I'm 78 and thus remember our 200th Birthday in 1976 very well when I was 28. The overall tone of the country was radically different then, and not because all was perfect.
Nixon had resigned in disgrace just two years earlier, and the US final exit from Vietnam had ended with the debacle of helicopters pulling the last troops off our Embassy roof just one year earlier.
AND YET almost everyone was joyous, with celebrations in every city and state.
Not so today. I blame both the MSM AND our education system, who emphasize every fault of America while minimizing all of the ENORMOUS positives of our great country.
I think the bigger difference is that Gerald Ford didn't try to hijack the occasion and give it a highly partisan emphasis, and especially didn't try to make it be about him personally. As long as Trump is doing those things, it's going to be tough to ask the many Americans who don't approve of him to mood-affiliate positively with it.
I think this is a misreading of my comment. I'm not saying Ford was a great guy or was popular. I'm saying he didn't attempt to put himself or his party at the center of the bicentennial, and so people who would have voted against him could still celebrate it without this looking like an expression of support for his administration.
Your example rather highlights pointing finger at MSM (I don't but probably too young recall Ford getting non-stip but plausibley).
Ford however was a normal honorable guy and as he didn't make it about him personally it kept the Celebration largely non-partisan outside the Fringies - as Taymon said
That said it's entirely human to lose celebratory enthusiasm for a celebration that appears vulgarly hijacked and made into political tribalism celeb (as Trump is doing in his short-fingered vulgarian showman way).
Me I am generally not a celebration guy and quite indifferent but can easily understand a reaction - as easily if a Democrat was doing the same - not the R or L politics but the direct type of action of a Prez around the actual celeb.
The observations of Taymon were contrasting a Ford with Trump.
that's quite aside from general patriotism - you and the Lefties whining about Trump are focused on the moment while the long-term trend is a different beast - one I only am disagreeing with you on relative to your MSM comment - which simply does not fit the data. Social media though does in timing (and in correlation with observed and similar effects in entirely different areas - social media shows signs of having been a real acid bath)
The 1970s were one of the most politically violent decades ever. In 1976 ALONE the FBI reported between 40 and 80 politically motivated bombings, shootings, arson, kidnappings, etc. While that was down from the 60 to 100 reported in 1975, it was still an average of roughly ONE PER WEEK in 1976. That's A LOT.
Also the mortgage rate in 1976 averaged 8.9% and the unemployment rate averaged 7.7% in 1976. COMPARE THOSE WITH TODAY'S NUMBERS.
AND YET, despite all that, the country had joyous celebrations in every city and state.
America existed long before Donald Trump and will still be here long after him. Presidents come and go every 4 to 8 years.
If your patriotism rises and falls based on who’s in the White House at any given time, then maybe your allegiance is to politics, not to our country. The Flag represents our nation and its people, not which administration happens to be in power.
I agree with your description of 1976 (I'm 2 years younger than you) but I disagree with your attempt to blame the current lack of patriotism on the MSM or our education system. America can only improve if it recognizes its flaws, and an acknowledgement of those flaws does not make one less patriotic. I have always considered myself to be patriotic, while at the same time recognizing the ways in which I think we can do better.
I place a lot of the blame for the current decline in patriotism on the administration, for 2 reasons. 1. The left believes that Trump's immigration policies are shameful, racist, and unAmerican, which makes it hard for them to be proud of this country. 2. Trump deemphasizes the values that, in the view of the left, are quintessentially American, and the things we should be most proud of: Our global support for human rights and democracy. In particular, his threats to invade Greenland, his refusal to support Ukraine, and his dramatic cuts in foreign aid to African nations all weaken the left's pride in America.
- The left believes *America* itself is racist, and Trump’s first election was “proof” of this, leading to ahistorical nonsense like the 1619 Project
- The left no longer believes in free speech for all Americans, only the ones they agree with
Trump is also bad on both of these counts, and many more, but this was a difference of degree, and slightly of kind, for Republicans since the Southern Strategy; treating other Americans poorly is their brand. Democrats abandoning pride in America, and bedrock principles like free speech (and innocent until proven guilty, see the Dear Colleague letter on Title IX from 2011)
My “WE FUCKING TOLD YOU SO!!!” sign might have no effect in the real world, but maybe you’ll take a step back and realize that you’ve taken what “a recognition of flaws” well past self-reflection and into the self-flagellation of “what do we have to celebrate, anyway?”
There are of course extremists on the far left, just as there are extremists on the right, but the vast majority of the people on the left believe in the First Amendment. I'm less convinced that the same is true of many on the right, as evidenced by Trump's efforts to ban reporters he disagrees with from White House press conferences, his attacks on entertainers like Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert, the attempts to deport students who peacefully demonstrated in support of causes the right disagrees with, and the firings of people who criticized Charlie Kirk after his assassination. (Political assassinations are awful, and I was appalled at the assassination of Kirk, but people had a First Amendment right to say bad things about him after his death, and the right didn't seem to understand that.)
The left does not regard the election of Trump as proof that America is racist; to do so would be silly when one contrasts Trump's bare-bones victories to Obama's substantial majorities in 2008 and 2012.
Something I will say about my patriotism is that I am always a patriotic person, but when my field and the fields of so many around me are collapsing due to gross mismanagement and placing American advancement behind other policies that trump has done, it becomes hard for me to really identify with the patriotism that the administration seems to hold as such a key value.
