American Patriotism at 250
This ain't 1976.
Interesting juxtaposition at memeorandum this morning.
WSJ’s Andy Kessler (“Let America’s 250-Year Bash Begin“):
This week kicks off a yearlong celebration and hootenanny for the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence—the semiquincentennial. That’s an awful name, a seven-syllable mouthful. Let’s change it now and instead call it the quarter-millennium. Even quarter-mill. Much better.
Expect a battle royale over what it means to be American. The “I’m more patriotic than you” contest has already begun. In May, the Chicago Tribune’s Laura Washington suggested that “waving the flag could turn the tables on Donald Trump and the GOP.” Yes, beware of both progressives and populists in Uncle Sam clothing. While Donald Trump held a military parade, those attending the June 14 “No Kings” counterrallies were told to wave American flags. A few days later, two giant 80-foot flagpoles were erected on the White House lawn.
Just after his inauguration, Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring a “grand celebration” for our 250th anniversary. Woohoo! But beyond parades and fireworks and funnel cakes, defining the American identity is lost in the woods. It’s more than football or Beyoncé or Marvel movies or Caitlin Clark—let alone B-2 bombers and bunker busters.
For me, it starts with freedom. Individualism. A nation of builders (American for entrepreneur). A certain ruggedness and resilience with an extra-large dollop of dignity, caring and giving. Martin Luther King Jr. thought the American dream required “a tough mind and a tender heart.” I like that.
There’s more, but you get the drift.
AP (“National pride is declining in America. And it’s splitting by party lines, new Gallup polling shows“):
Only 36% of Democrats say they’re “extremely” or “very” proud to be American, according to a new Gallup poll, reflecting a dramatic decline in national pride that’s also clear among young people.
The findings are a stark illustration of how many — but not all — Americans have felt less of a sense of pride in their country over the past decade. The split between Democrats and Republicans, at 56 percentage points, is at its widest since 2001. That includes all four years of Republican President Donald Trump’s first term.
Only about 4 in 10 U.S. adults who are part of Generation Z, which is defined as those born from 1997 to 2012, expressed a high level of pride in being American in Gallup surveys conducted in the past five years, on average. That’s compared with about 6 in 10 Millennials — those born between 1980 and 1996 — and at least 7 in 10 U.S. adults in older generations.
“Each generation is less patriotic than the prior generation, and Gen Z is definitely much lower than anybody else,” said Jeffrey Jones, a senior editor at Gallup. “But even among the older generations, we see that they’re less patriotic than the ones before them, and they’ve become less patriotic over time. That’s primarily driven by Democrats within those generations.”
America’s decline in national pride has been a slow erosion, with a steady downtick in Gallup’s data since January 2001, when the question was first asked.
Even during the tumultuous early years of the Iraq War, the vast majority of U.S. adults, whether Republican or Democrat, said they were “extremely” or “very” proud to be American. At that point, about 9 in 10 were “extremely” or “very” proud to be American. That remained high in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, but the consensus around American pride slipped in the years that followed, dropping to about 8 in 10 in 2006 and continuing a gradual decline.
Now, 58% of U.S. adults say that, in a downward shift that’s been driven almost entirely by Democrats and independents. The vast majority of Republicans continue to say they’re proud to be American.
Independents’ pride in their national identity hit a new low in the most recent survey, at 53%, largely following that pattern of gradual decline.
I’m old enough to have pretty distinct memories of the long celebration that marked America’s Bicentennial in 1975-1976. Television programs were interspersed with “Bicentennial Minutes,” there was a Bicentennial quarter, a Bicentennial half dollar, a Bicentennial dollar coin, a Bicentennial $2 bill, and, well, Bicentennial pretty much everything. Hell, the Dallas Cowboys changed their helmet stripe for the season to red, white, and blue.
Granting the differences in perspective of a 9-year-old and a 59-year-old, I’m just not getting anything like the same sense of celebration this go-round. The 4th is later in the week, and there has thus far been no fanfare. By this time in 1975, Bicentennial Fever was in full swing.
While 1976 had the parallelism of 1776/1976, I can’t imagine that 200 is less worthy of celebration than 250. Yes, “Bicentennial” has more of a ring to it that “Semisequentenial,” but, as Kessler notes, better branding is available.
The AP report highlights the polarization around Trump, and that’s certainly a big part of it. Then again, at this point 50 years ago, we were still reeling from the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War loss. And things were objectively worse with the energy crisis, rampant stagflation, and massive unemployment.
