Are “patriotism and “national pride” important elements in building the structure of wealthy nations? And why do these two issues in particular remain among the burning issues in the era of “America’s Trump” and “Britain’s Brexit,” and what future awaits the United Kingdom after it decided to leave the European Union and raised the profile of its “national pride,” which it considered too big to be a cog in a large European Union? Questions like these and others that economist Todd Buchholz, an economic advisor to the White House, is trying to answer in his book. “The Price of Prosperity: Why Rich Nations Fail and How to Renew Them” published by Brilliance Audio Publishing on June 7, 2016, 484 pages.
The American dream is dying
The writer is an extremist right-winger, which is why it does not seem surprising that he is one of Trump’s advisors. The writer believes that foreigners are what most threaten the prosperity of the United States, and she predicted economic instability in the European Union because it “opened its doors to immigrants from everywhere.” This time, Buchholz fears that the American dream was dying before the rise of Trump, when the voices of leftists who welcomed foreigners were loud and dominant. The writer says, “The United States is no longer cohesive. To make it cohesive again, we must renew the feelings of loyalty and patriotism among a disparate group of people, primarily citizens.” The book did not mention the name “Donald Trump,” nor did it cite his slogan, “Make America Great Again,” but the reader does not need much effort to glimpse Trump’s face and his slogans in the directions that “Buchholz” identifies for the advancement of the national economy, which are based in their entirety on considering foreigners as enemies who must beware of them, and the best thing is to get rid of them permanently! Extreme discourse, in which the author believes that prosperity creates unique problems. In the United States, birth rates are declining, people’s work is declining and their borrowing is increasing, and bureaucracy is stifling the spirit of initiative. The reason for this, according to his opinion, is that the United States today has become a society whose identity cannot be clearly defined, nor the features of basic national pride.
Foreigners: the biggest problem
According to the book, if a country (any country) is divided, it is due to two main reasons: trade and immigration. “Workers feel threatened by the combination of foreign machines and people,” says the author. But restricting trade is not an option, because “nations cannot get richer without trade.” Thus, the immigration debate is a central issue for Buchholz. The central message of The Price of Prosperity is that low birth rates push rich countries to accept immigrants. But immigrants can “contribute to” Splintering/ A strange word. Does it mean affected? dominant culture,” unless the country’s civil and cultural institutions are strong enough to absorb them. Buchholz believes that American national institutions do not even exist.
American DNA
US newspapers describe their country as a melting pot, a salad bowl, or a land of the free, and no one can dispute that immigration is an essential element in the DNA of a country with a long history of tensions and conflicts stemming from racial, ethnic, and linguistic diversity. But Bucholz is not convinced that this is the image the United States should project of itself. He complains that today’s immigrants speak little English, live in ethnic enclaves, consume ethnic media, lack diversity and, like many Latinos, only occasionally return to their homelands.
The dark side of immigration
What did the United States benefit from immigrants? The writer ignored every contribution of foreigners to the country’s history, and only exported what he called “the dark side of immigration in today’s world”: illegal movements, street wars, drugs, terrorist havens, and anti-Trump demonstrations, but the writer believes that these are all topics that do not receive enough discussion in the American media.
Learn from the tyrants of history!
The writer refers to historical models that he sees as successful in creating national pride at the expense of besieging foreigners. He refers to “Alexander the Great,” who conquered a multicultural empire and then transformed it into a single cultural unit, “Kemal Ataturk,” who created modern Turkey at the expense of erasing any cultural diversity in the country, and King “Meiji,” who destroyed the prestige of the “samurai” in Japan to tighten his control over the country.
Book Criticism
American journalist R. and. When Clark reviewed the book on the Washington Independent Review of Books website, he said sarcastically: If these were our only problems, we would still be better off than Japan, where “adult diapers sell more than baby diapers,” and France, where most government employees work only 35 hours a week. Ultimately, this writer is a curious mixture of economic analysis, sociology, eclectic history, and political polemic; He wants in every possible way to draw a stark conclusion that his country needs more patriotism and nationalism at the expense of immigrants, using similar racist statements about Italian, Jewish and Chinese immigrants that appeared in the nineteenth century.
