Well, this is my fourth column of the week, and I’ve still managed to fall behind somehow on all of the (mostly good) news that’s happening. And I’m half-way through the process of reading the entire SCOTUS ruling from last week on nationwide injunctions.
So my plan is to have a column on Monday with my thoughts on that great SCOTUS ruling. (Will I also be mocking Ketanji Jean-Pierre? Damn straight.) And I foresee another 4 column-week (at least) coming next week, if I’m going to have any chance of keeping my head above water during the deluge of winning that’s happening right now.
But I’ve buried the lede, because it’s Independence Day, and I hope you all have a great one.
It’s hard to talk about this day without going through a bunch of cliches that are so familiar that we’re now too close to see them. But this really is an amazing country, founded by geniuses, and with a history we should be proud of. And while we often take it for granted, I’ve been encouraged by a feeling that there seems to be a recent uptick in appreciation for the country.
However, that appreciation might not be as widespread as it feels to me, a fact brought home by a Gallup poll I read a few days ago, which is fascinating for three reasons: 1. It ties into a discussion I’ve been having with one of my lefty buddies recently. 2. The reporting on it was a textbook example of MSM media bias. (And no, we don’t hate them enough.) 3. It clearly illustrates a profound difference between the left and right in America.
I wrote a few months ago about several lefties who are good, old friends of mine, and in one of my recent email exchanges with one of them, I commented on those leftists who really dislike America. In his response, he said that he hoped I didn’t think he was among them, and I assured him that I didn’t. He’s a good man and he loves the country; I wouldn’t be able to maintain a friendship with somebody who hates my country.
But I think it’s pretty obvious that there is a disturbingly large segment of the left who disdains America, and it includes too many of the party’s leaders, including their last living president. Obama famously expressed his desire to “fundamentally transform” America because he thought it communicated the ambition of his policy agenda. But many of us realized the clear inference of that statement: if you love something or someone, you don’t want to “fundamentally transform” them.
When they look at American history, many leftists focus almost exclusively on the sins that we share with all other nations throughout history – slavery, violent clashes with earlier inhabitants, bigotry – rather than the breathtaking achievements that set us apart. And they judge us for the former more harshly than they ever would judge other nations, while they downplay, deny or elide our accomplishments.
They don’t just view us as no better than other nations, but as much worse. Ilhan Omar says that Somalia is better than America (though she seems frustratingly unwilling to go back there), illegal thugs from Mexico wave their flag and burn ours, and Nikole Hannah-Jones’s influential leftist screed blames America for 1619 (which we shouldn’t have to point out was a century and a half before America existed) and denigrates 1776.
Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan was well calculated to enrage the left, and boy did it! Their primary response was summarized by creepy Andrew Cuomo, then governor of one of our largest states: “America was never that great.”
On this Fourth of July, let the left have that pinched and sour lie. I’ll stick with the idea in one of my favorite poems, this one from Sir Walter Scott. It starts with these lines:
“Breathes there a man, with soul so dead/Who never to himself hath said,/This is my own, my native land!/Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,/ As home his footsteps he hath turn’d,/ From wandering on a foreign strand!”
(I wish the complainers on the left would spend a little more time wandering on a foreign strand, instead of staying here and b*tching.)
The end of the verse switches to contemplating the rightful end such a person will come to:
“The wretch, concentred all in self/Living, shall forfeit fair renown,/ And, doubly dying, shall go down/ To the vile dust, from which he sprung,/ Unwept, unhonour’d, and unsung.”
Walter knew what he was talking about.
So here’s the reporting on the Gallup poll’s results. In 13 left-leaning publications – HuffPo, Daily Kos, Axios, Newseek, etc. – the headlines are a variation on a theme: American pride falls to record low. (Remember: this isn’t talking about pride in your sexual tastes or fetishes. That was last month.)