Just as right wing Christian Nationalists have driven millions away from Christ, the chest pounding, “only the right can be patriots” will drive millions away from fully celebrating our country.
I wonder how much of this is simply because we no longer have the semi-monoculture that existed with three TV networks and a daily newspaper?
@Scott:
Indeed. If you’re not MAGA, you’re not a patriot.
First off, we shouldn’t be afraid of hard words Semiquincentennial is fine. But if the hip want to call it something else, QM for quarter millennium (I just made that up), I’ll go with that, too.
Second, while it is embarrassing to be associated with Trump voters, I still stand for the spirit of America. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, they’re pretty decent starts. And we’ve made great progress along the way, and should continue towards a more perfect union. That is, once we get over this current backwards slide which will take decades to overcome – the loss of leading scientists and other talented immigrants.
I have to be optimistic. I brought three kids into this world and I’ll be damned if I’m going to have them live in a fascist authoritarian country. I still don’t really believe that my Republican friends and family want that either, despite their idiotic short-sighted voting choices.
ETTD. Including pride in one’s country. Which doesn’t quite equal patriotism. I decry what’s happening to my country because I badly want only what’s best for my country. Is that patriotic?
I have become pretty skeptical when someone claims to be patriotic. It mostly means, from the people I hear the claim, that they revere Trump and like/love the people on the right and hate the people on the left. They value an image of the country that has never truly existed. On a personal level I guess it kind of pisses me off to hear some guy claim he is a true patriot, never having served his country in any meaningful way, while I having served, in peace and war, cant be a patriot because I think we should be nice to minorities of all kinds, tax rates could be bit higher, and even people are here illegally have constitutional rights.
The US has some faults, every country does, but I still think it’s a great place to live. I think since the ascendance of Trump the US has become much less welcoming and it’s now OK for the people who claim to be the true patriots to openly hate and try to remove those they dont like.
Steve
@Steven L. Taylor: It’s definitely part of it—and part of the polarization, too. (We can watch our own news programming, of course, but also live in a cultural bubble in a way that was essentially impossible in 1975.) Time has clouded my memory, such that I didn’t recall that the Bicentennial Minutes were a CBS-only deal. But everybody in those days would have watched a ton of CBS programming, given the dearth of other options.
EDITED TO ADD: Of the 30 Top-rated United States television programs of 1975–76, the only ones the family and I didn’t watch regularly was “Good Heavens.”
“America was never great” isn’t just a response to a Trump slogan. They really believe it. America was never perfect but it’s something to be proud of.
In the Watergate crisis, the system proved to be more dependable than the people in it. Over the past 8 years, people don’t believe that anymore. There was no catharsis. There was no moment when people set aside their differences.
American patriotism has taken a very weird turn. It’s gone from meaning having pride in the country, to now requiring that NO criticism, however small, is acceptable.
You can deeply love your children and still realize that they have faults. I don’t understand why it’s not permissible to feel that way about the country. It’s strange and unhealthy, and when those are the two options: either you love EVERYTHING, or you aren’t a patriot, then you’re going to have people who back away from that as a self-descriptor.
@gVOR10: The MAGAts want the same thing–what’s best for the country. You and they are just diametrically opposed on what “best” means. But surely, y’all’s bound to work out your differences. All it’ll take is time, right?
One single Australian immigrant bears disproportionate blame for eroding American patriotism: Rupert Murdoch. Had it been his stated goal to divide and weaken the American people, to reduce them to the shameful and degraded state we find ourselves in now, he could not have done a better job of it. A truly evil man.
@Fortune:
Only the simple-minded believe that patriotism requires the assumption of national greatness.
@Jen: That’s a bit of a strawman. Does anyone really believe you can’t criticize anything about your country?
@James Joyner: Not calling you a liar or anything, but it’s a stretch for my imagination that your family watched both Sonny and Cher and Donnie and Marie regularly, based on my impressions of your family from what you’ve described. Interesting.
@Michael Reynolds: I agree, but I’d also give a lot of the credit to Charles and David Koch, who organized the buying of SCOTUS and so much else.
And Good Heavens was in the top 25 in the ratings that year? Un-f***ing- believable.
@Fortune: Eh, it might be slightly overstated if you are a very binary person (I used to work with coders and they were so literal it was irritating, so yeah, if you’re in that camp I guess).
But with that caveat, it’s definitely a more extreme mindset than what I used to see. One sees this in any discussion of reforming the health care system in the US, for example. It’s almost a reflexive conservative response to say “the US has the best health care system IN THE WORLD,” but heaven help you if you ask them to define by which metrics (hint, it sure as heck isn’t cost to outcomes, because we suck at that).
