What America First Says to the World

The American Mind ^ | 08.19.2025 | Kristen Ziccarelli and Joshua Treviño

[E. Pluribus Unum]

We remain the beacon of ordered liberty for all mankind.

In the age of Trump, our nation lives under the banner of America First. In domestic policy, this means securing our border, deporting those who are in the country illegally, and reestablishing law and order in our cities, among other key goals. But what does America First mean for the world beyond America? To answer that question, we must look back centuries.

The onset of the American Revolution was not purely a local affair. The war eventually became a global conflagration, with battlefields stretching from the Caribbean to India. But the enduring contest was ideological, not geopolitical. Non-American lovers of liberty—Paine, Pulaski, Lafayette, Von Steuben, and Salomon for starters—from an array of nations arrived to fight for the American cause, and sometimes became Americans themselves. They understood that fighting for freedom here meant rekindling hope for their own countries.

A century later, the American Civil War stirred similar passions. It was rooted in a kindred understanding that what happened in America would have consequences that went well beyond our nation. “For a time,” observed George Bancroft in 1866, “the war was thought to be confined to our own domestic affairs, but it was soon seen that it involved the destinies of mankind.” And so it did: as Lincoln observed at Gettysburg, the war’s fundamental question was the endurance of republican government in principle, and in this the peoples of Europe especially felt a great stake. Again, the liberty-loving patriots of Europe came to the New World, including veterans of its 1848 liberal revolutions who wore Union blue. Even Giuseppe Garibaldi, hero of Italian unification, nearly took a general’s commission with federal forces.

A century after that, it was the American model that inspired the remaking of European governance, and the world...

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TOPICS: Foreign Affairs
KEYWORDS: americafirst

[Jim W N]

What America First Says to the World

FREEDOM from big gov't coercion through a Constitutionally Limited, Decentralized and Representative Republic!!!!

Shout it from the rooftops!!!

[Mariner]

I read the above excerpt and it’s obvious the author is going to claim we OWE the world.

But we PAID that debt in the 20th century several times over.

[mikey_hates_everything]

The only reasons politicians and bureaucrats don’t adhere to “America First” in how they vote and do their jobs are because they are lining their pockets with bribes, succumbing to blackmail due to their own wrongdoings or are just not truly US citizens and don’t belong here. This happens at the expense and welfare of the people they are supposedly representing.

This is no different than a traitor who commits espionage against the US and should be treated the same way.

[pgyanke]

Hey UK, France, Germany, the Republic of Congo, and others... do you believe in America First? Of course not. You believe in the UK, France, Germany, the Republic of Congo, and others First.

So... if America isn’t for America... who is?

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

It says that we are going to treat you like an actual grown up country not a batch of retarded two year olds.

We will be looking out for our interests, we expect that you will be looking out for yours. After some give and take we will both walk away with something that is beneficial to both of us.

[citizen]

Yes.....but somehow he skipped over the cancers of W Wilson and Constitutional Amendments 16 & 17.