Resuscitating Patriotism

In President Ronald Reagan’s farewell address, he asked Americans to consider this, “Are we doing a good enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world?”

Clearly, we aren’t, answers Stephen Soukup in American Greatness.

… pride in the nation has fallen considerably among political independents and has fallen, over time, among all age groups of respondents.

Most disturbingly, only 58% of American Millennials and a scant 41% of Generation Z-ers are proud of their country. “Notably,” as Gallup puts it, “more Gen Z Democrats say they have little or no pride in being an American (32%) than say they are extremely or very proud.”

According to smart, savvy observers, pride in America is at a low.

American kids simply aren’t taught today what makes this country so great. Instead, kids are taught more about the nation’s weaknesses than its strengths, more about its failures than its far more numerous successes.

The American education system, at all levels, is woefully derelict in its teaching of history, American history in particular. What young children are taught about this nation’s past focuses largely on the negative, while overlooking most of the positive aspects.

It’s Really Simple 

Patriotism in America’s rich, vital history starts with understanding what makes us, what we share with one another, and what that says about us in the broader arc of history.

According to Soukup, Elie Mystal, whom Soukup labels a “leftist commentator and writer,” asserted that the United States is “the bad guy on the world stage,” that Americans are “a menace” to “free people” and “peaceful people” everywhere. We “need to be sanctioned,” presumably by a more genuinely moral international authority.

Part of Mystal’s folly lies squarely at the feet of Trump Derangement Syndrome.

To most Democrats and a great many independents, whatever Trump does is by definition evil and therefore in need of rebuke.

Part of this is understanding that it is Elie Mystal’s shtick. He plays a role for his loving TV audience, and he must, by all means and at all times, stay in character.

Another, perhaps bigger part of Mystal’s rant, however, is the explanation for the political left’s declining pride in the country, as well as an indication of how immensely difficult it will be to restore that pride. Mystal is, in many ways, typical of those on the left and of those his age and younger.

It is natural, Rich Lowry writes in National Review, “that observers will ask how the appalling tragedy in Central Texas could have happened, but the fact-free, malicious attacks constitute one of the more poisonously stupid episodes of the Trump years — and that’s saying a lot.”

The theory here is that Elon Musk’s chain-saw cuts to the National Weather Service gutted the agency with catastrophic consequences. See, Trump’s adversaries say, we told you DOGE would get people killed.

Diversity has always been America’s strength. Superficial diversity, continues Soukup, can only be an asset “if it is underpinned by a more substantive commonality, a more serious belief that we are all part of the same tradition and, thus, part of the same story.”

… patriotism has nothing to do with supporting the government, right or wrong, or with being an unfailing supporter of everything the country does or has ever done. Rather, it’s about agreeing on the basic principles that animate our common existence and help us determine what is good, bad, right, and wrong, and then acting on those principles whenever and however we can.

Teaching American history honestly and fairly, Soukup believes, is a good place to start; a history that rebuilds pride and faith in the country.

America needs a “common understanding of what the nation is and why it is good and righteous. It’s a necessary part of resuscitating and rebuilding the virtue of patriotism.”