Mark Levin: America First Means ‘Having the Biggest Kickass Military on the Face of the Earth to Use It if We Need It’
Conservative talker Mark Levin opened Sunday’s broadcast of FNC’s “Life, Liberty & Levin” with a monologue about what it meant to be “America First,” which he argued could be defined by the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
Levin has defined “America First” as it pertained to foreign policy, which he said meant having the “biggest kickass military” and not being afraid to use it, especially regarding the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Transcript as follows:
LEVIN: What does it mean when we say I’m an American Firster? I believe in America First. What does that mean? Does anybody know?
A lot of people throw around that phrase and they really don’t believe in America First. They use that as a bumper sticker slogan to justify their ideological approach to governance, and society, and our culture, and a little more.
I assume most countries think that they are fill-in-the blank Firsters — Russia, Communist China, the terrorist regime in Iran, and so forth, and so on. So what does this get us when we say we’re for America First? What is a nationalist? Somebody who believes in America First, is that right?
What is a populist? Somebody who believes in We, the People?
Now, I would like to spend a few hours on this, but I don’t have a few hours. So, let me spend a little bit of time and then you’ll understand where I’m going with this.
I’m not a nationalist. I have in front of me, the pocket edition of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. The word “nationalist” cannot be found in either the Declaration or the Constitution. Why is this? Because the people who founded your country, and the people, the framers of your Constitution were not nationalists. They were Americans. They were yanks. They created and believed in Americanism.
The Declaration of Independence talks about what natural law and natural rights; not nationalism, what what’s natural raw law and natural rights? What’s that?
We have a Supreme Court nominee, now a woman who will or a person who will be on the Supreme Court, Judge Jackson, who said in a written response to what does she believe natural law means and she said, she doesn’t take a position.
She doesn’t take a position on the Declaration of Independence. She doesn’t take a position on the basis of Western civilization. She doesn’t take a position on the core fundamental principle of the Judeo-Christian belief system. Natural law is the Almighty.
See, you have a right to live, you have a right to be happy, you have a right to be free, not because some government says so, not because you’re a nationalist or a populist, but because you’re a human being. These are natural rights that predate the United States, that predate Greece, that predate all of ancient history.
There are certain truisms, some beliefs that we embrace in this country, that are really embraced everywhere, whether they’re practiced or not is a whole another story. Good and evil — good and evil is the same thing in Newark, New Jersey, as it is in Pakistan, or as it is in Havana, or anywhere else.
Again, it doesn’t mean regimes will practice what is good. In fact, most don’t, they embrace what’s evil. But it’s wrong to kill somebody, whether you kill them in France or you kill them in Kansas. Well, why is that? Because there are eternal truths. There’s the 10 Commandments. There are all of these that we believe in.
And the framers of your Constitution believed it. They would never have used the words nationalism or populism, look at the construct of our country. Is that populism? Is there democracy?
The only direct vote that was set up in our Constitution is the House of Representatives. The Senate wants to be chosen or elected by the State Legislatures.
The President of the United States and the Vice President aren’t directly elected, there is an Electoral College that comes between the people and those who are elected.
We have lifetime appointed Federal Judges. Where is all the democracy in the Constitution? Well, why didn’t they put it in there? Why weren’t they populists? Because they were afraid of mobocracy.
These are men who fought the American Revolution and at the same time they were watching the French Revolution. That was populism. It turned into terrorism. There was no justice. There was no due process.
The mob voted. The mob voted you’re dead, you’re dead. They voted you live, you live.
How about your private property rights? How about your privacy? How about your due process rights? Look at the whole Bill of Rights. Do we put that up for a vote? Of course not.
Your Constitution isn’t even about voting. It is about liberty. It is about a secure civil society with voting. I mean, they have voting in Russia. Somehow Putin keeps winning. They had voting — Hamas wants one election. They said they won and there has never been another.
They vote all the time in Cuba or in these other places and so forth. And of course, the Democrats want to destroy our voting system by opening up to whomever, maybe you can vote two or three times. Maybe you can vote from heaven or even hell. That’s not what this country is about.
This country is about liberty, a constitutional system. Nationalism? Nationalism. What the hell is all that about? Nationalism. Why do we have a 10th Amendment? Tenth amendment rejects nationalism. It is Federalism. It talks about state sovereignty.
Why do we have a Ninth Amendment? Have you read that one lately? It talks about individual liberty. It is, in my view, a reflection of the Declaration. They put it right there in the Ninth Amendment. That is your protection.
Nationalism strikes me as an all-powerful centralized Federal government. Right? Well, I’m not a nationalist. So, what is this America First stuff? What does it mean?
