June 23, 2025
When Donald Trump ran for president, he made a number of statements that suggested he wanted to curtail our neocon interventionist policy. But since his election, he has continued to send military aid to the Middle East and to Ukraine, He threatened to drop a "bunker buster" bomb on Iran and called for the citizens of Teheran to evacuate their city. He has also called for the residents of Gaza to move elsewhere. Regardless of your view of these conflicts, one fact is indisputable. President Trump's actions violate our traditional non-interventionist foreign policy. Under that policy, America was to remain neutral in all conflicts, except for direct threats to our country. The great historian Ralph Raico explained our traditional foreign policy with unmatched clarity and eloquence in a speech, "The Case for an America First Foreign Policy," that he delivered at the Future of Freedom Foundation at their conference in Virginia in June 2007. Rather than continue in my own words, here is a substantial part of that speech:
"Good morning, ladies and gentlemen...My view is that our cause should be anchored in the traditional American policy that served us so well in the first 100 years of our life as a nation, a policy that I will be calling America First. The record is laid out in a schoolbook by the great historian Charles Beard, published in 1940, A Foreign Policy for America. Charles Beard was a professor at Columbia and president of the American Historical Association, considered the dean of American Historians until he concluded and documented that Franklin Roosevelt was not really all that sincere when he told the American people, before Pearl Harbor, that he was working night and day to keep us out of war, whereupon Beard was suddenly demonized by the profession and dismissed as a hopeless nutcase.
This was Beard's thesis in that small book: In our dealings abroad we should basically follow the guidelines laid out by George Washington in his farewell address to the American people. The great rule of conduct in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations, we should have with them as little political connection as possible. This statement by Washington, which we may hear maybe once or twice during this seminar, involves three basic points. First, we should engage in mutually beneficial peaceful commerce with the rest of the world, but forcing nothing, as Washington was careful to add. Second, while trading with them, we should avoid entanglements in the political affairs of other countries and in their quarrels with other nations. Finally, we should always remain strong enough to defend ourselves from attack.
This system was endorsed by John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and the other Founders. That was no accident. Nonintervention was the natural counterpart to the form of government, the Republic, which they had instituted. The monarchies of Europe were all massive war machines, systematically exploiting the people to finance the never-ending conflicts and to support the military and civilian bureaucracy that those conflicts necessitated. The old monarchies were dedicated to the pomp and glory and power of the state. America would be different: Novus Ordo Seclorum, as you will find still on the back of dollar bills, the new order of the ages.
Here, the rights of the people, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, of all things the pursuit of happiness, that was our mainstay. Government power was to be strictly limited, mainly exercised by the localities and the states. Hence the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which still reads, for all the good it does us, 'The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.' Taxes would be low, and the public debt would soon be liquidated, ensuring that the citizens, citizens not subjects, would not be routinely plundered as was the European and monarchial way.
In order to forestall high taxes, debt, and the centralization of power, there was a crucial precondition, however; we had to steer clear of war. Here is the considered opinion of James Madison: 'Of all the enemies of true liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, debts, and taxes are the known instrument for bringing the many into the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the executive, that is the President and his minions, is extended. No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.'
So the advice of the Founders was this: If you want to preserve the system we had established, keep out of war, except when war is required to defend the United States; avoid political entanglements overseas, since these are likely to lead us into war. And, as Washington also warned in his farewell address, we should treat all foreign nations fairly and equitably, not showing favoritism to any, because, he said, 'The nation which indulges towards another an habitual hatred or habitual fondness is in some degree a slave.' You can call this the policy of America First. First it was reiterated by James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, Grover Cleveland, and others throughout the 19th century.
America First in no way meant isolation from the rest of the world. This term 'isolationism' has turned into a one-word slam dunk in the hands of the proponents of global meddling. It's the only thing that most college students, for instance, remember about American diplomatic history, if they remember anything-that in the bad old days we used to be isolationists. But no one was more of a cosmopolitan than Thomas Jefferson. America following Washington, Jefferson, and the others welcomed trade and cultural exchanges with all nations while rejecting political connections. As we abstained from overseas meddling, American civilization flourished, and America became the world's economic powerhouse.
This noninterventionist America devoted to solving our own problems, and nurturing our own distinctive civilization, soon became Stupor mundi, the Latin phrase 'wonder of the world.' Everywhere people struggling for their freedom looked for inspiration and hope to the Great Republic of the West. America served the cause of freedom in the lands across the seas not by sending troops or bombers or foreign aid, but by being, in the words of Henry Clay, 'a light to all nations,' a shining example of a happy and prosperous people enjoying their God-given rights and peace. When the French decided to send us a birthday present for our country's 100th birthday, the statue was named 'Liberty Enlightening the World.' That's the reason that the statue in New York Harbor is carrying a torch. Traditional American policy thought it was none of our business to make any distinction between foreign nations as to their morality, ideology, or provenance. If a regime had the attributes of a state, we could recognize it and deal with it..."
That concludes the part of Ralph's speech that I'm reprinting. I agree entirely with him. Murray Rothbard agreed with him too. We need to return to our traditional foreign policy and abandon power politics. President Trump wants to "Make America Great Again" but we can achieve this goal only through the pursuit of liberty and peace. The Tenth Amendment, which Ralph Raico mentioned, shows that America was originally intended to be a loose confederation of states, with limited power to the federal government. Abraham Lincoln overthrew the Constitution by his invasion of the South, in an effort to turn America in a Great Power, a goal antithetical to our Founding Fathers. Let's do everything we can to get President Trump to abandon interventionism and to return to our traditional foreign policy.