On Brexit and Paul Ryan: Is America Second?

Ace neatly develops the theme found in McArdle's short essay, to wit:  who the Hell are these people who care about 'others' first?  McArdle is discussing Brexit, but relates it to the US.

...For the first few centuries of its existence, America had a chronic labor shortage, which eased any frictions with new arrivals. We also lacked a modern welfare state, to which low-skilled immigrants are likely to be net costs rather than net contributors. I heard the strain on the National Health Service cited multiple times this weekend as a sore spot for Brexiteers, and though the “Remain” campaign says “You’ve got it all wrong, the problem is Conservative budget cuts,” this rather aggressively misses the point: When things are hard, immigrants compete with natives for scarce government resources, and the natives don’t like the competition....

Umnnhhhh....yes.  Ace is a lot more forceful.  (Note:  Ace has a sight problem, so the spelling is left as in the original.)

...Her major point is that the elites of UK and Euorpe -- and, by implication (though she's delicate about it) the US -- have decided that "nationalism" is crude and kin to racism, and therefore, there is no longer any legitimate reason to favor a fellow citizen over a foreigner. To favor the former over the latter is a crude tribalism close enough to "racism" to be racism, for all intents and purposes....

...If a US citizen and a foreign immigrant find themselves in competition -- as all things in life find themselves in competition, outside the babytalk liberal babblings that we're all on the same team -- and the foreign immigrant wins out, well, that's not really anyone's problem but the citizen who lost out. Other US citizens should not have been rooting for the US citizen to prevail, nor think it a bad thing that he lost. To harbor such Pro-US-Citizen sympaties is inherently Racist....

See, That's Not Who We Are.  Right?  And speaking of Paul Ryan...

...At some point, people will believe you when you keep telling them you have higher priorities than looking out for their interests.

Is there a single American out there who believes the radical Randian Paul Ryan is actually looking out for Americans ?...

Now that is a very damn good question.  In fact, it is the question which got The Donald to where he is:  about to pull down the pillars which supported the Republican Elite.

I had asked the question earlier--in a passing-thought sort of way--just exactly what IS wrong with "America First"?  And, like Ace, I do not mean that in a jingoist sense; but rather, in the sense that "America Second" is a rather stupid way to run this country.  I have yet to hear an answer aside from vague and snide references to 'Lindbergh'.  The fact that John F. Kennedy was a member of the "America First" bunch escapes the memory of the "America Second" crowd.

Isn't that a puzzle?