A Tale of TWO Americas
"The college-educated professionals who began to take over the Democratic Party in the 1970s prided themselves on having a sophisticated grasp of American history. They recoiled from the Republicans’ crude, coercive patriotism, which demanded a kind of national idolatry—a celebration of America that was blind to slavery, Native American genocide, Jim Crow, Japanese internment, the Vietnam War. In Republican politics, love of country became a negative force, almost the same thing as hatred of compatriots in the opposition. National symbols such as the flag, the anthem, and the Pledge of Allegiance turned into partisan weapons. In 1988, the performance of patriotism constituted most of George H. W. Bush’s presidential campaign and might have cost Michael Dukakis the election."
“'The Republicans learned to own the flag and own the symbols,' the Georgetown University historian Michael Kazin, who has written numerous books on the American left, told me. At the same time, an influential strain of thought from the ’60s anti-war movement became left-wing orthodoxy: the idea of the U.S. as an almost uniquely awful nation, the source of most of humanity’s ills—white supremacy, patriarchy, homophobia, militarism, settler colonialism, environmental destruction. Howard Zinn’s immensely popular A People’s History of the United States, published in 1980, taught several generations of young Americans on the left to see patriotism as an embrace of something evil..."
"In the past decade, profound pessimism about the American experiment has grown beyond the niche viewpoint of American-studies professors. With the universities came important sectors of the public..."
"For very different reasons, in recent years the progressive left and the nationalist right have reached the same conclusion: The 'abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times,' is a mirage, a trap, a lie. It doesn’t define us as Americans."
"Few politicians say this out loud, or even articulate it to themselves..."
"Nearly three decades later, what are the grounds for patriotism? The institutions created at the founding no longer work well. Our elected leaders have sunk to abysmal depths of selfishness, corruption, and cowardice. The words of the Declaration bring tears to your eyes and the taste of ashes to your mouth. 'It’s not easy to defend the American ideals, because there’s so much cynicism about how they’ve been used and politicized,' Kazin said. 'Young people are much less enamored of the ideals as they understand them, much less willing to be proud of the country. They’ve been tainted by fierce ideological conflict...'”
"What Americans have in common is a way of life made by their creed..."
"Around the globe, autocracy is on the march and democracy’s reputation is in decline as its leading light extinguishes itself. In America, most of your fellow citizens in both parties think democracy has stopped working on their behalf. You have to make the case that all the promised shortcuts to greatness are roads to hell—that there is no path toward a more decent life except through the common effort of free and equal citizens. And you have to keep believing it in the face of their utter folly. The only way to be a patriot is to work together with those fools, your fellow Americans, to stop this growing tyranny so that we have a chance to redeem ourselves":
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/11/american-patriotism-democracy-culture/684337
