Is American Patriotism Flagging?

Ahead of the nation’s 250th birthday, many Americans are in no mood to celebrate. Some 72 percent of Americans polled by the Associated Press think the country is on the wrong track. Only 25 percent agree that America “stands above other countries.” Findings like these might cast a shadow over the Semiquincentennial festivities. Past experience, though, shows that the right leadership can renew American exceptionalism — quickly.Some of the gloom recorded by the AP survey can be chalked up to economic unease. Some 73 percent of those polled said they took a dim view of the economy. Only 34 professed to believe that “the American Dream — that if you work hard you’ll get ahead — still holds true,” as the AP framed the question. Such sentiments could well brighten, one imagines, along with an upturn in the economy — and progress in the fight against inflation.More troubling, though, are the insights about Americans’ ebbing patriotism and sense of national identity disclosed by the AP survey. Some 30 percent reckon that “there are other countries better than the United States.” Only 55 percent say that “being an American” is “extremely” or “very important” to them, and 16 percent say it is “not very” or “not at all important.” By contrast, 53 percent say that their “gender” is very or extremely important.Plus, too, 36 percent of respondents deem very or extremely important their “race or ethnicity,” matched by 37 percent who consider very or extremely important their “family’s ancestry or country of origin.” To be sure, no one is begrudging the pride any Americans take in their heritage, no matter whence they or their families may have arrived. Yet it’s hard to avoid a sense of unease about a waning sense of pride in our shared identity as Americans. It’s not the first time since 1776 that Americans’ faith in the national project has sagged. The Bicentennial in 1976 saw its share of grumbling in the aftermath of the defenestration of President Nixon over Watergate, the demise five years earlier of the Bretton Woods-era gold exchange standard, and the unsatisfactory end, forced by Congress, to the Indochina conflict. Amid this gloom arose the presidential candidacy of Ronald Reagan.The Gipper tackled Americans’ concerns about their country. On the hustings in 1980, he framed his campaign as a dialogue with Americans: “a national conversation together on the future of our country.” Responding to President Carter’s insinuations that he was a warmonger, Reagan averred: “I hope it will be recorded that I appealed to our best hopes, not our worst fears, to our confidence rather than our doubts, to the facts, and not to fantasies.”Such level-headed talk at the top of the federal government can do much to influence popular sentiment. On the eve of Election Day, Reagan spoke of how visitors to the capitol were still “Americans awed by what has gone before, proud of what for them is still…a shining city on a hill.” The bicentennial fireworks of 1976, Reagan asserted, too, were “reminders of our birthright of freedom,” and of the “generous, fervent patriotism that burns in America.”

Is American Patriotism Flagging?

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