Americans Are Patriotic. Why Aren’t Our Politicians?

Neither party embraces simple love of country anymore

Simple appreciation for America, and a desire to build on its strengths, has become nearly impossible to find among politicians and pundits today. The loudest voices in politics today say there’s hope for America, but only if you empower them to save it from itself. On the right, Tucker Carlson released a manifesto this month to free America from the clutches of the elite “Epstein class.” On the left, Wisconsin state Representative Francesca Hong, who narrowly lost her bid to be the Democratic nominee for governor, has declined to recite the Pledge of Allegiance at legislative hearings and in 2020 urged the cancellation of Thanksgiving, which she said honors colonialism.

Since pundits and politicians alike tend to mirror the public, can we deduce that Americans have simply lost interest in patriotism? We don’t think so. On the contrary, we believe that there is an unmet demand in this country for a revival of patriotism that politicians of both parties appear incapable of meeting.

The reasons our politics has been such a cold shower for Americans’ patriotism are not hard to discern. One of them is the president. Donald Trump won the Republican nomination in 2016 by framing the U.S. as a nation in terminal decline, and he has frequently drawn a moral equivalence between the actions of foreign dictators and America’s own foreign policy. In the period since Trump overtook the Republican Party, right-wingers have become much more critical of America as it actually exists. And though Trump regularly expresses patriotism, his pageantry and truculent manner have been more polarizing than unifying. He seems to miss no opportunity to associate love of country with his own personal MAGA brand.

But it’s by no means just the fault of Trump and his party. Democrats have long practiced what we might call a “yes, but” approach to patriotism. The general idea is that patriotism is kind of okay but only if it’s immediately linked to the terrible things that America has done in the past and the injustices that still exist today. Simply being patriotic, full stop, is viewed with suspicion, if not outright hostility. And on the party’s ascendant far left, the Democratic Socialists of America—a number of whose members are likely to join Congress in November—recently released a platform that called for getting rid of the U.S. Constitution altogether.

But you don’t just need to look at the radical left to find Democratic objections to patriotism. Earlier this month, it was reported that Christina Bohannan, an Iowa Democrat trying to swing a critical House seat, called patriotism “sensitive and controversial” in a statement she issued in 2021. And last month, moderate Democratic Congressman Tom Suozzi of New York bemoaned his party’s aversion to patriotism. “The choice Democrats face is clear,” he wrote in The Wall Street Journal. “We can allow patriotism to become a partisan label, or we can reclaim a tradition that rightly belongs to every American.”

An allergy to patriotism is commonplace among grassroots Democratic activists and intellectuals. In a June piece for The Atlantic, liberal writer Yoni Appelbaum recounted this anecdote:

On a July afternoon in 2019, I found myself in a large, sun-dappled room within one of America’s great estates. An assemblage of distinguished jurists, Ivy League professors, nonprofit leaders, journalists, and theologians sat around me in a half circle. I was trying to be on my best behavior, but I blurted out a word dirty enough to make them blanch…

Our first exercise, the facilitator explained, was intended to build trust—listing words or concepts that all Americans could endorse, even if our definitions might vary…

“Patriotism,” I volunteered.

I had rolled a live grenade into the center of the room. One participant flinched, as if struck. Suddenly, everyone was talking at once, voices and tempers rising. One woman said the word made her feel excluded. Another said it connoted violence and racism. Still another participant was offended that anyone could be offended by the word. The facilitator declined to write patriotism on the easel.

And just before the Fourth of July, Chris Rabb, a Democratic candidate for Congress in Pennsylvania who is running unopposed in a deep-blue Philadelphia district, had this to say about the Declaration of Independence:

Those screeds that were very lofty but were notoriously catering to a performative aspect of collective genius that purposely erased indigenous and black peoples… It created distance from an empire to help very privileged people continue that privilege and ultimately institutionalize that through the U.S. Constitution many years later. But it certainly did not provide independence to indigenous and black peoples. And we cannot talk about anything today without acknowledging that this is a nation born on stolen land and stolen labor.

Such rhetoric drags the Democrats away from any kind of unapologetic, unifying patriotism and ensures that voters always hear the “but” part of “yes, but.” The cost of admission for this version of Democratic patriotism seems to include agreeing with a critique of American history and contemporary American society that portrays the country as racist at its core and controlled by a club of self-interested billionaires. This conditional patriotism simply is not capable of meeting Americans’ underlying demand for an uplifting patriotism that would make them feel good about their country.

