For some reason, the birth of the United States declaring independence from England is becoming a partisan holiday. Patriotism has always been shunned, to some extent or another, by liberals who view it as some kind of jingoistic expression of celebrating a country they hate.
Now there’s some new data to back up the anecdotal evidence that patriotic flag-waving Independence Day parades are enjoyed mostly by middle America and shunned by coastal elites.
According to new numbers from Gallup asking Americans if they are “proud” or “extremely proud” to be an American, the partisan split is wide and getting wider:
Recent surveys have exposed a rift on patriotic attitudes that academics say could lead to Independence Day becoming a holiday embraced mostly by conservatives.
• A Gallup poll reported Thursday that 58% of Republicans, 34% of independents and 26% of Democrats said they are “extremely proud” to be American. That is down from 87% of Republicans, 65% of independents and 62% of Democrats in the same poll last summer.
• A nationwide survey of 2,000 college students reported Tuesday that 76% of self-identified conservative undergraduates feel “proud to be an American,” while 40% of liberals feel likewise.
• A December 2020 study from the nonpartisan More in Common US found that 34% of self-identified “progressive activists” and 51% of Generation Z were proud to be Americans.
Many modern-day progressives and liberals don’t understand why anyone would have pride in the United States of America. In their view, the nation’s wrongs far outweigh the nation’s progress and ideals rooted in liberty and freedom that there’s no reason to be proud of anything.
Most Americans know, however, that American exceptionalism is alive and well. This is not the idea that Americans are somehow better than other people in other nations, but the ideals this nation was founded on have led to the greatest economic and technological expansion in a span of 200 or so years not seen anywhere else on the planet.
One researcher says the Gallup data is evidence of a disconnect between generations on patriotism and patriotic displays like fireworks and flags:
Robert Gmeiner, an assistant professor of economics at Methodist University in North Carolina, said a negative view of America’s “founding ideals of freedom and its history of emancipation” is turning more students away from patriotic displays such as flags and fireworks.
“I believe that Independence Day is indeed becoming a conservative holiday, but this is a result of a misguided view that America was not founded on freedom,” Mr. Gmeiner said.
“Even conservative students tend to be cynical about America and its future. Everything is funny, everything is ironic, everything is subjected to immediate parody,” said Richard Gamble, a professor of history at Hillsdale College. “Displays of patriotism are also seen, I suspect, as [baby] boomer.”
In other words, patriotic flag-waving and an Independence Day barbecue are for “boomers” and considered “antiquated” to the Tik-Tok generation.
Others pointed out that modern-day Democrats or “liberals,” especially younger ones, don’t understand that civil rights battles of the past were rooted in American patriotism and using the tools given by the constitution to right past wrongs:
“As a card-carrying liberal, I am both saddened and appalled by the way the left has ceded patriotism to the right,” said Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor in the history of education at the University of Pennsylvania.
Mr. Zimmerman noted that abolitionist Frederick Douglass, suffragist Susan B. Anthony and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. were “ardent patriots” who understood that they needed to love the nation’s “ideals of liberty and equality.”
Liberty and equality are inherent in the nation’s founding documents despite not being practiced at the time. It was a love for the country that drove activists like Martin Luther King Jr. to push for true equality and fix the sins of the past.
Some of the reactions to Independence Day can no doubt be related directly to reactions toward the American flag itself.
The late Rush Limbaugh, America’s Anchorman, used to cite a 2011 study that found exposure to the American flag tended to make people more patriotic and shift their views ever so slightly toward voting Republican:
Just a glimpse at the American flag can sway voters, even Democrats, toward more Republican voting behavior, attitudes and beliefs, a new two-year study says.
The authors, from the University of Chicago, Cornell University and Hebrew University, say the research proves the American flag has a powerful effect on voters.
“A single exposure to an American flag resulted in a significant increase in participants’ Republican voting intentions, voting behavior, political beliefs, and implicit and explicit attitudes, with some effects lasting eight months,” reads the study titled, “Long-Term Effects of U.S. Flag Exposure on Republicanism.”
“These results constitute the first evidence that nonconscious priming effects from exposure to a national flag can bias the citizenry toward one political party and can have considerable durability,” the study says.
In other words, the red, white, and blue stars and stripes flying high on Independence Day is repulsive to progressive ideals of authoritarian centralized government. The concepts of freedom and liberty are antithetical to a central-planning, top-down view of the federal government. Furthermore, exposing children to the flag might make them like their country and want to save the ideals of freedom and liberty by voting Republican.
The bottom line underscores why it is important to teach children to love their country since loving one’s country is an apolitical act. Loving one’s country means loving the people that make up the country of all stripes, not demonizing or wishing death upon them because they hold starkly opposing political views.
America wasn’t built for everyone to get along which is why we have 50 state laboratories to govern locally and a federal government to provide for the common defense.
Hating Independence Day won’t make the country’s problems go away any more than loving it will.
What love for the country does provide is some kind of unifying rally cry that we all live under the banner of freedom and we are all born with or inherit the best privilege on the planet: American privilege.
