"America First" is Heresy

“America First” is Heresy.  “America for and with others” is a much better philosophy on which to maintain our democratic republic.  That means an America that comes to serve others, rather than to be served.  Make America GOOD Again should be MAGA on a blue baseball cap. 

“America First” doesn’t make America good, let alone great.  March 4, 2025, The Independent reported that 15,000 people (10% of them children) had died due to “savage cuts to USAID.”  In Rome, Alistair Dutton, head of Caritas International, an organization of 162 charities working in over 200 countries charged that these abrupt cuts will “will kill millions of people and condemn hundreds of millions more to lives of dehumanizing poverty.”[1]  In an interview with the associated press, Cardinal Micheal Czerny of the Vatican observed that what the USA gives in aid is not even 1% of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product. The Bible calls for 10% to be given to charity.[2]  

When did Americans become so stingy and cheap?  “America for and with others” is the generous America I remember.  In 1973, Canadian journalist Gordin Sinclair gave a stirring speech, praising the willingness and ways Americans come to the assistance of others around the world: “This Canadian thinks it’s time to speak up for the Americans as the most generous… people in all the world.”[3]

Since 2003, President George W. Bush’s life-giving PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief) program has saved some 25 million people who would otherwise have perished.[4]  Now, this administration’s cuts are sentencing millions to death.  I guess he calls that “winning.”

“America First” is a divisive, destructive ideology; an agenda destined to destroy harmony, peace and collaborative efforts to construct and maintain a world of peace and prosperity.  Trumpeting “America First” contradicts the hallowed grounds of American domestic and international policies that made the world safe for democracy.  The shining beacon on the hill guarding human rights, maintaining peace, and championing the liberation and freedom of the oppressed, has turned off its lights.  Children of the 1950s and 60s remember Superman flying across black and white TV screens as the music flared, while the voice proclaimed that we were the people of Truth, Justice and the American Way.  Now blatant lies dominate and destroy truth.  Justice is whatever greedy republicans and corporate capitalists say it is.  And the American Way is people abandoned in fire and flood torn communities because FEMA is no more.  Worst yet, the Naval Academy Library is burning books.[5]

“America First,” was first voiced by Know Nothings in the 1840s, a nativist party against, among other things, immigrant Catholics from Ireland.  They burned Catholic churches in Philadelphia in 1844.  In the 1920s, The KKK blared “America First” as it tried to make America Great for white people.  Jews, Blacks and Catholics were not considered real Americans.  In the 1930s, The America First Committee rallied people to an isolationist stance.  Charles Lindberg, among others, lent support to its Fascist leanings and anti-Semitic rantings.  Dr. Seuss ridiculed such political opinions in cartoons, connecting the movement to Nazism.[6]  On Feb 20,1939, American Nazis filled Madison Square Garden with a “Rally for America.”  Watch the video of the event[7].  Cyrus Vesser in Time Magazine argues that America First’s policies, and dangerous analysis of global politics, contributed to the conditions that led to the devastation of World War II.[8]

     

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“America First” is not good for the vast majority of people in the USA.  This bold, distorted vision of unbridled freedom is just a mask for the cynical and greedy grab for everything by the billionaire class.  “America First” means Musk takes it all, and the rest are left to look for work.  Bezos and Zuckerberg and their buddies are fine.  Everyone else is adrift with no social security, no government because no one works there anymore, and no hope for a representative democracy.  Those were gifts the American people gave to themselves and the world for almost 250 years.

“America First” means someone can run for President more than twice (Does that include President Obama?).  But no worries.  That will never happen.  If the Republicans can’t win in 2026 or 2028, elections will be cancelled.  And Fox News will say that cancelation is Making America Great Again.  Actually, it will be making our country not America anymore. 

“America First” is Heresy because “America First” destroys America and much of the rest of the world.  Necessary alliances, trade agreements and jobs are destroyed by “America First.”  Ukraine is abandoned by “America First.”  First Buddy Putin is strengthened and supported by “America First.”  And America’s and the world’s poor are abandoned.

“America First” Kills.  It supports those who bomb and maim men, women and children in Gaza.  “America First” kills the present of thousands being kicked out of their jobs into the streets, with no time to prepare for the transition.  “America First” kills the future, the hopes and dreams of generation Z and Alpha, whose chance to go to college just evaporated along with Pell grants.  Those who thought they were voting for a sane and sensible common-sense candidate, now must realize the insanity they have unleashed. 

We are not first, not even close.  The U.S ranks 27^th in both education and health[12] (we were 6^th in 1990).  We are 48^th in life expectancy[13] behind places like Panama, Albania, and Denmark (is that why he wants Greenland?).  At $89,678, we are 7^th in GDP per capita.  But that puts us well behind Ireland $107, 243 and Switzerland $111, 716[14] 

The USA has 341 million people.  The rest of the World is some 8.1 billion.  Going it alone is not only sad, stupid and sinful.  Going it alone is suicide.  If we won’t help others, we should not expect others to help us. 

Make America Good Again.   Remember, there is one who teaches, “The first shall be last and the last shall be first.”  Listen to him.  Not those preaching America First.

[1]  Report: How Jesuit Refugee Service is responding to the Trump foreign aid freeze | America Magazine 

 

[2]  Vatican's Caritas outraged at 'reckless' USAID cuts, says millions will die, others left in poverty

 

[3]  Gordon Sinclair - The Americans Radio Broadcast

 

[4]  Nearly 15,000 will have died already because of Trump and Musk’s cuts to USAID, advocacy program claims | The Independent 

 

[5]  Naval Academy removes nearly 400 books from library in new DEI purge ordered by Hegseth's office

 

[6]    America First (policy) - Wikipedia

 

[7]   Revealed: Forgotten 1939 Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden - NZ Herald ).

 

[8]  History Shows How Dangerous 'America First' Really Is | TIME

 

[9]   When a Jewish laborer took on 20,000 US Nazis in Madison Square Garden | The Times of Israel     and    Revealed: Forgotten 1939 Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden - NZ Herald

 

[10]   feb 20 20939 nazis in madison square garden - Search Images

 

[11]   Political messages of Dr. Seuss - Wikipedia

 

[12]   Study: The US ranks 27th in education and health care | CNN   and Measuring human capital: a systematic analysis of 195 countries and territories, 1990–2016

 

[13]    Life Expectancy by Country and in the World (2025) - Worldometer

 

[14]   GDP per Capita by Country 2025