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Todd's Take
Tomorrow, my friends, America turns 250. And this week Gallup put a number on something we’ve all known for years: the country is deeply divided in many ways, including whether we're even glad to be here.
Gallup's new poll found 93% of Republicans say they're extremely or very proud to be American. Democrats? 27%. That's a record low in 25 years of Gallup asking the question, and one of the widest partisan gaps they've ever measured. I want to be careful with this, because pride, done wrong, is a sin — Scripture is clear about that. The pride that puts you above God, above His rules, is the same pride that got Adam and Eve run out of a garden. But that's not what we're talking about here.
What I'm talking about is a genuine gratitude and the plain, unearned honor of being born into or welcomed into the freest, most prosperous experiment in self-government the world has ever produced. That kind of pride isn't arrogance. It's closer to what Zig Ziglar meant when he called gratitude the healthiest of all human emotions.
So why the gap? Some of it, I think, is virtue signaling — a certain kind of person needs an audience to know how bothered they are by an election result, so bothered they can't function, can't go to class, can't fly a flag. The more publicly upset these folks are, the more virtuous they look to their tribe. That's not principle. That's performance.
But here's what I want to say to the roughly one in four Democrats who told Gallup they're still proud to be American: thank you. You're not who I'm talking about today. You disagree with me on some things, and that's fine — but you have more in common with the people listening to this show than with the third of your own party who says they have little to no pride in this country at all. If you love this country and you're tired of a party that treats loving it as embarrassing, the door's open here. And it always will be.
Tomorrow, America turns 250. She's not perfect. She's never claimed to be. But she is good, and she's done more for freedom than any other nation in the history of the world. I'm grateful — and I’m proud to be American. Happy 250th, America.
Conservative, not bitter.
Todd
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Quote of the Day
Gratitude is the healthiest of all human emotions.
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Stack of Stuff
Gallup's own writeup of the poll Todd cited today — 93% of Republicans vs. 27% of Democrats extremely/very proud, a 25-year record low. Read it here
NPR/PBS/Marist ran a similar poll and talked to actual Americans on both sides about how they feel heading into the 250th. Read it here
US News ties the patriotism dip directly to a shrinking flag-flying gap between the parties this Fourth of July weekend. Read it here
Battlefront Spotlight: Government
Part of our ongoing look at the Eight Battlegrounds of the Cold Civil War.
Today's American pride gap isn't really about polling — it's about two totally different theories of government. The Gallup numbers track almost perfectly with a divide worth naming plainly: people who believe government's job is to protect rights and otherwise get out of the way, versus people who believe government exists to engineer fairness into every outcome, down to sea levels in 50 years and equal pay across every job in the country. One theory built the freest, richest nation in history. The other has never once delivered on its promises — and it's not a coincidence that the people most invested in that second theory are also the ones telling pollsters they're least proud of what the first one actually produced.
This fight isn’t just about who wins elections — though, make no mistake, it’s absolutely about that, too — but whether we still believe government exists to secure liberty, or to promise a utopia it can never deliver. Fewer people are buying the promise these days. That's not something to panic about, but it is something to act upon while we still have the opportunity to do so.
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