No Major Support in U.S. for "America First"

For over a century, the monied class has not endorsed George Washington's "no foreign entanglements" exhortation. Bold individuals are not going to change this.

John Leake

Readers often ask me why Dr. McCullough and I are not more critical of President Trump’s “give Benjamin Netanyahu whatever he wants” policy.

Before I respond to this question, I’d like to give a bit of background on this issue. For over thirty years, Dr. McCullough and I have been acutely aware the State of Israel’s outsized influence over U.S. foreign policy since the Johnson administration. Moreover, Dr. McCullough’s wife is a Palestinian Christian who is extremely distraught about the plight of the Christian congregation in Gaza and all innocent civilians in Gaza.

We believe that the United States government should heed President Washington’s exhortation —stated in his Farewell Address (a foundational document)—that the U.S. Republic should avoid foreign entanglements and alliances. However, we must also recognize that there has been ZERO support for this policy in America’s monied class for over a century.

Though I (a freelance scribbler) am a man of modest means, I grew up in an affluent Waspy community in Dallas in which there is ZERO support for or even awareness of the foreign policy prescriptions that President Washington articulated.

If they took the time to read the Address, most would likely regard Washington’s ideas as quaint, 18th century notions with little application today. I wrote about this subject a few weeks ago (“Avoid Political Alliance”) and the post got little engagement.

Generally speaking, gentile Americans have little knowledge of or interest in foreign policy, which is why they are easily manipulated into endorsing war whenever their government invokes the specter of a foreign bogeyman.

On the other hand, many Jewish Americans—including those with substantial resources—are keenly interested in foreign policy and the plight of Israel, which they regard as their ancestral homeland. This community in the United States is extremely educated, engaged, and organized. They stick together, support each other, and make generous campaign contributions to candidates who support their objectives.

During the George W. Bush years, I never heard a single monied, self-professing Christian—including major supporters of Bush—express the slightest concern about what was happening to the ancient Christian community in Iraq after Saddam Hussein was removed by the U.S. military. I suspect that few of these guys even knew about this congregation. Few were aware that Hussein and Assad of Syria protected the ancient Christian congregations in their territories. And while I don’t know any fervent Jewish Zionists, I know several monied Christian Zionists.

Because I believe that the growing risk of a direct war with Russia would likely have catastrophic consequences for the American people, I have repeatedly used this newsletter to protest the U.S. government’s insane proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. However, even these posts have been met with more hostility than support.

Until the American monied class starts supporting an “America First” foreign policy, the U.S. government will continue pursuing an “America Last” foreign policy when it comes to the interests and security of ordinary American citizens. American politicians will continue shipping hundreds of billions of cash and weapons to their cronies abroad while the American homeland continues its downward slide into a debt-ridden and divided dystopia.

Charlie Kirk was a sharp critic of the U.S. proxy war in Ukraine, and I am currently evaluating reports that he drew the hostility of Ukrainian nationalist fanatics—i.e., one of the most aggressive and unhinged groups of guys one could ever have the misfortune of meeting.

There is also evidence that Kirk was becoming increasingly concerned about President Trump’s “give Netanyahu whatever he wants” policy and even articulating his concerns. Paradoxically, given the Left’s unhinged, apoplectic hatred of Charlie Kirk, he was probably our best hope for (slowly but surely) cultivating a more balanced foreign policy. With the exception of a few lunatics who seem to think his murder was faked, we all know what happened to him.