I guess I don't go to bed every night asking myself whether I wish for us to become richer, smarter and stronger, or poorer, dumber and weaker. Horrible statement because of that line, and mediocre-at-best statement for the "us first" line, but could be rewritten to be a freedom statement with something like: "other nations consider their own interests first, so we must pay particular attention to our own interests". Sounds trite, but makes all the difference between a healthy nationalism and a toxic one.
Weird that I've been agreeing with TJ on some stuff lately.
And people keep talking about "ethnic states" or "nation states'. How do you determine if someone is German or Italian or English. Do you have to take a language test? Is it a blood test?
Of course Europe isn't like America and the political landscape there is based more on history than philosophy and it is totally the prerogative of a society on whether people who are from another society should ever be allowed to join their society. That's all great and all but is it ultimately their benefit to have an exclusive society. You can look at Rome and make an argument either way.
On one hand, Rome started taking care of a lot of foreigners who couldn't care for themselves and that may have put excessive stress on their system after a half dozen generations, on the other, when they eventually started cracking down on refugees, it ultimately backfired.
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