The Patriotism Gap

On America's 250th birthday, we are teetering on a brink.

On June 14, 2026, the White House hosted an historic and unconventional, albeit quintessentially Trumpian, celebration called UFC Freedom 250, kicking off the upcoming 250^th anniversary of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. It featured a seven-bout UFC card and a musical performance by the Zac Brown Band, which opened the event with Brown singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” live on the White House South Lawn, backed by the United States Marine Band.

The unabashedly patriotic spectacle predictably sparked controversy and Trump-hating outrage. At least one scheduled performer pulled out of the event rather than appear to be aligned with Trump’s politics, but Zac Brown defended his presence there by noting, “This is patriotism, not politics. F--k all the division. I don’t believe in that. I love this country.”

A couple of weeks later, in an episode of ABC’s daytime talk show The View, co-hostess Joy Behar played a clip of comedian Larry David calling the White House event “a travesty,” adding that it made him “embarrassed to be an American.”

“And of course Larry is embarrassed to be an American,” Behar chimed in. “In that way, we should all be.”

This contrast – between Americans who put patriotism over politics on the one hand, and on the other, Americans who have swapped out love of country for love of Party – highlights the volatile state of America today as we mark 250 years as the freest, most prosperous country on Earth.

That contrast has been confirmed by recent polls quantifying the gaping chasm between Republicans and Democrats regarding their perspectives on how they feel about America.

An Elon University/YouGov America 250 National Survey, for example, performed between April 30^th and May 4^th, 2026, asked respondents, “Is there any other country on Earth you would rather live in than the United States today?” to which a jaw-dropping 55 percent of Democrats replied yes. A still-shocking 38 percent of Independents also said yes while only 10 percent of Republicans gave the same answer.

Asked how true or untrue the statement “I am proud to be an American” is, a whopping 83 percent of Republicans declared “very true”; only 26 percent of Democrats agreed.

Can a nation survive when such a significant percentage of the population has little-to-no allegiance to it?

As further evidence of a partisan divide, the poll also asked, “Who has been the best President in United States history?” Democrats overwhelmingly voted for the radical Leftist Barack Obama, while Republicans put Donald Trump at number one, with more than twice as many votes as George Washington received. Trump received a total of zero votes from Democrats, while only two percent of Republicans named Obama.

Another poll, a mid-June survey from the Economist/YouGov, asked respondents to rank how they feel about America among the world’s countries. Opinions were predictably divided sharply along party lines. A mere eight percent of Democrats believe America is “the greatest,” while more than five times as many Republicans, 44 percent, said the same. Only 14 percent of Democrats categorize America as “among the greatest,” as opposed to 31 percent of Republicans; another 12 percent of Republicans rank the country as above average, meaning the vast majority of the GOP (87 percent) rank America as either the greatest, among the greatest, and better than average in status compared to other countries.

A plurality of Democrats, 25 percent, believe America is “worse than average” when compared to other countries. Another 14 percent of Democrats said America is “among the worst” countries, and six percent deemed it “the worst.” That means nearly half, or 45 percent, of Democrats think America is at best worse than average. By contrast, only 12 percent of Republicans categorize America as worse than average or the worst. (Opinions among independents were more widespread, as 16 percent said America is among the greatest, and 16 percent said it is worse than average).

Overall, 42 percent of respondents reported they are “very proud” and 18 percent “somewhat proud” to be Americans. Republicans, at 78 percent, were the most likely voters to say they are “very proud,” with 15 percent saying they are “somewhat proud.” Only 3 percent of Republicans declared they are ashamed to be American, and only 4 percent said they are “neither proud nor ashamed.”

By contrast, the survey found that over a quarter of Democrats, 26 percent, are “somewhat ashamed” to be an American, with 12 percent “very ashamed.” That is nearly twice the number of all U.S. adult citizens polled.

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This May, the reliably Left-leaning The New Yorker chose to publish a lengthy piece by Arthur Krystal asking, “How Problematic Is Patriotism?” What’s problematic about loving one’s homeland, you wonder? Well, Krystal spends 4000 words trashing it as a mere “[a]ttachment to a parcel of land [that] can easily harden into isolationism, jingoism, and racism.” As reasons why no one should be proud of this country, as Joy Behar put it, Krystal predictably runs through a litany of America’s “sins” from slavery to the “profoundly un-American” chaos of the FBI-orchestrated “insurrection” of January 6, 2021. He dredges up every quote the internet can disgorge demonizing the love of country, from Borges to Zinn.