Well, those who use it really do believe in an all-powerful Federal government except when they don’t. They are schizophrenic. They really know not of what they say, but they like to repeat it over and over again as justification for their ideological approach.
Let me ask you this question. Let’s bring this into modern times. Is it a good idea from a nationalism point of view to be an isolationist? The 21st Century, whose century is this going to be? Whose century is this going to be? The 19th Century many people believe, that was Britain’s century. Twentieth Century, many people believe that was America’s century.
Well, whose century will the 21st Century be? Well, if you blink too many times, it’s going to be Communist China’s century. Why? Because we have a very strange and gravely dangerous fusion of ideologies going on in this country, the so-called nationalist populace who are not constitutionalists, who are not conservatives, who do not believe in representative government. How can you be a populist and believe in representative government? They really don’t even embrace the Declaration or the Constitution.
Again, they know of not what they say, but they say it all the time and with authority.
And the American Marxist movement that we’ve talked about at length, and I’ve written about at length, there’s a fusion there. The one outright hates the country, the American Marxist trying to destroy it from within. The other says, I love the country so much, we have to isolate it from everything and everything else.
Really? Yes, we should only buy American. Well, I try to buy America mostly. But let me ask you a question. We have millions and millions of people who work in this country, who work for companies that are headquartered somewhere else. We have millions and millions of people who rely on food and clothing and housing material that come from somewhere else.
You can’t even build this pen in the United States without some support from some other country. So, what am I saying? Am I a globalist? I don’t even know what that means.
No, I’m a red-blooded American constitutionalist who believes in capitalism and representative government, but also has what I call prudence. What does that mean? It’s simple. You don’t treat Communist China the way you treat Great Britain when it comes to trade. You don’t send advanced technologies to Russia or to Iran, technologies you might send to Israel, or to some other ally.
You use your noggin, you use your common sense. That’s what you do. That’s right. Mexico is not North Korea, thank God.
Now, we have our problems. These countries are imperfect and in terms of trade and how they treat us on immigration and so forth, and we ought to put our foot down, and we ought to push back.
But ladies and gentlemen, when it comes to globalism, I’ll tell you what I oppose. I oppose exporting our governance to international organizations like the United Nations or the International Criminal Court or whatever you want to call it, or exporting our economic system under the name of climate change to international organizations or treaties that have as their goal to destroy our economic system. That’s what I oppose.
But I do not oppose getting knowledge from other places, getting material from other places if it improves American society and the life of individuals in our own country.
So, what am I talking about here? Let’s move this into foreign policy.
I keep hearing this line, still. What do you want to do? Get us in a war with Russia over Ukraine? Get us into a war with Russia over Ukraine — and these people pretend to be conservatives, and they say America First, America First. These are prominent people who know of not what they speak.
They’re going to surrender the next century, this century, to the Communist Chinese with their idiocy, with their lack of foresight.
America First means having the biggest kickass military on the face of the Earth to use it if we need it. America First means securing our border, so that people come in here if we let them come in here, and if they meet America’s standards. That’s the way it used to be, that’s the way it needs to be.
America First means not an all-powerful national government, it means following our brilliant constitutional system. America First doesn’t mean that people get the vote on all things, including your unalienable rights because their populists, no, America means embracing our Declaration and again, following our constitutional construct.
America means embracing capitalism, but not selling to the enemy or giving to the enemy weapons that they sure as hell will use against us — prudence, and Americanism to me means when you see mass graves in Ukraine now 9,000; when you see people being slaughtered by a monster in a war machine, that is imperialistic, that if they have their way will do the same to the rest of Eastern Europe and Western Europe and will light a fuse with its allies and Communist China and terrorist Iran, and North Korea, and on and on and on, really creating a true World War.
Well, America First doesn’t mean putting your head in the sand and pretending otherwise. You want to protect your children from war? You stand up now. You want to protect this country from war? You stand up now.
Do you believe in America First from our Declaration, to our Constitution, to our founding principles, to our economic system? Then you must reject American Marxism, nationalism, populism, and all the other isms. Embrace your history. See what’s before you. Reject these dangerous ideologies that are incoherent, that are destructive.
This country has been through this before. It’s been through this before. I am not a radical interventionist. I’m not a war monger. I’m not a neocon. On the other hand, I’m not a pacifist. I’m not a dove. I’m not of the surrender first mentality.
I don’t believe we hand our Constitution and Declaration over to the mob any more than I believe we hand it over to nationalists who will decide for all the rest of us how we live.
The Constitution is a magnificent document. The Declaration lays out why this nation was founded in the first place.
I would encourage you on this Sunday, read them again.