Just how conditional Democrats’ patriotism tends to be is exemplified by recent findings from Gallup. In 2001, the share of Democrats who said they were “very” or “extremely” proud to be American was quite high at about 88 percent, but it dipped during the George W. Bush years, rose again under Barack Obama, and has plummeted since Trump’s election to just 27 percent as of this year—the lowest level on record. In contrast, the Republican share hasn’t dropped below 85 percent during that same time, and it hit 93 percent this year. Clearly, Republicans’ pride in their country is much less conditional than that of Democrats, whose pride appears to respond strongly to their level of political power (or lack thereof).

But for all their pride in country, the fact remains that many Republicans are indelibly associated with a dark view of America, with their standard-bearer, Donald Trump, regularly calling it a “failing nation.” Trump’s vision of the country, in which baleful forces lurk within society, also imposes a high price of admission for the average voter. Trump’s version of patriotism is not so much about loving our country as it is about loving him.

The parties can—and, indeed, must—do better if we are to have any hope of reviving the broad, unifying spirit of American patriotism. The good news here is that Americans are ready for this revival. Survey data, including a recent poll conducted for the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), clearly demonstrate that there is unmet demand for a capacious, generous-spirited patriotism among citizens, even if the parties seem reluctant to supply it.

First, Americans want to be hopeful and feel good about their country, though that aspect of polling is rarely covered. According to an Ipsos poll taken in the lead-up to July 4, 67 percent of Americans are willing to make sacrifices for the good of the country, and 66 percent wish there were more ways to contribute to the country’s success. Reflecting this hopefulness, 88 percent in the same poll agree that there’s an urgent need for greater unity among Americans, and 84 percent agree that there’s no limit to what Americans can achieve when united as a country.

Second, Americans don’t think of themselves primarily as partisan actors. In a recent AP-NORC poll, when asked about a series of things that were important to their personal identity, family came first (81 percent), followed by being an American (55 percent). “Political affiliation” was last of the eight choices at just 21 percent. This finding says it all. Partisans’ efforts to identify patriotism with their own party and priorities will do little to rekindle patriotic unity among Americans. The average American is looking for a very different route to patriotism.

This brings us to a very important point: Americans strongly believe in the active cultivation of positive patriotism and in teaching the rich history of our country—both failures and successes. Here are some examples from the AEI survey.

• Three-quarters believe that high school students should be required to study the Declaration of Independence as part of America’s 250th anniversary.

• About the same number (74 percent) believe too many of today’s young people fail to appreciate how good this country is.

• More than three-quarters (77 percent) think it’s important or absolutely essential for public schools to teach kids that the U.S. is a fundamentally good country. The same number believe it’s important or absolutely essential to teach kids to be patriotic and loyal toward the nation.

• Even larger numbers believe it’s important or absolutely essential that kids be taught to appreciate the freedoms they are guaranteed under the Constitution and the Bill of Rights (93 percent), and that whatever their ethnic or racial background, they are all part of one nation (91 percent).

• Three-quarters agree that in order to understand the Founding Fathers’ impact on America today, we need to examine their tolerance of slavery alongside their many contributions, and even more (81 percent) agree that studying the political principles of the Founding Fathers can help inform our decisions today.

• Reflecting a hopeful outlook, three-quarters believe America is not perfect, but we have made substantial progress in addressing past wrongs such as slavery. And more than three-quarters (78 percent) believe the U.S. is a melting pot in which people of different countries combine into a unified American culture.

• Finally, this view from parents of school-age children sums up what Americans are really looking for: 74 percent believe schools should “focus on teaching kids to be proud of being part of this country and to learn the rights and responsibilities of citizenship,” while less than one-quarter think they should “focus on each student’s ethnic or racial identity and make sure they feel proud of their own heritage and group.”

Americans’ demand for a unifying, uplifting patriotism is clear. But neither party is doing a very good job supplying it, focusing instead on their partisan priorities and painting a dark picture of what has befallen the American project. Americans—and America—deserve better.

The irony is both parties have spent decades trying (and failing) to build an electoral majority that can endure for more than eight years and rally the American public to chart a steady course into the future. Yet neither party has tried, let alone succeeded, in building that platform on the simple patriotism that most Americans profess. The first side to figure it out may gain a leg up in 2028 and beyond.

Editor’s note: this piece first appeared in The Free Press.