Krystal declares that “Patriotism just isn’t cool anymore” – at least, not since the watershed moment of the election of Donald Trump in 2016. The teaser to the New Yorker article reads, “National pride in America has plummeted in the Trump era. Is it worth trying to salvage?” First, the truth is that in the Trump era, it is Democrat pride in America has plummeted; conservative pride has risen, spotlighting the unbridgeable divide between the American Left and Right today. Second, today’s Democrat Party is congenitally anti-American, but what really grinds the Left’s gears is America under Trump, who for all his flaws, is unabashedly and genuinely pro-American. There is no way that the New Yorker would have felt compelled to publish Krystal’s subversive message during a Joe Biden or Kamala Harris regime. It would have been unnecessary.

The Left is incapable of distinguishing the country from whatever its current government happens to be because the Left believes in the totalitarian lie that government can save us, especially big government – the bigger the better. That is why Democrats feel comparatively more pride in the nation when Barack Obama or Joe Biden sits in the White House, but want to burn America to the ground when Donald Trump resides there. The Right, on the other hand, maintains a love for this country no matter which party is in power, because we know that America is bigger than any one administration, any president, any party.

The New Yorker article encapsulates the Left-wing attitude that America doesn’t deserve our love, that Americans who claim to be patriots have a jingoistic “amnesia” about our checkered history; after all, didn’t the Constitution exclude women, the poor, and the “enslaved”?

Instead of feeling jazzed about celebrating the nation’s 250^th, Arthur Krystal is bracing himself for “an excess of foolish excess” under the Trump administration. Indeed, President Trump has promised the “largest fireworks show in history” this July 4 – and why not? He is leading a movement to Make America Great Again, and the 250^th anniversary is a special milestone. Krystal no doubt feels the UFC America 250 event, which galvanized so many patriots across the country, qualified as “foolish excess” as well.

The New Yorker concludes with this advice: “Forget the word ‘patriotism.’”

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How did we arrive at this patriotism gap? We got here via more than a half century of the cultural Marxist assault on the culture, the “long march through the institutions” which resulted in the radical Left takeover of every influential arena from the news media to the entertainment industry to education. Through those organs spread the anti-American narrative that our nation’s origins were rooted in racism and slavery, not liberty; that our country has historically been a fount of oppression, exploitation, and genocide, not a force for good in the world; and that, as Barack Obama put it, “American exceptionalism” is no more exceptional than British exceptionalism or Greek exceptionalism.

That toxic narrative has successfully poisoned generations of Americans and driven a widening wedge between Left and Right, between young and old, between urban and rural. And American now finds itself, on its 250^th birthday, teetering on a brink. Which way we fall – toward chaos and collapse, or toward renewed unity and vibrancy – will depend upon which party prevails in the current cold civil war – a cold civil war that has already turned hot – in which we are deeply engaged.

How do we begin to close the patriotism gap? It will take a concerted, multi-pronged effort involving a wholesale recapture of the institutions still under Leftist control, retooling them from purveyors of indoctrination to defenders of truth.

It will require rebuilding public trust in the institutions such as the media, the healthcare industry, and higher education that we have come to realize betrayed us.

It will require a transparent government wielding cultural influence and legal power to root out and disempower subversive elements in our schools, human resources departments, corporate boardrooms, and government itself.

It will require everyday citizens becoming more engaged in local politics, especially on school boards, in order to counter the radical activists.

It will require dismantling the entrenched power of far-Left unions and the subversive network of the Deep State.

It will require leaders committed to selfless service rather than the lust for power. All this and more.

And this will be an uphill, possibly generational battle, not least because there is precious little optimism on either side of the political aisle about America’s future. The Elon University/YouGov America 250 National Survey referred to above notes that 59% of Republicans feel that, looking ahead to 2076, the United States will likely be more divided politically than it currently is; 69 percent of Democrats feel the same.

On the semiquincentennial anniversary of our exceptional nation, true patriots are gearing up for a glorious spectacle of celebration across the country. Meanwhile, the Democrat Party wants you to forget patriotism, to stay bitterly focused on our country’s historical faults and missteps, and to let one’s Trump Derangement Syndrome-driven rage come to a boil. This, tragically, is where we currently are as a nation.

Beginning this Independence Day, our mission as Americans must be to work passionately and relentlessly to defend our country against the cynicism, the self-loathing, the racial division, and the wars on faith and family that have been inflicted upon us in recent decades. We must do the hard work to close the patriotism gap, reclaim a unified drive toward greatness, and make the next 250 years of American preeminence even more exceptional than the first.