The TL;DR is that I’m in my 50s now, and conservative friends are far, far less likely to entertain the notion that other places on the planet might well be doing things better than us.
@James Joyner: While there are a handful of other shows on that list that no one in my family actually watched, Good Heavens is the only that I have no recollection of.
Several cities in California have cancelled the Independence Day celebrations for fear of the secret police.
I think its fair to say that the battle over what America means is hotly contested, with the Trumpists on the side of the Royalists and Confederates and everyone else on the side of the Patriots and Unionists.
Recall, in 1976 we had already lived through a decade of America Love it or Leave it and parties and pols wrapping themselves in the flag.
@Fortune:
Most people–not to mention political persuasions–feel they have the moral authority to define what is acceptable and unacceptable criticism of one’s country.
As long as you keep your criticism acceptable, then it’s fine. It also happens that said criticism is almost always also an attack on the beliefs of people whom that side/person doesn’t agree with.
The MAGAt patriot.
Just swap “the very rich” with “the elite.”
@just nutha: We definitely watched both routinely. We watched pretty much all the variety shows. Carol Burnett was another.
We watched a lot of shows with a pretty liberal bent, including the Norman Lear catalog. All in the Family, The Jeffersons, Maude, Good Times, etc.
Plus, given three channels, I think everyone pretty much watched all the popular shows either in the first go-round or in summer reruns.
@Franklin:
QM, pronounced “quim”?
@Fortune:
I think that if we look to Canada as the control group in the American Experiment, we will find a number of areas where we come up short.
Parliaments seem to work better at expressing the will of the people than our hodge-podge of semi-independent states. And slavery was banned earlier.
The indigenous folks were apparently fucked either way though.
In Watergate, the system “worked” because the people in the system had a sense of shame and put country ahead of party. Given that we had the Iran-Contra Crisis and Jan 6th, and the current crisis, I don’t think the systems really worked in Watergate. No one was held accountable, the people at the top levels who were complicit showed up in later administrations, etc.
@Jen:
To me, the distinction seems more like a child’s view of their parents. When a child is very young, they assume that their parents are perfect, know everything, and know exactly what they are doing. When that child becomes an adult, they realize their parents are flawed human beings and were just doing the best they could.
@Gustopher:
You can admire Canada and the US. I said “America was never perfect but it’s something to be proud of.” Do you agree?
@Fortune: You specifically said:
When was America great?
Was it when George Washington had dentures made out of the teeth of his slaves? Was it the Trail of Tears? When? Give a precise year.
I don’t think we can make any serious claim of American Greatness until Reconstruction, and that was mostly rolled back a few years later. 1865-1877. There were still lots of problems, but we were trying to address them.
ETA: is this the American Greatness?
https://bsky.app/profile/cajunblue.bsky.social
@Fortune:
I was raised in an Army family. Love of country was assumed. I have always been a patriot and not at all reluctant to defend the US even when I disagreed with various policies. But you people broke that. If I could manage it in practical terms I would renounce. I did not sign up to live in a corrupt fascist oligarchy dominated by a rapist served by a brain dead cult.
I still believe in reality, in truth, in civic virtue, in basic decency. You people are a shit stain smeared across US history. Fuck every one of you.
Put another way, those still in the thralls of the America hating teachers and professors. The next year may be telling as public displays of pride in the USA will be breaking out causing those still overcoming their schooling to have a think.
But it was telling that there was little remark of the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta in 2015. This is especially revealing of all the Liberal Arts departments/colleges that gave little public note of the event.
I thought it odd as a celebration of the 800th anniversary of a foundational document could have been used to inspire more to study the Western canon. Of course, many universities are loath to acknowledge the Western canon in any but a derogatory manner.
But this year, the celebrations of the semiquincentennial won’t depend on academics and we are likely to see the professors reward students who protest against America
@Gustopher: The premise of America has always been great, and the American experience has always been great for its time. I can’t condemn Washington’s era, considering how he walked away from power repeatedly and helped establish the first major republic. I can’t even condem the Trail of Tears era which corresponded with the rise of the Abolition Movement.
@Chip Daniels:
“Several cities in California have cancelled the Independence Day celebrations for fear of the secret police.”
My township initially cancelled the Fourth of July parade due to fears that the police could not protect the people lined up along the parade route from a driver who decides to use his car to attack the onlookers. After an outcry, it is now going to happen as scheduled.