It’s just that being patriotic has nothing to do with the administration, but the word patriotic, and the things it represent change when the same administration that makes patriotism such a key part is so strong on doing things that I find shameful of a country I love to do.
The data Nate presents do not match a Blame Trump narrative.
This is just partisanship. Not that Trump is helping but the data show something else is going on beyond Trump
Blaming MSM is silly and also a partisan thing w/o doubt
But Social Media, that aligns with the data and has a correlation that suggests one can have a good hypothsis for causation
But on education, no, it seems to me as a not-Democrat the education bias of the past 2 decades has gone hugely over correction into really tear the idea of America down. The radical fractions have had too much influence.
Who is President or what Party controls Congress should be irrelevant.
You seem to forget that Gerald Ford was being crucified non-stop by the MSM for his pardon of Nixon back then.
The values that are "quintessentially American" are Individualism, Self-sufficiency, Prudent Risk-taking, and a Sense of Adventure.
As the first in my modest family to go to college, I eventually earned three professional degrees starting with Chemical Engineering, and have made a fair amount of money over the years, as have almost all of my engineering classmates despite almost all of them also coming from modest backgrounds. I'm also an infantry combat veteran, and I enlisted - I wasn't drafted.
While I still have nightmares over half-a-century later I have no regrets because combat allowed me to see and do things by the time I was 22 that most people would never see or do if they lived to be a hundred. It also gave me maturity beyond my years (I came home 22 going on 40), and instilled in me a pragmatic callouness that has contributed to having a more successful life.
I didn't vote for Trump, nor Biden, nor Hillary, mainly because I rarely vote in Federal elections at all because who is President or what Party controls Congress has little effect on my life, I generally do OK regardless. I do vote regularly in state and local elections because they do affect my life.
Philosophically I'm a Libertarian-Darwinist ("...the strong do what they can, while the weak suffer what they must ..."), and Politically I have no permanent Allies and no permanent Enemies; only my Self-interest is Eternal.
And as a Jesuit-educated Atheist I have no strong beliefs beyond The Second Law, Maxwell's Equations, and Wave-Particle-Duality.
I honor you for your service, and I'm sorry about your nightmares.
Certainly many people on the left criticized Ford for his pardon of Nixon (I wasn't one of them). But people on the left respected Ford as a decent man who had the best interests of the country at heart, and who fundamentally believed in American values and the Constitution. Ford tried hard to be President of all Americans, not just his constituency. I disagreed with many of his views, but I always thought he was trying to do what he viewed as being in America's best interests. I'm less sure of that with Trump.
The idea that the education system is to blame for people not being patriotic enough is resonant only of dictatorships like North Korea or the Soviet Union. “Maybe a spell in Siberia will re-educate you and make you more patriotic, Comrade.”
A 2025 University of California faculty committee reported that academic preparation among incoming freshmen had declined sharply with about 1 in 8 freshmen required remediation below expected high-school math standards, stating that many students with high high-school GPAs COULD NOT PERFORM MIDDLE SCHOOL MATHEMATICS, describing the problem as a serious threat to both student success and instructional quality.
A 2024 College Board faculty survey of over 3,000 faculty members from more than 1,200 colleges and universities reported incoming students are less academically prepared and that SAT scores have declined at the same time that high-school GPAs have generally risen.
The Washington Post in 2025 cited professors at multiple institutions, including Harvard University, who reported seeing unusually large numbers of underprepared students.
Inside Higher Education has published numerous articles since 2022 discussing faculty concerns about declining student writing, math skills.
The Chronicle of Higher Education has likewise run extensive reporting and commentary from professors describing increased remediation and lower academic readiness.
By contrast:
I was in Elementary school in the 1950s and High School in the early 1960s.
I took calculus as a high school senior, and not as part of an 'honors program' - it was offered to anyone who had taken Algebra I & II, Geometry & Trigonometry as prerequsites. I also took an elective 'Shop Class'. Almost every high school in the country offered it back then. Many students, even those headed for college like me, also took 'Shop' because it taught essential life skills like basic auto maintenance, woodworking, basic home wiring, etc. ALSO:
In almost every grade in both Elementary and High School back then there were a few students who either had to attend MANDATORY summer school and/or were "Left-Back" and had to repeat a grade. And many of THOSE wound up eventually graduating and had decent lives as adults. Today they are just given high grades, a diploma, and shipped off to college to ultimately fail in both college and life.
And its not just in math:
It's amazing how many of the younger generations are clueless about our form of government:
We are a FEDERATION of states. The STATES elect the President. This was determined by the 'Connecticut Compromise' at the 1787 Constitutional Convention and without which the smaller states would never have ratified the Constitution and we would never even have had a country. I was taught this in ELEMENTARY SCHOOL in the 1950s. Do they teach ANYTHING anymore???
Yeah, the decline in math is scary. I'm not sure it's entirely the fault of the schools: The pandemic caused a substantial decline in academic achievement, and it's possible that I-phones are partially to blame, though that's less clear. AI may also be a substitute for thinking.
Schools don't teach patriotism, but they teach civics (or at least they should) and they teach American history and the American constitution, which ought to have some effect.
"... Schools don't teach patriotism, but they teach civics (or at least they should) and they teach American history and the American constitution ..."
