophisticated postwar interpretation in the fin de siècle campaigns of Pat Buchanan, whose themes, in coarse and erratic form, have been picked up by Donald Trump.

Trump’s happenstance adoption of “America First” as his credo—it was suggested to him by a New York Times reporter—has predictably called forth buckets of spittle-flecked slander from the gatekeepers of the Only Acceptable Narrative of American History, which is social democratic at home, and world-saving militarist abroad.

While Trump’s gutsy criticisms of the Iraq War, NATO, and our rabid Russophobes merit the America First mantle, his enthusiasm for torture, contempt for the Iran deal, and lack of evident fondness for the Bill of Rights places him outside the tradition of Robert A. Taft, Edmund Wilson, Gore Vidal, and the best exponents of America First.

Better than Trump’s big-is-beautiful “make America great again” bluster is the message of an earlier America Firster, Sen. Hiram Johnson, who said in 1919, “Bring home American soldiers. Rescue our own democracy. Restore its free expression. Get American business into normal channels. Let American life, social and economic, be American again.”
Now there’s a real American platform.

TheKingDude

Host of the Mike Church Show on The Veritas Radio Network's CRUSADE Channel & Founder of the Veritas Radio Network. Formerly, of Sirius/XM's Patriot channel 125. The show began in March of 2003 exclusively on Sirius and remains "the longest running radio talk show in satellite radio history".

See Full Bio