By Wayne Allensworth
Vice President J.D. Vance may be President Donald Trump’s most valuable asset. He is a more polished and articulate spokesman for America First than the president himself, filling an important niche in fleshing out Trump’s often contextless stream-of-consciousness remarks. Whether commenting on why Greenland and the situation regarding the Panama Canal are important for our country, or explaining to hapless media hacks what “America First” actually means, Vance is playing an invaluable role. John Nance Garner once quipped that the vice presidency wasn’t worth a warm bucket of spit. But J. D. Vance is showing us that that does not have to be true. And I sense that Trump will listen to him.
Here’s a very important example. In an interview with Sean Hannity, J. D. Vance explained what is — or should be — self-evident to any normal human being; i.e., the hierarchy of love, obligation, and responsibility that makes civilized life possible:
“You love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love fellow citizens and then, after that, you can focus on and prioritize the rest of the world.” As Vance accurately put it, the “far left has completely inverted that. They seem to hate the citizens of their own country and care more about people outside their own borders.” That, as the vice president put it, is no way to run a society. And that is the profound difference between this administration and its enemies. We put our own people first. Vance also correctly noted that such a worldview is a Christian one.
This is not complicated. I dare say that even many of the leftists/globalists afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome look after the interests of their own family and their own friends as a priority. They will do so, as Matt Walsh explained in his commentary on Vance’s completely sane and common-sense remarks, because it is simply impossible to do otherwise. Impossible, that is, if one is inclined to fulfill often burdensome responsibilities by loving and caring for the ones closest to you, whether your family members or neighbors, or, in a pinch, anyone nearby in distress.
This is love demonstrated in the best way available to us. Love is action. Love is taking on responsibility and doing so in a way that requires something personally from the responsible party. That’s what, in part, taking up one’s cross means. Those who try to save their lives, that is, live for themselves, will lose it. Those who sacrifice in a way that affects them personally will gain it. Some of the Trump haters will never recognize the colossal gap between what they actually do and what they say they prioritize. That’s apart from not acknowledging just how arduous a task it can be to fulfill even one’s most basic obligations.
Walsh rightly observed that many people will resist such a hierarchy precisely because it requires something from them personally. It’s far easier to express sympathy for distant strangers from one’s couch, while avoiding picking up that cross and disrupting one’s own desires and plans. One can easily virtue signal while not acting within the natural limits we all face to embody virtue. It is, as Walsh said, beyond our means to take care of a homeless person in China. The place we can do good is also where we reasonably bear the most responsibility.
Then there are the “activists,” those leftist “pathological empaths,” products of a milieu that has inverted our value system, as Vance noted, in a way that threatens the stability and wellbeing of society. Those people are the offspring of “Pandemonium’s rebellion,” a rebellion that is essentially against anything, family, church, or country, that would limit the rebel’s desires. It is a rebellion driven by Lucifer’s pride, a determination to create one’s values, usually by prioritizing “self-realization” separated from the hierarchy of love. That separation undermines personal spiritual fulfillment. It’s a rebellion built on self-pity, resentment, and a rage against God himself, one that inevitably ends in nihilism. It follows that caring for one’s own is cast as “selfish” by radicals of that stripe, and that protecting one’s own people and country is “fascism.” Such distorted empathy serves the interests of the globalist managers as well. As the vice president stated, caring for one’s own first does not mean hating others or wishing them ill.
J.D. Vance is the most able spokesman for America First. Trump needs Vance, and so do we.
Chronicles contributor Wayne Allensworth is the author of The Russian Question: Nationalism, Modernization, and Post-Communist Russia, and a novel, Field of Blood. For thirty-two years, he worked as an analyst and Russia area expert in the US intelligence community.
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