Unfortunately many, if not most, don't. To wit:
I've been a paid subscriber to the WSJ for over 35 years.
A recent comment I made attempting to explain our form of government and the Connecticut Compromise received over a dozen responses, many of which indicated that the responders had never heard of the Connecticut Compromise, nor a Bicameral structure.
Now keep in mind that this was in the comments section of the WSJ where a subcription for the online version alone is >$400/year. These were just two of the responses:
- "The Republicans created the Electoral College just to give the Red States power".
- "You use fancy foriegn words like 'Bicameral' to impress people".
I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I had first heard the word 'Bicameral' in Civics class as a 7th or 8th grader back in the 1950s. So NO, many schools are NOT teaching even the basics of Civics anymore, and likely haven't for quite sometime, since these were WSJ commenters.
Blaming "Mainstream Media" is perverse. The habits and reporting of mainstream media - to the extent they are really driving the public haven't changed in really huge ways since the 70s or the 90s
If one is not going to be simplying Blaming Things I Personally Don't Like one has to look at what has changed in the time period immeidately before and since the decline.
There we see a time stamp in the data presented by Nate, early 2000s.
This coincides with online - social media penetration and social media starting to dominant information.
While correlation is not causation, the wider subject of negativity and studies on Americans and global declines on indicators like happiness etc to my understanding very much track to social media penetration and the dominance of their algorythms.
Given the social media algos, demonstrated in data, bias to putting "extreme" or fringe views up (not Left / Right bias but Fringe Bias) - clickbaiting - and the tendency of the extremes on Left and Right (and non-partisan but just Doom Mongering) we should have a strong sense that there is likely probable cause with social media Dooming algos driving broadly negativity - political, social
The timeline certainly tracks - of course one shouldn't be monocausaul -
Education I will agree with you in alignment with social media and dominance from the Lefty side of education in the academic radicals (critical race theory, the NYT type 16whatever project) - although I think alone not likely explanatory if tied up to social media one starts to have something plausible in both time alignment and mechaism especially if one looks at data on other effects
I wish we would/could? come together like we did during the bicentennial even with the shame of the Nixon presidency, the polarizing Viet Nam aftermath, the burning of our cities during the race riots, and the gas lines of the OPEC oil embargo. Being best in class is but a fleeting title regardless of what is being measured against. May we overcome our collective hand wringing and get back to, as Johnny Mercer of the Pied Pipers would sing back in the 1940s, Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate The Positive, back when patriotism was popular.
I am not American, but I’d rather blame SOCIAL media instead of MSM. I’m aware that even your ‘classic’ media outlets are much more polarised compared to the media ecosystems we have in Europe. Still, the more fragmented the conveyed information becomes (how can there be a differentiated message within 60 seconds tops on an algorithmic curated platform?), the more polarised and in the long run negative and grieved the particular consumer becomes.
I can’t do much to change the median or mode, but BY GOD I will do what I can to change the mean. (And that’s with full acknowledgment of our failings. Even with those failings, our potential is IMMENSE.)
The public is right. We no longer espouse the values we were founded on. The blatant corruption in the White House no one cares about of course only makes it worse. I feel more and more about America these days like a parent whose child became an addict and is constantly in and out of prison. I do not hate America, but it does not inspire even a glimmer of patriotism in me anymore. Loving it does not mean liking what it’s doing or what it did. We are in a deep decline.
The US had flagrant corruption through its history and was far worse in the 19th century, from start to finish. Not that it is great Trump is doing a reversion to either 1880 or 1801 but this kind of ahistorical nonsense is part of the problem
I had conservatives call me a third worldist America hater for opposing the Iran war during its opening strikes back in February. The knee jerk accusation that the only reason one could have lost pride in the US is by believing ahistorical lies or deluding themself couldn’t be further from the truth. Is the fact that America was also corrupt in the past supposed to make one more patriotic?
It’s just another datapoint for me and fellow liberal Democrats warning about turning American history into one gigantic guilt trip.
It makes me want to hand a banner from my house saying “WE FUCKING TOLD YOU SO!” but my less online neighbors probably wouldn’t know what I was so pissed about.
In a discussion I think in Yglesias on similar subject there were the observations from several parties (of which myslef) that if one as the radical fraction on the Left did - critical race theory etc, 1619 - turn the entire American concept into negativity and "fundamentally racist" it's somewhat similar to raising a kid and constantly telling them they're a worthless failure and going to be a criminal - which is well-known to have a strong tendency to generate self-fulfiling effects, kid decides, yeah I am bad guy and bad - and f-it I will be me.
The radical Left fraction has been doing that for a while but since 2000ish what was once marginal input gets both institutional and social media amplification (on the Right one gets what results in the neo-Nazis... great two fringes)>
Clearly bad outcome
There needs to be a push to end the welcoming of "voices" like those behind that 1619 project
Countries like people benefit from self-confidence and striving - and believing in some self-myths (even if we know better on some details).
I do wonder about, and I hate to call it this, “hidden” patriotism. It seemed that sometime around 2015 it became the sophisticated view to anti patriotic. Patriotism was seen as something stupid gullible people believed in while educated sophisticated people knew better. Most of the liberal educated people I know think patriotism is morally wrong either in the U.S. or anywhere. Still, I wonder if that taboo has made it more likely that people would just shift from “extremely” to “not very” proud to be American. Maybe not but it does seem strange that Dems were less patriotic under Obama than Bush.
