America has been a frontier. It's been a colony. It's been an empire. What it has never been is a "nation-state," in the way that Sweden, Poland, and Finland have been and are.
I say this because so much of middle-class politics—whether it be quasi-socialist "liberalism" or "America First!" civic nationalism—is based on nostalgia for something that has never been.
America has never "looked out for its own people" or "stayed out of foreign conflicts." It's been a platform for territorial and economic expansion; it's been a refuge for the world's malcontents and religious fanatics; it's been a economic and military global hegemon.
To demand that America give up its overseas dominions and financial domination so that we can take care of everyday Americans is a thoroughly decent sentiment, but a naïve one.
The American middle class as it's currently constituted is dependent on America's imperial footprint; it is employed, in effect, in the administration of the empire's bureaucracy.
Becoming a regular nation-state, as the liberals and America First-ers like to demand, would be all but unprecedented and would create a power vacuum and result in chaos. Such a unilateral abandonment of power would also entail the destruction of the middle-class lifestyle.
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