As the strongest power in the world, the U.S. has a responsibility to think of others in its actions.   It should never adopt a simple “America for itself and for itself only” attitude; to do so mirrors the polices of those who oppose the core American values of liberty, equality, opportunity, and security around the world.  Since the end of WWI 100 years ago, all American Presidents have accepted the responsibility of leading global aspirations for freedom.  Today a new American President has announced a sea-change in American policy, proclaiming his intention to put “America first,” imitating the narrowly nationalist strong-man politics we see in China, Russia, and Turkey, among others.

The new President has painted a picture of an America in ruins, destroyed by Washington elites who spent resources abroad while Americans suffered at home. He has promised his policy of “American first” will change that reality.

Yet it is America’s own economic elites who plundered the American middle-class, through misleading mortgages, the financialization of the economy, and their fierce opposition to all the rules and institutions that protected ordinary Americans – from unions and minimum wages to efforts to expand medical care, the funding of public colleges and universities, improved access to voting, and protections for the disabled and minorities. While all of America’s leadership and intelligentsia deserve blame for not seeing this soon enough and not doing enough to stop it, the new President has taken the traditional populist path of blaming our own shortcomings on others – on foreigners and “radical Islam,” who have in fact not been the agents of the loss of middle-class America’s well-being.

If history is any guide, the new President and his administration will enrich themselves while blaming foreigners and other enemies; they will incite conflict and possibly wars with other countries to distract from their own unwillingness to tackle the real root of the problems they denounce.

Already the Trump cabinet appears to be one of the most corrupt and incompetent that has ever been nominated – whether it is the future Treasury secretary “overlooking” $100 million in personal assets that he forgot to declare in his ethics report, or the future Energy secretary who lacks the credentials to even read the resumes of the nuclear experts that will be working under his command.

I know that millions of Americans will fight for a better vision of American responsibility, which we owe both to our own people and to those around the world who share our aspirations to enjoy a life of opportunity and freedom from tyranny.

The fight for freedom, truth and the American way begins today; sadly it must be a fight against the policies and principles of the new President, who appears willing to sacrifice exactly those values while going forth in search of dragons to slay.