We now have a Media environment (call me partisan but its mostly from the right...or at least started there) that floods us every morning, noon, and night with the message that the other political aisle is the devil incarnate, dedicated to destroying everything you and your family hold dear. Every f'ing day. Add in Twitter and social media and its amplified by 1000.
Even something that should be apolitical and devoid of partisanship, like the Artemis launch or the 250th celebration, is infected with politics. Patriotism becomes 'cheering when my side is in power.'
I absolutely hope things change. But I don't see it happening any time soon.
Here’s what I don’t understand. Here in Florida, the Mexicans, Cubans, and Eastern Europeans in my neighborhood love America. My White neighbors and friends, all living comfortably but not wealthy, complain the most about the country and government. Now, they are mostly Democrats, not progressives, however.
My group are retired and mostly in their mid to late ‘60’s’. So that’s why I’m confused. The most comfortable are the most disgruntled. Maybe we are a product of the ‘60’s or just spoiled and need to return to work.
One other comment. How does Gallop select the people they interview?
It's hard to feel pride for a nation represented by just the most extremely lame losers on so many fronts! Yes, Trump & friends, but also Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, et al... Like, these are the people who represent the best of what we can produce? If these are the "leaders" we are producing, is that not a strong indication that something at the core is rotten?
I would say Elon is an example of what makes America great, his political opinions aside. An immigrant who is now running two of the world’s most innovative companies and will likely play a key role in humanity’s spacefaring future. That’s something to be proud of.
I'm skeptical of asking people to grade themselves. The folks who rate themselves most generous are rarely the ones picking up the check. "Proud to be an American" is worse than most self-report items, because pride doesn't map to attachment. I can love my kids and not be proud of how they're acting. A soldier can be proud of her unit and hate its lieutenant and what it's ordered to do.
The cross-country comparison is even shakier, because expressing pride is itself culturally regulated. Germany's famously low numbers reflect a postwar taboo on saying you're proud to be German, not weak attachment. Jordan's 97% reflects a norm running the other way, plus well-known cultural differences in acquiescence and extreme responding. Comparing the U.S. to Britain on a pride scale is comparing thermostats, more than temperatures.
Better to watch what people do with their money and their lives. Morse and Shive ("Patriotism in Your Portfolio") showed patriotic countries overweight home-country stocks even after controlling for the boring explanations — and U.S. home bias has fallen substantially since the 1990s. Konrad and Qari found patriots cheat less on their taxes, and countries with more patriotic "warm glow" run smaller shadow economies. Kang and Rockoff measured WWI patriotism as the below-market yield Americans swallowed on Liberty Loans — the cleanest costly signal on record, though it requires a war.
Military enlistment is the classic behavioral measure, and superficially it confirms the decline: four straight years of recruiting shortfalls. But raw enlistment numbers swing with the labor market, and eligibility has cratered for reasons that have nothing to do with sentiment. The 2025 "rebound" proves the point: the Army beat a bigger goal four months early after raising entry pay from under $22,000 to nearly $28,000 and fattening bonuses. Don't count the recruits; check the price of a recruit. That price has soared.
Exit measures fail the same way — citizenship renunciations are countable, but the post-2010 spike is a FATCA tax story, not disaffection. And flag sales and displays, once a decent proxy, is now partisan-coded: flying one measures your party, not your country. Same contamination as the survey question.
I'm inclined to measure patriotism in prices, not self-reports. The yield concession on war bonds. The diversification cost of home bias. The bonus needed to fill the ranks. By the recruiting-price measure, American patriotism really has gotten more expensive — the Pentagon is paying retail for what it used to get wholesale. By most of the others, the polls can't distinguish declining love of country from declining approval of whoever happens to be running it.
Fascinating and disturbing. But I disagree with the apparent implication that patriotism = pride. I would say patriotism means love of country, not necessarily being proud of it. My country right or wrong, not my country always right.
One other thing (I’m so pissed right now): During his book tour for The Invisible Bridge, Rick Perlstein lamented that America refused to “grow up” by celebrating the Bicentennial earnestly.
Well Rick, thanks to you and many others, looks like you’re getting your wish this time. I hope you’re happy.
Maybe it is because people are increasingly getting alienated from left and right. With more people getting online and getting exposed to all the social media hatred, it's hard not to take it personal time to time, whether it was the cancel culture, or the more recent ICE chasing people based on their skin color. It's like that Civil War movie meme of "which America". On top of that, in a time of economic difficulties, people are more like to be self centered than focusing on something greatet than themselves.
I think there are a lot of old, angry, very online people that like to answer polls. If you look at young millennials and Gen Z, they tend to be very patriotic.
I'm 78 and thus remember our 200th Birthday in 1976 very well when I was 28. The overall tone of the country was radically different then, and not because all was perfect.
Nixon had resigned in disgrace just two years earlier, and the US final exit from Vietnam had ended with the debacle of helicopters pulling the last troops off our Embassy roof just one year earlier.
AND YET almost everyone was joyous, with celebrations in every city and state.
Not so today. I blame both the MSM AND our education system, who emphasize every fault of America while minimizing all of the ENORMOUS positives of our great country.
