“America First,” “America Only”, and the political order

Matt Walsh and other commentators have become articulate conduits of a new sociopolitical frustration. The slogan “America First” always had a long and tangled history, yet its present revival signals something more than a campaign tagline. Instead, it is a reaction to cumulative social fatigue.

When Walsh and others speak of an “America First” or even “America Only” posture, the rhetoric aims less at isolationism and more at a plea for triage. For some time now, the country seems to have been haemorrhaging civic strength, economic stability, and cultural coherence for decades. Meanwhile, its leaders have crafted policies that gesture toward everywhere except home.

Polling from Pew Research in 2023 indicated that a majority of Americans believed the federal government focused too much on international affairs and too little on domestic problems, demonstrating a sentiment that rose across both parties. The instinct for national self-preservation inevitably gains traction when citizens feel that those in charge possess more enthusiasm for managing other nations than for addressing grocery bills and mortgage rates in their own communities. 

The last several administrations, irrespective of party, were guilty of contributing to this atmosphere. The trajectory of modern politics has favored theatrical foreign crusades, complex financial interventions, and sprawling bureaucratic expansions. Meanwhile, ordinary citizens find themselves dealing with daily pressures that have climbed faster than wages. Inflation and the cost of living rise at a rate that feels almost mocking.

Between 2020 and 2023, the Consumer Price Index rose more than it had in any equivalent period since the early 1980s, and grocery prices rose by more than seventeen percent according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Housing prices stretch toward margins that would have made previous generations blanch. The median home price doubled between 2011 and 2023, according to the Federal Reserve. Debt per household reaches records almost annually, and much of it is consumer debt that indicates survival rather than luxury. The New York Federal Reserve reported that credit card balances reached more than one trillion dollars for the first time in 2023, with delinquencies also rising. Though economists debate the nuances, the American family is squeezed by policies crafted in boardrooms and committee chambers whose residents rarely face the consequences personally.

An obvious example sits in the structure of entitlement programs. Social Security, Medicaid, and a range of welfare provisions consume enormous portions of the federal budget. The intent of the original programs was noble, and some of what these programs accomplish remains indispensable. Yet the present implementation expanded eligibility to such a degree that many able-bodied adults have drifted from the workforce toward long-term dependency.

A 2022 study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics noted that the number of prime-age males out of the labor force grew steadily for decades, and a significant subset reported no disability that would impede work. Analysts from AEI, Brookings, and other institutions documented how pandemic-era expansions entrenched withdrawal from productive labor even when jobs became abundant again. One Brookings analysis showed that labor-force participation among childless adults receiving expanded Medicaid dropped measurably in states with broader eligibility rules.

This creates a dual crisis where the welfare system strains under growing expectations, and the labor market strains under declining participation. In both circumstances, the taxpayer receives the bill for both failures.

The nation also struggles with an immigration dilemma so large that polite euphemisms fail to capture its scale. Millions of undocumented migrants have entered through a border that functions more as a polite suggestion than a sovereign boundary. Customs and Border Protection recorded more than eight million encounters at the southern border between 2021 and 2024, the highest in the agency’s history. This influx created vast shadow communities operating outside basic expectations of public life.

Entire illegal job markets flourish, causing direct harm to the legal job market. Local hospitals and schools absorb burdens they are not equipped to handle. Cities such as New York projected migrant-related expenses exceeding twelve billion dollars over two fiscal years. Border towns resemble staging grounds for humanitarian triage. Citizens witness these realities and wonder why their leaders continue to appear more interested in securing foreign borders than their own. The grievance deepens when they pay rising taxes to finance these very systems that seem engineered for dysfunction.

Given this context, the appeal of “America First” and “America Only” is quite understandable: it has a moral and civic logic rooted in ordinary human experience. Citizens desire leaders who recognize an elementary truth that even children intuit—that responsibility begins at home. A father who excels at his career while his family languishes earns the reputation of a scoundrel. A pastor who invests more energy in a conference speaking schedule than in his parish earns the critique of negligence.

Public office carries similar moral gravity because when an official raises a hand and swears an oath, the oath is a covenantal act. It binds the officeholder to the welfare of a specific people: the people who elected him into office. Augustine observed in The City of God that civic leaders rightly order their duties when they attend to their immediate communities first, since proximity of care follows from the order of charity. The natural law tradition affirmed that governance possesses a hierarchy of priority, and the immediate community always holds primacy.

Aquinas treated patriotism as a natural virtue because it arises from the debt a person owes to the community that nurtures him. This virtue flows from piety, which directs gratitude toward parents and country. Since grace perfects nature, the supernatural virtue of charity deepens patriotic loyalty rather than dissolving it. Patriotic responsibility can never become an excuse for injustice, yet its presence forms part of the ordinary texture of moral life. Many Americans instinctively understand this, even if they could not cite Aquinas directly.

The doctrine of the common good within Catholic social teaching follows the same hierarchy. Elected officials have a duty to protect and promote the conditions under which their constituents may flourish. This unfolds at various levels of authority. The principle of subsidiarity instructs that decisions ought to be made at the lowest feasible level, and it compels the state to avoid imposing functions that communities and families can carry out themselves. It also called for an interior focus on constituents by elected officials. Subsidiarity matches the instinct behind “America First” and “America Only” with surprising clarity. It resists overextension of federal power, cautions against reckless foreign entanglement, and demands that governance emerge from the care of local communities before venturing into global ambitions.

Solidarity enters the conversation as well, and it extends the vision outward without undermining subsidiarity. While subsidiarity obliges a nation to govern itself first, solidarity obliges a nation to consider the legitimate needs of its neighbors and allies when its internal common good has been reasonably secured.

Augustine highlighted this dynamic when he illustrated that although charity begins at home, it moves outward once foundational duties have been satisfied. While George Washington’s foreign policy exemplified restraint, and James Monroe’s doctrine demonstrated careful attention to hemispheric stability, both these approaches remain compatible within a Catholic moral framework. This is because it sees the United States as a nation with responsibilities that follow a clear moral ordering. The local and national common good must first and foremost be healthy before a nation expends its resources elsewhere, and the care of international partners becomes a secondary obligation rather than a primary obsession.

At this moment, the American citizenry is dealing with genuine hardship. Families face economic anxiety. Communities experience cultural fragmentation. Workers confront declining real wages. The public square feels disordered and fatigued. These symptoms point to deeper civic wounds. The priority of governance, therefore, must shift toward healing domestic health. The national common good demands recovery before generosity abroad can resume. Charity may expand outward only when justice is secured inward. An America that fails to care for its own people will accomplish very little in the global arena.

“America First” and “America Only” in their healthiest form express a desire for rightful political order. American citizens today long for leaders who honor the covenantal oath inherent in public office. They want a nation that seeks the welfare of its people, guards its borders, stabilizes its currency, lowers its debt, restores healthy work incentives, and tempers its foreign entanglements until its own home is in order. Such a vision aligns with Catholic social teaching because it enacts subsidiarity, honors solidarity, upholds human dignity, and works towards a proper framework of the common good. In particular, subsidiarity leads government toward local restoration, while solidarity prevents the nation from drifting into a hardened isolation.

The path forward requires well-formed statesmanship capable of making such distinctions. Citizens are weary of false dilemmas that demand a choice between reckless globalization and reckless isolation. There exists a rational, virtuous middle stance. Order the home first. Heal the national wounds. Secure the common good at the local and national levels. Then, from a position of civic strength, extend measured assistance to allies and partners as prudence dictates.

A nation that follows that hierarchy reflects a Catholic understanding of political life where charity and justice cooperate rather than collide.