On patriotism and progressivism
These ideals don’t need to be at odds
Today, the United States will celebrate its 247th birthday. As millions of Americans congregate with loved ones to fire up the grills and watch fireworks, many of us will likely also take time to reflect on our country and its history.
That history is no doubt a complicated one. It has included darker times, from slavery and Jim Crow to the Vietnam and Iraq Wars to periods of nativism and exclusion. But it has also seen the United States live up to its founding ideals as a liberal democracy, such as winning hard-fought battles to end slavery and racial discrimination under the law, helping liberate Europe and Asia from Nazi and Imperial Japanese rule, pushing forward scientific discovery and technological progress, and welcoming millions of immigrants to our shores every year.
Indeed, it’s the country’s ability to learn from its mistakes and improve itself that has long made Americans of all backgrounds proud to live here. One group, however, has been a consistent outlier in holding more pessimistic views of America: political progressives.
I was reminded of this a couple months ago when I was out to dinner with a friend whose politics are quite far to the left. At some point in the evening, they asked, skeptically, “What good qualities would you say America even has?” If you’ve ever spent time in progressive circles, you may have come across some variation of this question or heard views that, at best, cast doubt on the idea that America has many—or any—redeeming qualities.
These sentiments are not new. A 2014 Pew survey found that the lone ideological group in which a minority said they often felt proud to be American was “solid liberals.” This group’s feelings about their country seemed to grow worse after Donald Trump won the presidency and have persisted since he left office:
In an October 2018 report from the Hidden Tribes project, those identified as “progressive activists” were nearly three times more likely than the average person to say they were “ashamed to be an American.”
A December 2020 survey from More In Common, the group behind the Hidden Tribes report, found that a majority of Americans—including a majority of people in nearly every demographic category—said they were “proud to be American.” The one exception? Progressive activists, just a third of whom agreed with that sentiment.
A 2021 Pew survey showed that less than a quarter of all Americans—including a fairly small share of traditional liberals—believed that “there are other countries that are better than the U.S.” But fully 75% of those on the “progressive left” supported that statement. Similarly, in a June 2022 Echelon Insights poll, “strong progressives” disagreed with the idea that America is “the greatest country in the world” by a margin of 66–28%. They were the only group across age, race, gender, ideology, and political party—other than a slight majority of Gen Z—to hold this view. By comparison, two-thirds of all respondents agreed with that statement.
In another More In Common survey from last July, a whopping 76% of Americans said that American identity was important to them. Again, majorities of every ideological sub-group agreed—except for progressive activists, just 35% of whom embraced being American as part of their identity. This cohort was also the only one in which a majority disagreed that “a story of duty, honor, and service to the nation” described their family’s experience in America.
It is perfectly normal for citizens of any country to occasionally grow frustrated, and there has been plenty for Americans to be distressed about in recent years. Over just the past two decades, the country has endured two wars, a recession, the rise of a reactionary right wing, a once-in-a-century pandemic, racial unrest, an insurrection, inflation, threats to abortion rights, rising crime and gun violence, feverish culture war fights over race and gender, and more.
At some point, though, persistent frustration with America’s blemishes and an insistence on dwelling on them—if divorced from a recognition of the country’s enduring virtues—risks snowballing into outright antipathy and self-hatred. We have seen this begin to manifest among some on the far left who have attempted to rewrite the story of our founding, arguing that it was not based on the values set forth in 1776 in the Declaration of Independence, which have guided us for the past two-and-a-half centuries; rather, it was based on the nation’s original sin of slavery, which began in 1619 when the first ships transporting African slaves arrived on our shores. The conscious effort to re-frame the story of America in this way demonstrates a level of cynicism that simply doesn’t resonate with most Americans.
And this kind of sustained and vocal bitterness could lead to headaches for America’s left-of-center party, the Democrats: though significant majorities of the country do want public schools to teach a full accounting of U.S. history, including the less admirable parts, recent surveys show that at least two-thirds of Americans are also proud of their country. In politics, it’s a good bet that you won’t have much success if voters perceive your party to be the one disavowing patriotism and looking down on those who embrace it.
Importantly, many Democrats don’t possess such lousy views of America. In several of the above surveys, other left-of-center ideological blocs were far less cynical about their country than the loudest and most strident progressives were. We also don’t have to reach far back to find Democratic presidents talking proudly about their country.
Additionally, it’s not as though Republicans are clearly owning patriotism these days either, as they struggle with their own fidelity to America’s constitutional values. This gives Democrats an opening to reassert themselves as the country’s party of patriots, but they will need to convince some of the more progressive elements in their coalition to come along. In addition to encouraging Americans to learn from their past, there are a number of things the party can actively celebrate that align with both their values and the founders’ vision:
First Amendment protections. It may seem obvious, but constitutional rights to free speech, worship, journalism, protest, and the lobbying of one’s government are a core part of what makes America great. Governments all around the world often trample on these rights with impunity, and even other Western democracies don’t always guarantee the same robust speech protections as the United States. Some on the left have lost their way on these issues in recent years, but protecting freedom of speech and protest are especially vital for minority groups to ensure their voices can be heard—a point that progressives should embrace.
Immigrant culture. Since the country’s founding, we have been a nation of immigrants. As of 2023, more immigrants lived in the United States than in any other country by a long shot, a sign of America’s enduring allure to people around the world searching for a better life. We also harbor more refugees than any other western democracy.1 Moreover, America is among the most welcoming countries for immigrants and refugees. Despite our at times troubled past on these matters, we have often remained committed to our original promise to be a destination for the “tired…poor…huddled masses, yearning to breathe free.” That is something to be proud of.
Pluralism & diversity. As the country has attracted people from all around the world, it has naturally grown more diverse. Rates of interracial marriage have gone up exponentially over the past half-century—as has public approval of them. This, again, is a testament to the American experiment: our young country has strived to become the first large and enduring multiracial democracy ever.2 Unlike most societies throughout history—and contrary to the claims of some progressives—the U.S. was not founded on the basis of a shared trait like race, ethnicity, language, religion, or geography. Rather, as former President Lyndon Johnson put it, we were “the first nation in the history of the world to be founded with a purpose,” leaving the door open to people of all backgrounds and identities coexisting here. Even though it has sometimes happened in fits and starts, we have inexorably overcome racial and ethnic strife and become a more tolerant nation. This is something that liberals, especially, should celebrate.
There is plenty more that the U.S. has done right. Of course, no country is perfect. There’s still work to do to make life better for millions of our fellow countrymen and women. But, as another former Democratic president famously said, there is nothing that is wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America. That has proven to be the case time and again.
This July 4, those who hold a more cynical outlook about the United States would do well to remember that patriotism isn’t a call for blind conformity or refusal to criticize one’s government. On the contrary, at the root of patriotism is a sincere belief that we should hold our country to the highest of standards, criticizing it when it messes up but also celebrating it when it gets things right.
To quote American icon Mark Twain, “Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.”
A version of this post first appeared in The Liberal Patriot.
This data is from mid-2021 and does not account for the Ukraine refugee crisis that began in 2022, but only one other western democracy (Germany) even came close to matching the United States’ refugee totals in 2021.
And lest anyone think someplace like Europe is a post-racial utopia, I’d encourage everyone to check in on the state of professional soccer on the continent.