I think the bigger difference is that Gerald Ford didn't try to hijack the occasion and give it a highly partisan emphasis, and especially didn't try to make it be about him personally. As long as Trump is doing those things, it's going to be tough to ask the many Americans who don't approve of him to mood-affiliate positively with it.
Who is President or what Party controls Congress should be irrelevant.
You seem to forget (or are too young to know) that Gerald Ford was being crucified non-stop by the MSM for his pardon of Nixon back then.
I think this is a misreading of my comment. I'm not saying Ford was a great guy or was popular. I'm saying he didn't attempt to put himself or his party at the center of the bicentennial, and so people who would have voted against him could still celebrate it without this looking like an expression of support for his administration.
America existed long before Donald Trump and will still be here long after him. Presidents come and go every 4 to 8 years.
If your patriotism rises and falls based on who’s in the White House at any given time, then maybe your allegiance is to politics, not to our country.
The Flag represents our nation and its people, not which administration happens to be in power.
Your example rather highlights pointing finger at MSM (I don't but probably too young recall Ford getting non-stip but plausibley).
Ford however was a normal honorable guy and as he didn't make it about him personally it kept the Celebration largely non-partisan outside the Fringies - as Taymon said
America existed long before Donald Trump and will still be here long after him. Presidents come and go every 4 to 8 years.
If your patriotism rises and falls based on who’s in the White House at any given time, then maybe your allegiance is to politics, not to our country.
The Flag represents our nation and its people, not which administration happens to be in power.
Yes.... and?
That said it's entirely human to lose celebratory enthusiasm for a celebration that appears vulgarly hijacked and made into political tribalism celeb (as Trump is doing in his short-fingered vulgarian showman way).
Me I am generally not a celebration guy and quite indifferent but can easily understand a reaction - as easily if a Democrat was doing the same - not the R or L politics but the direct type of action of a Prez around the actual celeb.
The observations of Taymon were contrasting a Ford with Trump.
that's quite aside from general patriotism - you and the Lefties whining about Trump are focused on the moment while the long-term trend is a different beast - one I only am disagreeing with you on relative to your MSM comment - which simply does not fit the data. Social media though does in timing (and in correlation with observed and similar effects in entirely different areas - social media shows signs of having been a real acid bath)
The 1970s were one of the most politically violent decades ever. In 1976 ALONE the FBI reported between 40 and 80 politically motivated bombings, shootings, arson, kidnappings, etc. While that was down from the 60 to 100 reported in 1975, it was still an average of roughly ONE PER WEEK in 1976. That's A LOT.
Also the mortgage rate in 1976 averaged 8.9% and the unemployment rate averaged 7.7% in 1976. COMPARE THOSE WITH TODAY'S NUMBERS.
AND YET, despite all that, the country had joyous celebrations in every city and state.
America existed long before Donald Trump and will still be here long after him. Presidents come and go every 4 to 8 years.
If your patriotism rises and falls based on who’s in the White House at any given time, then maybe your allegiance is to politics, not to our country. The Flag represents our nation and its people, not which administration happens to be in power.
I agree with your description of 1976 (I'm 2 years younger than you) but I disagree with your attempt to blame the current lack of patriotism on the MSM or our education system. America can only improve if it recognizes its flaws, and an acknowledgement of those flaws does not make one less patriotic. I have always considered myself to be patriotic, while at the same time recognizing the ways in which I think we can do better.
I place a lot of the blame for the current decline in patriotism on the administration, for 2 reasons. 1. The left believes that Trump's immigration policies are shameful, racist, and unAmerican, which makes it hard for them to be proud of this country. 2. Trump deemphasizes the values that, in the view of the left, are quintessentially American, and the things we should be most proud of: Our global support for human rights and democracy. In particular, his threats to invade Greenland, his refusal to support Ukraine, and his dramatic cuts in foreign aid to African nations all weaken the left's pride in America.
- The left believes *America* itself is racist, and Trump’s first election was “proof” of this, leading to ahistorical nonsense like the 1619 Project
- The left no longer believes in free speech for all Americans, only the ones they agree with
Trump is also bad on both of these counts, and many more, but this was a difference of degree, and slightly of kind, for Republicans since the Southern Strategy; treating other Americans poorly is their brand. Democrats abandoning pride in America, and bedrock principles like free speech (and innocent until proven guilty, see the Dear Colleague letter on Title IX from 2011)
My “WE FUCKING TOLD YOU SO!!!” sign might have no effect in the real world, but maybe you’ll take a step back and realize that you’ve taken what “a recognition of flaws” well past self-reflection and into the self-flagellation of “what do we have to celebrate, anyway?”
There are of course extremists on the far left, just as there are extremists on the right, but the vast majority of the people on the left believe in the First Amendment. I'm less convinced that the same is true of many on the right, as evidenced by Trump's efforts to ban reporters he disagrees with from White House press conferences, his attacks on entertainers like Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert, the attempts to deport students who peacefully demonstrated in support of causes the right disagrees with, and the firings of people who criticized Charlie Kirk after his assassination. (Political assassinations are awful, and I was appalled at the assassination of Kirk, but people had a First Amendment right to say bad things about him after his death, and the right didn't seem to understand that.)
The left does not regard the election of Trump as proof that America is racist; to do so would be silly when one contrasts Trump's bare-bones victories to Obama's substantial majorities in 2008 and 2012.
