America 250: Has the Left Abandoned Patriotism?

Even during times of trial and hardship over the first 250 years of this still-young nation, an overwhelming number of Americans considered themselves patriotic. It was taken for granted that, despite our historical imperfections, citizens of this country appreciated what a blessed land they had the good fortune to call their own. From the reverse angle, the ten million plus migrants who poured over our southern border during the Biden years punctuate the point that the tired, poor, and huddled masses beckoned by the Statue of Liberty more than a century ago still view America as the land of promise and opportunity. But what about the left?

What Is a Patriot on the Left?

As we prepare to celebrate a quarter millennium of independence over the coming weeks, will ascendant progressives participate in the observances and festivities, or will they throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater, trashing American history as a whole because a man they despise happens to be president at this time? Come to think of it, would they not feel the same way if George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan were in the Oval Office? And how would they celebrate 250 years if Kamala Harris had been elected president? Would they skip the flag-waving and focus on systemic racism and the struggle to shake off the shackles long imposed on people of color by a nation founded in slavery?

Sure, you will hear protestations from those who see only the shortcomings of America’s history to the effect that real patriots are willing to stand up to illegitimate authority, protest, and demand change. True enough, but when your entire raison d’etre is asserting how corrupt, rigged, and unfair the system is, unmoored to the reality of abundant freedom and opportunity, the question of whether you are patriotic, whether you love your homeland, largely answers itself. Love it or leave it has been replaced by hate it and remain.

200 Years vs 250 Years

At the time of its bicentennial in 1976, the country was still in recovery from the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the Vietnam War, and the Watergate scandal. With the resignation of President Richard Nixon less than a year in the rearview mirror, the country was yearning for a return to normalcy and in a mood to cut loose and celebrate. Majestic tall ships were showcased along New York’s Hudson River and local celebrations dotted the national landscape. The desire for a renewed spirit of patriotism filled the land.

In sharp contrast, the country is now all but defined by the partisan divide and cultural schism between right and left that we are witnessing day after day. The goal of national unity and shared patriotism seems more distant than ever. Polling from Pew Research Center and others shows that a majority of Americans feel the country’s best days are behind it. Trust in government, media, and other central institutions remains near historic lows, replaced by a climate of political exhaustion and economic anxiety.

All Gloom and Doom on the Left

A recent article in The Nation effectively echoes the fury, gloom, and doom rampant among today’s left: “Independence Day will be a moment demanding more than mindless flag-waving. It’ll be a day for national soul-searching.” And then the author ties the president to his own belief in collectivism, writing that “Trump embodies the dangers of self-aggrandizement that grow out of American individualism. He is the worst-case scenario of the Jeffersonian dream of the ‘pursuit of happiness, ‘ curdling into nothing more than soulless accumulation and boasting.”

MS NOW anchor Ali Velshi said the quiet part out loud recently about how his fellow travelers have felt about the country since Trump was first elected, and likely before: “[T]here is a deep unease about this. I feel a deep unease about the celebrations to which I am invited to mark the 250th anniversary of our so-called democracy. In America’s case, anniversaries often gloss over the racial dynamics underlying much of America’s history and politics, issues that remain unsolved, because America has never actually fully reckoned with its racist past and its original founding sin of slavery.”

Of course, most Americans would disagree with the notion that we have never reckoned with our past. Some would argue the opposite, that we have been hyper-focused on race for decades, ever since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the advent of Affirmative Action. The four years of the Joe Biden administration represented the radical culmination of more than half a century of a supersized welfare state designed to sort and divide the country by race. But some things never change, and some people will never be happy. The common characteristic of most on the left is the desire, or perhaps the need, to define the country strictly by its most regrettable episodes, rolling the clock back decades to justify open hostility that seems unquenchable.

Then there is the issue, and it’s a big one, of the U.S. Constitution. The left has long had an adversarial relationship with much of it: the diffusion of power between the three branches of government, the inviolable civil right to keep and bear arms outlined in the Second Amendment, and the deference to states called for in the Tenth Amendment that limits the powers of the central government. What these objections all have in common is the desire for maximum power and control to be invested in the federal government, unencumbered by the desires of the 50 individual states. It’s all summed up by a finding in a recent survey by Gallup revealing that a full two-thirds of registered Democrats prefer socialism to capitalism.

Viewed from that perspective, it’s no wonder the left feels there is little to celebrate as we approach July 4th. But 250 years into the most successful experiment ever in governance, lifting more people out of poverty than any other system devised by man, it begs the ultimate question: if things are so rotten here, why stay? After all, there are many collectivist states spanning the globe that would welcome you in and fulfill your utopian dream.