Tillerson explained “America First” this way. It applies to “national security and economic prosperity, and that doesn’t mean it comes at the expense of others.” This defies common sense. Surely, if we’re first, someone else is second, third, and finally last. Tillerson made it clear that he believes in American freedoms for the United States, and acknowledged that they have some role in shaping American policies, but then walked that notion back in his most disturbing sentence: “We really have to understand, in each country or region of the world that we’re dealing with, what are our national security interests, what are our economic prosperity interests, and then as we can advocate and advance our values, we should” (emphasis added).

If this is seriously meant, American officials should declare their support for free elections, the rule of law, or rights for women abroad only if that would not thereby jeopardize national security and economic interests, however slight. And since there are always some kind of security and economic interests in play, America cannot and should not stand for much in the world beyond a kind of national selfishness, less intense perhaps but essentially no different than that of China or Russia.

Perhaps this was just sloppiness, although one would have wished the nation’s senior diplomat should know the importance of precise speech in a statement that is posted for all to see on the State Department’s website. Which is why effective secretaries of state make major proclamations with care, in writing, and with due regard for their wider audience.

Tillerson’s idea that in foreign policy American interests and American values are two separate things, the first mandatory, the second optional, reflects a misunderstanding of our past (not uncommon in this administration) and of the essence of our national character. The United States is surely the Manhattan skyline, the Kansas plains, the redwood forests, the Mississippi river. But it is, far more importantly, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Gettysburg Address. You could cut down the forest or dry up the river and the country would be infinitely the poorer for it, but it would still be the United States of America. If Americans jettison the Bill of Rights and the ideas enshrined in it, they become a different country altogether.

Nor is it correct to suggest, as Tillerson did, that the choice is between insisting that other nations have to adopt the full suite of American principles of government and behavior and pursuing American interests. One can accept that Egypt will not adopt New England town meetings, but still persistently call out corruption; one can work with Recep Tayyip Erdogan while making clear American abhorrence of what he has done to freedom of the press in a country drifting into Islamist authoritarianism. Indeed, the case of Turkey helps illustrate why the United States should press—prudently but persistently—for open and law-abiding societies. They make infinitely better allies in the long run than thugs sitting on powder kegs.