Something I will say about my patriotism is that I am always a patriotic person, but when my field and the fields of so many around me are collapsing due to gross mismanagement and placing American advancement behind other policies that trump has done, it becomes hard for me to really identify with the patriotism that the administration seems to hold as such a key value.
It’s just that being patriotic has nothing to do with the administration, but the word patriotic, and the things it represent change when the same administration that makes patriotism such a key part is so strong on doing things that I find shameful of a country I love to do.
The data Nate presents do not match a Blame Trump narrative.
This is just partisanship. Not that Trump is helping but the data show something else is going on beyond Trump
Blaming MSM is silly and also a partisan thing w/o doubt
But Social Media, that aligns with the data and has a correlation that suggests one can have a good hypothsis for causation
But on education, no, it seems to me as a not-Democrat the education bias of the past 2 decades has gone hugely over correction into really tear the idea of America down. The radical fractions have had too much influence.
Who is President or what Party controls Congress should be irrelevant.
You seem to forget that Gerald Ford was being crucified non-stop by the MSM for his pardon of Nixon back then.
The values that are "quintessentially American" are Individualism, Self-sufficiency, Prudent Risk-taking, and a Sense of Adventure.
As the first in my modest family to go to college, I eventually earned three professional degrees starting with Chemical Engineering, and have made a fair amount of money over the years, as have almost all of my engineering classmates despite almost all of them also coming from modest backgrounds. I'm also an infantry combat veteran, and I enlisted - I wasn't drafted.
While I still have nightmares over half-a-century later I have no regrets because combat allowed me to see and do things by the time I was 22 that most people would never see or do if they lived to be a hundred. It also gave me maturity beyond my years (I came home 22 going on 40), and instilled in me a pragmatic callouness that has contributed to having a more successful life.
I didn't vote for Trump, nor Biden, nor Hillary, mainly because I rarely vote in Federal elections at all because who is President or what Party controls Congress has little effect on my life, I generally do OK regardless. I do vote regularly in state and local elections because they do affect my life.
Philosophically I'm a Libertarian-Darwinist ("...the strong do what they can, while the weak suffer what they must ..."), and Politically I have no permanent Allies and no permanent Enemies; only my Self-interest is Eternal.
And as a Jesuit-educated Atheist I have no strong beliefs beyond The Second Law, Maxwell's Equations, and Wave-Particle-Duality.
I honor you for your service, and I'm sorry about your nightmares.
Certainly many people on the left criticized Ford for his pardon of Nixon (I wasn't one of them). But people on the left respected Ford as a decent man who had the best interests of the country at heart, and who fundamentally believed in American values and the Constitution. Ford tried hard to be President of all Americans, not just his constituency. I disagreed with many of his views, but I always thought he was trying to do what he viewed as being in America's best interests. I'm less sure of that with Trump.
The idea that the education system is to blame for people not being patriotic enough is resonant only of dictatorships like North Korea or the Soviet Union. “Maybe a spell in Siberia will re-educate you and make you more patriotic, Comrade.”
REALLY?
A 2025 University of California faculty committee reported that academic preparation among incoming freshmen had declined sharply with about 1 in 8 freshmen required remediation below expected high-school math standards, stating that many students with high high-school GPAs COULD NOT PERFORM MIDDLE SCHOOL MATHEMATICS, describing the problem as a serious threat to both student success and instructional quality.
A 2024 College Board faculty survey of over 3,000 faculty members from more than 1,200 colleges and universities reported incoming students are less academically prepared and that SAT scores have declined at the same time that high-school GPAs have generally risen.
The Washington Post in 2025 cited professors at multiple institutions, including Harvard University, who reported seeing unusually large numbers of underprepared students.
Inside Higher Education has published numerous articles since 2022 discussing faculty concerns about declining student writing, math skills.
The Chronicle of Higher Education has likewise run extensive reporting and commentary from professors describing increased remediation and lower academic readiness.
By contrast:
I was in Elementary school in the 1950s and High School in the early 1960s.
I took calculus as a high school senior, and not as part of an 'honors program' - it was offered to anyone who had taken Algebra I & II, Geometry & Trigonometry as prerequsites. I also took an elective 'Shop Class'. Almost every high school in the country offered it back then. Many students, even those headed for college like me, also took 'Shop' because it taught essential life skills like basic auto maintenance, woodworking, basic home wiring, etc. ALSO:
In almost every grade in both Elementary and High School back then there were a few students who either had to attend MANDATORY summer school and/or were "Left-Back" and had to repeat a grade. And many of THOSE wound up eventually graduating and had decent lives as adults. Today they are just given high grades, a diploma, and shipped off to college to ultimately fail in both college and life.
And its not just in math:
It's amazing how many of the younger generations are clueless about our form of government:
We are a FEDERATION of states. The STATES elect the President. This was determined by the 'Connecticut Compromise' at the 1787 Constitutional Convention and without which the smaller states would never have ratified the Constitution and we would never even have had a country. I was taught this in ELEMENTARY SCHOOL in the 1950s. Do they teach ANYTHING anymore???
They clearly didn’t teach you brevity in the 1950s.
Yeah, the decline in math is scary. I'm not sure it's entirely the fault of the schools: The pandemic caused a substantial decline in academic achievement, and it's possible that I-phones are partially to blame, though that's less clear. AI may also be a substitute for thinking.
