The United States, for the sake of her national security and good faith with allies and adversaries alike, deserves an America First president. This shouldn’t be a controversial statement, yet after the previous administration’s disastrous conduct both at home and abroad, this issue is of paramount importance. The Left, among other matters, still has yet to embrace this simple fact.
One of the most recent examples of this dissonance was apparent in Kelly O’Donnell’s question during Tuesday’s White House press briefing.
“What do you think Putin's motivation is to try to do something for President Trump as opposed to just resolving the conflict?”
I scowled at the question the first time I heard it. Does this woman not understand the reality of the modern foreign policy landscape? Other world leaders don’t need any motive to work with America, because everyone wants to work with her. America is the global hegemon. The Left ignores many obvious facts but I was still taken aback upon learning this was one of the ones on the list.
It was not out of ignorance that Press Secretary Leavitt avoided devolving into a lecture about American revolutionary philosophy, and the principles of republicanism. I am confident in her comprehension of American affairs. Simply, a White House press briefing is not a particularly appropriate environment to educate Liberals on our country’s enumerated and implied influence on the world stage.
Stemming from their belief that our country owes an apology for her superiority to every corner of the world she has influenced, Liberals (along with many Conservatives) idea that the United States’ was never created to imperialize counters both the founding fathers’ and God’s intention for her to become the modern empire. Unlike what we are taught in school today, an empire is not conjured for the sole purpose of taking colonies and establishing spheres of influence, but to maintain peace and prosperity in the world as a whole.
Publius, the name under which Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay wrote the Federalist papers, relentlessly denies this sentiment, anticipating its threat to the Constitution’s ratification.
In Federalist papers three and four, Publius applies his future-oriented philosophy to national affairs, discussing the States’ individual versus collective influence in international affairs. He recognizes that people’s passion will inevitably stir war with European powers who maintain a presence next to some states. When that passion eclipses the population, an individual state will not be able to control the damage. “But not only fewer just causes of war will be given by the national government, but it will also be more in their power to accommodate and settle them amicably.”
In the beginning, the United States’ duty was to maintain the peace between themselves and foreign neighbors. Publius even recognizes the need for an “energetic” government to mediate foreign relations. As the United States succeeded in maintaining peace among the states and among her own neighbors, she began to fulfill her most important role in her higher years.
In our Constitution’s preamble, the founders express their intent “to form a more perfect union,” diction very similar to that of Queen Anne’s proposal to Scotland for unification with England. As contextualized in Federalist five, the queen promises Scots that “an entire and perfect union will be the solid foundation of lasting peace.” As Scotland and England were the first two countries that created the Kingdom of Great Britain, the states were the first adherents to the new republic of the United States. Even at that time, our leaders knew peace at home meant peace abroad.
In Federalist 19, Publius introduces his audience to the Germanic Empire, describing it not as a despotic monarchy, but as an enlightened empire, with a balanced diet between the emperor, “who is the executive magistrate,” and “two judiciary tribunals” with “supreme jurisdiction in controversies which concern the empire, or which happen among its members.” He continues on to discuss the duties of this empire, and especially the executive, the overwhelming majority of which are similar to provisions in our Constitution.
The additional ways in which Publius compares us to other empires are too numerous to detail in one piece. If the United States was created with the intent of being a small nation state, Publius would not speak with such magnanimity when discussing our influence on the world stage.
I anticipate the sneers and condemnation of my opposition as I write this. In school, we are taught to cringe when learning about the isolated period of "American Imperialism” after the Spanish American War and prior to World War One. The figures of this time are smeared as greedy capitalists with only the interests of our own image in mind while Democrat presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan is hailed as an American hero who maintained loyalty to the “true, anti-imperialist” undertones of the American Constitution.
We are not explicitly told what side we should take when the question of the American occupation of foreign land is posed to us, but the sides we are presented with play on our desire to choose Democratic justice over moral degeneracy.
As I experienced it, all of my classmates subscribed to the idea that “our form of government, our traditions, our present interests, and our future welfare, all forbid our entering upon a career of conquest,” by the end of my American history course. They praised the genius of Bryan while left ignorant of Publius’ deepest intentions for our country’s future.
To this day, Liberalism continues to impede our country’s obligation to the world. It continues to lead people to the belief that the United States’ presence does not matter. It is what impelled Kelly O’Donnell to question Russia’s and Ukraine’s refusal to “just resolve the conflict” themselves. It is what caused previous presidents to embark on a worldwide apology tour and denounce our greatness. It betrothed the idea that we could establish sturdy democracies in places they were not wanted, then leave them to their own devices. It is what led the previous administration to ignore the influence the United States had on Afghanistan and deny the havoc that a brisk pullout would unleash.
To clarify, I do not preach from a pulpit of interventionism. It is not the United States’ role to intervene in petty disagreements and distant temper tantrums. In fact, I recognize that at times, involving ourselves in one side over another worsens conflict, making it difficult to regain our position as the head negotiator, the role President Trump is venturing to play with Russia and Ukraine, Cambodia and Thailand and various other conflicts.
The second our great country fulfilled her destiny as the global peacemaker nearly eighty years ago, she began to act upon the potential her founders had given her just less than two hundred years earlier. Today, after numerous upsets resulting from Liberal malaise, we have once again found our true calling as the new global empire, and we have begun to act like it.
If this has not been enough to convince my detractors, I have one last insight from Publius in Federalist 14 to share, in which he directly warns against Liberalism’s rhetoric:
Hearken not to the unnatural voice which tells you that the people of America, knit together as they are by so many chords of affection, can no longer live together as members of the same family; can no longer continue the mutual guardians of their mutual happiness; can no longer be fellow-citizens of one, great, respectable, and flourishing EMPIRE. (capitalization added)
President Trump is not only silencing that unnatural voice, but honoring the men before him that fought tirelessly to eliminate it from our founding philosophy almost 250 years ago.
Press Secretary Leavitt may not have had the outlet to educate Mrs. O’Donnell, yet she alluded to it masterfully in her response: “Russia and all countries around the world actually respect the United States again, and the President is using the might of American strength to demand that respect.”
America is great, America is respectable, and America is an empire.
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