The authors of “Freakonomics” did a contest for the best six-word motto for America:
Perhaps that should be the motto for the semiquincentennial
@Michael Reynolds: I hope your departure hasn’t put you in a spot where you’re ashamed to admit how badly you’ve misread reality.
@Fortune:
Your usual vacuous irrelevancy. Tiresome little man.
@James Joyner: Reviewing the list, I see about 10 shows that I’ve never watched at all*, but I was living on my own and working nights by then, so I’m not a typical family.
*For instance, I’ve never watched a single episode of The Waltons.
ETA: Living in Seattle, I grew up in a TV market with 4 networks (PBS) and 3 or 4 independent stations. That may be an additional anomaly. And some neighborhoods got Canadian stations on airwave reflection skips. (My brother got a Bellingham station on a little B/W portable in his upstairs bedroom that we couldn’t get downstairs on the big color TV. And at some point, UHF stations started being popular in Seattle.)
And JKB proves my point. These aren’t just teachers and professors who are examining the American experience from an alternative viewpoint, one that is critical of some of our nation’s actions–no, they are “America hating.”
THAT is EXACTLY the type of nonsense I was getting at in my original comment.
Not uniformly and unequivocally, no. There are lots of things about America that I’m not proud of at all. (And I’m afraid that many of those things are exactly what others are proud of.)
@JKB: We know you love America. It is just Americans you hate.
I really, really wish people would not respond to Fortune. Cookie is the Uriah Heep of OTB.
@Franklin:
Negative. In this, the year we celebrate the 100th anniversary of “The Sun Also Rises” and thereby Hemingway…Anyone who uses the word “semiquincentennial” should be shot.
@just nutha: Would you ever apply those standards anywhere else, like when you recommend movies or someone asks you about your vacation? If someone asks you if you love your wife?
@CSK: Oh dear
@Fortune:
So you’re talking about Senators who refused to remove a man who had clearly bribed a foreign official and who had clearly attempted to overthrow an election and stay in power. You’re talking about those people who chose party over country, right? Thought so.
Good night just nutha….
@Daryl: I was referring to people who pretended Trump won the 2020 election, covered for or excused the covering for Biden when he was incapable of performing the job, and/or voted for Trump in the 2024 primaries.
I’m don’t think rapists who incite terror attacks on Congress, collude without Putin, and demean our fallen soliders as “losers and suckers” should be president. This alone makes me infinitely more patriotic than the average Republican in 2025, who believes in stripping millions of healthcare while destroying the 5th Amendment, pardoning the J6 terrorists, denying disaster aid, deploying masked ICE goons against workers and citizens, and adding trillions to the deficit to shower oligarchs with corporate socialism.
The right talks a big game about love of country, but their actions and slavish support of a scummy lying career demonstrate a hatred of the We The People and our aspirational values. Trump era conservatives have weakened America.
@DK: Everyone here agrees you shouldn’t compare people’s patriotism.
@Fortune:
You said: There was no catharsis. There was no moment when people set aside their differences. (end copy/paste).
I disagree, there was a moment a little over 4 years ago when folks on both sides of the political aisle could have set aside their differences and agreed that it was wrong to storm the Capitol and chant Hang Mike Pence, or to declare that someone who said they should put a bullet in Pelosi’s brain on tv was dreadfully wrong and misbehaved. Instead, the majority of these folks received a pardon.
@Fortune: Divorced. We both agreed that we no longer loved each other. Get a better metaphor. 🙁
ETA: Almost never watch movies and I don’t get the vacation comparison at all. Weird!
@Fortune: I wasn’t invited to that Zoom call, because I agreed to no such bylaw. We who oppose inciting and pardoning the Jan 6 terrorists are more patriotic than those who support and defend the 5th Amendment gutting criminal rapist president who did both.
So. There goes your “everyone here” theory, I guess.
@just nutha: I lived in Houston from ages 2 to 9, and we had the Big 3 networks (ABC, NBC, CBS), PBS, and two “independent” channels on the UHF dial. I’m sure we watched PBS on occasion and I know there were some reruns on the UHF channels, but our Prime Time fare was almost exclusively the Big 3. I don’t recall what we had available the year we lived on Fort Leonard Wood (which actually overlapped this particular season with Houston), but presumably at least the Big 3. And then Armed Forces Network, which aired a Best Of sampling from the US networks, from age 11-13.
@DK: If you missed my point, I was making fun of how most of the comments either denounce comparing people’s patriotism or assert the left is more patriotic or both.
@Gustopher: Missed those earlier. Thank you for the vocabulary word of the day!