Schools don't teach patriotism, but they teach civics (or at least they should) and they teach American history and the American constitution, which ought to have some effect.
"... Schools don't teach patriotism, but they teach civics (or at least they should) and they teach American history and the American constitution ..."
Unfortunately many, if not most, don't. To wit:
I've been a paid subscriber to the WSJ for over 35 years.
A recent comment I made attempting to explain our form of government and the Connecticut Compromise received over a dozen responses, many of which indicated that the responders had never heard of the Connecticut Compromise, nor a Bicameral structure.
Now keep in mind that this was in the comments section of the WSJ where a subcription for the online version alone is >$400/year. These were just two of the responses:
- "The Republicans created the Electoral College just to give the Red States power".
- "You use fancy foriegn words like 'Bicameral' to impress people".
I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I had first heard the word 'Bicameral' in Civics class as a 7th or 8th grader back in the 1950s. So NO, many schools are NOT teaching even the basics of Civics anymore, and likely haven't for quite sometime, since these were WSJ commenters.
Blaming "Mainstream Media" is perverse. The habits and reporting of mainstream media - to the extent they are really driving the public haven't changed in really huge ways since the 70s or the 90s
If one is not going to be simplying Blaming Things I Personally Don't Like one has to look at what has changed in the time period immeidately before and since the decline.
There we see a time stamp in the data presented by Nate, early 2000s.
This coincides with online - social media penetration and social media starting to dominant information.
While correlation is not causation, the wider subject of negativity and studies on Americans and global declines on indicators like happiness etc to my understanding very much track to social media penetration and the dominance of their algorythms.
Given the social media algos, demonstrated in data, bias to putting "extreme" or fringe views up (not Left / Right bias but Fringe Bias) - clickbaiting - and the tendency of the extremes on Left and Right (and non-partisan but just Doom Mongering) we should have a strong sense that there is likely probable cause with social media Dooming algos driving broadly negativity - political, social
The timeline certainly tracks - of course one shouldn't be monocausaul -
Education I will agree with you in alignment with social media and dominance from the Lefty side of education in the academic radicals (critical race theory, the NYT type 16whatever project) - although I think alone not likely explanatory if tied up to social media one starts to have something plausible in both time alignment and mechaism especially if one looks at data on other effects
I wish we would/could? come together like we did during the bicentennial even with the shame of the Nixon presidency, the polarizing Viet Nam aftermath, the burning of our cities during the race riots, and the gas lines of the OPEC oil embargo. Being best in class is but a fleeting title regardless of what is being measured against. May we overcome our collective hand wringing and get back to, as Johnny Mercer of the Pied Pipers would sing back in the 1940s, Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate The Positive, back when patriotism was popular.
Amen sister.
Dazed and Confused!
I am not American, but I’d rather blame SOCIAL media instead of MSM. I’m aware that even your ‘classic’ media outlets are much more polarised compared to the media ecosystems we have in Europe. Still, the more fragmented the conveyed information becomes (how can there be a differentiated message within 60 seconds tops on an algorithmic curated platform?), the more polarised and in the long run negative and grieved the particular consumer becomes.
I can’t do much to change the median or mode, but BY GOD I will do what I can to change the mean. (And that’s with full acknowledgment of our failings. Even with those failings, our potential is IMMENSE.)
The public is right. We no longer espouse the values we were founded on. The blatant corruption in the White House no one cares about of course only makes it worse. I feel more and more about America these days like a parent whose child became an addict and is constantly in and out of prison. I do not hate America, but it does not inspire even a glimmer of patriotism in me anymore. Loving it does not mean liking what it’s doing or what it did. We are in a deep decline.
Nonesense, ahistorical nonsense.
The US had flagrant corruption through its history and was far worse in the 19th century, from start to finish. Not that it is great Trump is doing a reversion to either 1880 or 1801 but this kind of ahistorical nonsense is part of the problem
I had conservatives call me a third worldist America hater for opposing the Iran war during its opening strikes back in February. The knee jerk accusation that the only reason one could have lost pride in the US is by believing ahistorical lies or deluding themself couldn’t be further from the truth. Is the fact that America was also corrupt in the past supposed to make one more patriotic?
Frankly it is irrelevant.
What is relevant is the unfactual claim and overheated statements.
It’s just another datapoint for me and fellow liberal Democrats warning about turning American history into one gigantic guilt trip.
It makes me want to hand a banner from my house saying “WE FUCKING TOLD YOU SO!” but my less online neighbors probably wouldn’t know what I was so pissed about.
In a discussion I think in Yglesias on similar subject there were the observations from several parties (of which myslef) that if one as the radical fraction on the Left did - critical race theory etc, 1619 - turn the entire American concept into negativity and "fundamentally racist" it's somewhat similar to raising a kid and constantly telling them they're a worthless failure and going to be a criminal - which is well-known to have a strong tendency to generate self-fulfiling effects, kid decides, yeah I am bad guy and bad - and f-it I will be me.
The radical Left fraction has been doing that for a while but since 2000ish what was once marginal input gets both institutional and social media amplification (on the Right one gets what results in the neo-Nazis... great two fringes)>
Clearly bad outcome
There needs to be a push to end the welcoming of "voices" like those behind that 1619 project
Countries like people benefit from self-confidence and striving - and believing in some self-myths (even if we know better on some details).
