Dear Mr. Trump,

First of all, let me say how grateful I am to God that you have dodged all the bullets. For most public figures, I would mean that as a metaphor. And indeed, our profoundly mediocre elites, corrupt to the marrow of their bones, have tried every “soft” means to destroy you via vilification as “Hitler,” a four-year Deep State coup, and never-ending lawfare with Soviet prosecutors, Mafia-quality judges, and tame O.J. juries.

Of course, in your case our rulers know that they belong not in power but hiding in exile, rotting in prison, or in black sites under questioning, so they’re willing to go further. They literally want you dead, but you shouldn’t take it personally. It’s really your voters they hate — the ones they want to break, destroy, and replace.

It’s hard not to take bullets personally, however, as I learned while serving in the U.S. Army infantry. And I want to take a somewhat personal angle here. I write to you as a father, as someone who, like you, has tried to instill in the people I’m raising an ethic of hard work, honesty, and responsibility not just for themselves, but for the most vulnerable among us. You should be very proud of your family, of children whose circumstances might well have turned out decadent, hedonistic wastrels. But they didn’t. They’re fine young people who love you — no doubt because you insisted on molding their characters firmly and fairly.

If Your Father Were My Father

There’s a story from American political history that I love. One summer in the early 1920s, two young men were sweating in the sun doing brutal manual labor. The first lad started talking about his father. Eventually the second guy admitted the identity of his own: then-President Calvin Coolidge. The first said, “If my father were the president I wouldn’t be doing a job like this.” The young Coolidge answered, “You would if your father were my father.”

I think that the America First policy you’ve boldly reintroduced to our political discourse works the same way. The U.S. is so disproportionately powerful compared to all its allies that it really does stand in relation to them as a father to teenage sons — which is ironic, considering how old most of those countries are compared to us. But facts are facts: We have by far the largest economy, most powerful military, and most international influence. We’re their leader, and they depend on us.

But in the years since 1991 when the Cold War finally ended, how well has America performed in that role, led as we were by meddlesome, lazy, unprincipled advocates of the New World Order? You could sum up our foreign and immigration policies in a single slogan: Invade the World, Invite the World. Maybe add to that “Enable the World.” Our presidents since Ronald Reagan left office have acted like rich, irresponsible dilettantes indulging spoiled, reckless children. In fact, our leaders encouraged some of the worst instincts in our allies, like a playboy dad who let his kids share his stash of drugs and porn.

Starting Wars for the Heck of it

We kept NATO in place long after it ceased to serve any legitimate purpose. In fact, we broke our agreement by which Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to dissolve the Warsaw Pact, expanding NATO right up to a nervous Russia’s borders. Meanwhile, we let those same allies welch on their defense spending commitments. As if that weren’t bad enough, we used our Deep State to teach those countries’ intelligence agencies how to smother public opinion — keeping patriotic parties out of power, rigging the outcomes so that despite the voters’ wishes, the countries kept on importing millions of non-Western immigrants, to serve as tame new subjects of their liberal elites. Now, with Britain imprisoning citizens for questioning immigration policy and Germany close to outlawing its equivalent of the MAGA movement, we see how well our dependents learned from us. And of course there’s a useless, grinding war in Ukraine, where our diplomats intervened to avoid a peaceful settlement.

An America First policy toward Europe wouldn’t mean narrow national selfishness, but rather treating our allies like what they are: fully sovereign nations responsible for themselves and answerable to their voters — rather than as provinces in an empire, ruled by jaded satraps who take their cues from Langley, Virginia. Let those countries pull their weight, defend and control their borders, and honor their national heritages rather than compete to remake a continent in the image of the Beltway. Nor should we goad and stoke an outdated, destructive rivalry with a much-reduced Russia.

Looking to Asia, an America First policy would mean expecting countries like Japan, South Korea, and India to do their part in deterring Chinese expansion — without our making reckless guarantees to start World War III against a shockingly high-tech, enormous military power. We should also make some demands that honor our values. For instance, we could insist that an aggressively nationalist, increasingly intolerant India stop mass persecution of local, indigenous Christians. And of course we must bring back to U.S. shores the industries for producing our own medicine, computer chips, and other necessities of life. For too long we’ve let “economic efficiency” and the stock portfolios of high-dollar political donors trump national security.

Make Israel Treat Christians Decently

In the Middle East, we’d continue to support Israel’s security and safety, and broker deals between that state and the saner players in the Muslim world — as you did in the Abraham Accords. We wouldn’t encourage disruption, turmoil, and massive human suffering through the region — as your predecessors did via the Iraq War, the Arab Spring, and our outrageous deal to help the regime in Iran hold onto power in return for vague promises about its dangerous nuclear program.

If we are going to invest tens of billions in aid to such countries — which you might well decide to stop — then we need to demand something in return from them. We should at least require of them, as the price of our friendship and aid, a basic level of respect for our values. That would entail several things. First of all, a respect for religious minorities and their rights — from the hunted Yezidis to the Christians of Gaza, whom Israel is currently besieging, bombing, and starving for the sins of their Hamas neighbors. We must recognize that the angry Muslim suburbs of London, Paris, and Berlin are full of the children of refugees our own policies helped to create.

It’s not good for Israel or for us when its military engages in actions that feed antisemitism globally and offer propaganda that campus antisemites can use to terrorize Jewish students. We need to treat Israelis, Europeans, Asians, and everyone like adults — and that means making of them adult demands in return for benefits.

I know that as a wise and loving father you’ve made good choices. I saw you make such choices while you were in office, which was a rare window of peace for the peoples of many regions. I pray that when you return to the Oval Office you can indeed make America great again. It’s the only way to make the rest of the world a little closer to good.

Jason Jones is a senior contributor to The Stream. He is a film producer, activist, and human rights worker. He is also the author of three books, the latest of which is The Great Campaign Against the Great Reset.