Several publications are a little more dramatic (“Americans have never hated being Americans more,” says the New Republic), or identify the real cause of the problem: “American pride plunges to new low under Trump,” says Alternet; “National Pride in American takes dramatic nosedive under Trump,” sneers the Daily Beast.
So the message is clear: more Americans than ever think that America sucks, and it’s all Trump’s fault. Unexpectedly!
But you won’t be shocked to find that the feckless media bottom-dwellers skewed their headlines. Because the poll itself breaks the results down by political groups, and it finds that Republicans are pretty consistently proud to be American, while pride among Independents has been slowly slipping over the last 10 years, but is still a majority position.
But the vast majority of diminished pride has happened among the Democrats, 62% of whom were proud to be American last year, while only 36% feel that way now.
So the accurate headline isn’t “Americans’ pride plunges under Trump.” It’s “GOP consistently proud, most Independents proud, Democrats throw a tantrum like whiny little beeyotches when they don’t get their Cadaver in Chief.”
Which leads me to my final point concerning the dramatic differences between the parties. It’s natural for your pride to ebb and flow a little bit, depending on whether your guy is president or not.
Even I (an optimistic, America-loving patriot) – when watching Joe Biden fall up staircases and over sandbags, and scream at the clouds like Grandpa Simpson, and poop on the Pope – had to fight the urge to wear dark glasses and a baseball cap low over my forehead in the hopes that people would mistake me for a miserable Canadian.
But the surprising thing is that pride in our country is not only highest among Republicans, it’s much more consistent. The Gallup poll has tracked national pride since 2001, and in the wake of 9/11, GOP pride was at 90%; for the next 24 years, it averaged right around where it is now, at 92%. It only dipped into the 80s during the 4 years of Biden, and at its low point was still at 84%.
The Democrats started out at 87%, and briefly touched 90% once, in 2002. Since then it’s been a steady decline, staying in the high 70s to low 80s until 2015, when it plunged down to 42% during Trump I. It recovered when Biden began his reign of error, but even then it only reached a high of 62.
The Independents have generally been in between the two parties. It’s a little troubling that Independents’ pride has also been sliding – if less extremely, and with less volatility than the Dems’ – from 76% ten years ago to 53% now. But my instinct is that if you forced Independents to declare for one party or the other, the most patriotic among them would go to the GOP, and the less patriotic to the Dems, leaving both parties about where they are now.
We probably didn’t need this poll to tell us the two main take-aways from the data.
First, Democrats are generally less patriotic than Republicans. Over the last 10 years, which were evenly split between Dem and GOP presidents, only a little over half of Democrats (55%) said they are proud to be American, while more than 90% of Republicans said that over the last 25 years.
Second, Democrats’ patriotism is much less steadfast; it waxes and wanes depending on whether or not they control the White House.
On both of those points, I’d much rather be on our side than on theirs. I’m glad that we can see America with all of its flaws – and yes, these are often expressed in the foolish choices manifested in badly chosen presidents – and still love it, and be proud to be American.
Watching so many on the other side cling to their bitterness and focus it on this amazing country is hard to take. Their rejection of our founding and traditions leads to so much unhappiness, as we’ve seen in the degradation of the big blue cities, the hollowed-out universities, and the lost reputation of the compromised legacy media.
But we can’t let that temper our own optimism. We’re winning a lot of battles now, and the ship of state is slowly turning in the right direction. Our successes and their failures are making the differences between our philosophies all the more stark, and more and more people are voting with their feet,
We’re still facing a lot of challenges, and we’ve got a lot of obstacles to overcome. Getting our budget under control, repairing the damage caused by an open border, and cleaning up our damaged institutions is going to be a long slog. But every generation since the founding has had to fight to preserve the republic, so we know that it can be done.
And we can see the road the Democrats are on – in California, Chicago, and now New York City – and we know how they’re going to end up.
Unwept, unhonour’d, and unsung.
Happy Independence Day, everybody!
Hamas delenda est!
Martin Simpson 