I do wonder about, and I hate to call it this, “hidden” patriotism. It seemed that sometime around 2015 it became the sophisticated view to anti patriotic. Patriotism was seen as something stupid gullible people believed in while educated sophisticated people knew better. Most of the liberal educated people I know think patriotism is morally wrong either in the U.S. or anywhere. Still, I wonder if that taboo has made it more likely that people would just shift from “extremely” to “not very” proud to be American. Maybe not but it does seem strange that Dems were less patriotic under Obama than Bush.
We now have a Media environment (call me partisan but its mostly from the right...or at least started there) that floods us every morning, noon, and night with the message that the other political aisle is the devil incarnate, dedicated to destroying everything you and your family hold dear. Every f'ing day. Add in Twitter and social media and its amplified by 1000.
Even something that should be apolitical and devoid of partisanship, like the Artemis launch or the 250th celebration, is infected with politics. Patriotism becomes 'cheering when my side is in power.'
I absolutely hope things change. But I don't see it happening any time soon.
We should de-politicize patrotism as we should with so many other things that get completely misinterpreted as political statements.
Here’s what I don’t understand. Here in Florida, the Mexicans, Cubans, and Eastern Europeans in my neighborhood love America. My White neighbors and friends, all living comfortably but not wealthy, complain the most about the country and government. Now, they are mostly Democrats, not progressives, however.
My group are retired and mostly in their mid to late ‘60’s’. So that’s why I’m confused. The most comfortable are the most disgruntled. Maybe we are a product of the ‘60’s or just spoiled and need to return to work.
One other comment. How does Gallop select the people they interview?
GO USA ON MONDAY !!!!
Is there any way to correlate this decline with the deprioritization of teaching history and civics?
It's hard to feel pride for a nation represented by just the most extremely lame losers on so many fronts! Yes, Trump & friends, but also Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, et al... Like, these are the people who represent the best of what we can produce? If these are the "leaders" we are producing, is that not a strong indication that something at the core is rotten?
I would say Elon is an example of what makes America great, his political opinions aside. An immigrant who is now running two of the world’s most innovative companies and will likely play a key role in humanity’s spacefaring future. That’s something to be proud of.
I'm skeptical of asking people to grade themselves. The folks who rate themselves most generous are rarely the ones picking up the check. "Proud to be an American" is worse than most self-report items, because pride doesn't map to attachment. I can love my kids and not be proud of how they're acting. A soldier can be proud of her unit and hate its lieutenant and what it's ordered to do.
The cross-country comparison is even shakier, because expressing pride is itself culturally regulated. Germany's famously low numbers reflect a postwar taboo on saying you're proud to be German, not weak attachment. Jordan's 97% reflects a norm running the other way, plus well-known cultural differences in acquiescence and extreme responding. Comparing the U.S. to Britain on a pride scale is comparing thermostats, more than temperatures.
Better to watch what people do with their money and their lives. Morse and Shive ("Patriotism in Your Portfolio") showed patriotic countries overweight home-country stocks even after controlling for the boring explanations — and U.S. home bias has fallen substantially since the 1990s. Konrad and Qari found patriots cheat less on their taxes, and countries with more patriotic "warm glow" run smaller shadow economies. Kang and Rockoff measured WWI patriotism as the below-market yield Americans swallowed on Liberty Loans — the cleanest costly signal on record, though it requires a war.
Military enlistment is the classic behavioral measure, and superficially it confirms the decline: four straight years of recruiting shortfalls. But raw enlistment numbers swing with the labor market, and eligibility has cratered for reasons that have nothing to do with sentiment. The 2025 "rebound" proves the point: the Army beat a bigger goal four months early after raising entry pay from under $22,000 to nearly $28,000 and fattening bonuses. Don't count the recruits; check the price of a recruit. That price has soared.
Exit measures fail the same way — citizenship renunciations are countable, but the post-2010 spike is a FATCA tax story, not disaffection. And flag sales and displays, once a decent proxy, is now partisan-coded: flying one measures your party, not your country. Same contamination as the survey question.
I'm inclined to measure patriotism in prices, not self-reports. The yield concession on war bonds. The diversification cost of home bias. The bonus needed to fill the ranks. By the recruiting-price measure, American patriotism really has gotten more expensive — the Pentagon is paying retail for what it used to get wholesale. By most of the others, the polls can't distinguish declining love of country from declining approval of whoever happens to be running it.
Fascinating and disturbing. But I disagree with the apparent implication that patriotism = pride. I would say patriotism means love of country, not necessarily being proud of it. My country right or wrong, not my country always right.
Self-regard is the new patriotism.
One other thing (I’m so pissed right now): During his book tour for The Invisible Bridge, Rick Perlstein lamented that America refused to “grow up” by celebrating the Bicentennial earnestly.
Well Rick, thanks to you and many others, looks like you’re getting your wish this time. I hope you’re happy.
Maybe it is because people are increasingly getting alienated from left and right. With more people getting online and getting exposed to all the social media hatred, it's hard not to take it personal time to time, whether it was the cancel culture, or the more recent ICE chasing people based on their skin color. It's like that Civil War movie meme of "which America". On top of that, in a time of economic difficulties, people are more like to be self centered than focusing on something greatet than themselves.
I think there are a lot of old, angry, very online people that like to answer polls. If you look at young millennials and Gen Z, they tend to be very patriotic.