AMAC Exclusive
The Fourth of July should be a holiday that unites all Americans around love for our country. But just as the Left has attempted to diminish and secularize the true meaning of Christmas, the data show they are also increasingly hostile to the spirit of patriotism that has historically defined Independence Day.
Indeed, this July 4th finds Republicans and Democrats with very different feelings about America and what it represents in the world. A recent Gallup poll finds that while 64% of Republicans are “extremely proud of their country,” only 31% of Democrats say the same. That number has dropped drastically from the 45% of Democrats who were extremely proud of their country in 2016. Gallup’s poll shows that at least 10% more Republicans than Democrats have said they are very proud to be Americans every year for the past two decades.
Another recent survey found that this Independence Day, Republicans will be “almost twice as likely to use patriotic elements like flags, streamers and balloons during the Fourth of July celebration than Democrats.”
The patriotism disparity is perhaps most stark when it comes to the topic of American history. A recent Rasmussen poll found that while 80% of Republicans think America’s history is “something to be proud of,” only 45% of Democrats concur.
Republicans are more likely than Democrats to believe that the Founding Fathers were heroes rather than villains and that statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson should not be taken down.
By wide margins, more Democrats than Republicans support athletes kneeling for the national anthem and protestors burning the flag in the streets (more than 40% of Democrats believe flag burning can be “patriotic”). Overall, Republicans are 23 percentage points more likely than Democrats to say that just looking at the American flag makes them feel patriotic, according to a poll from March of this year.
The unfortunate partisan divide over patriotism is also reflected in the White House. You just won’t see President Biden hugging the American flag, as President Trump memorably did during his years in office.
Last week, when Olympic athlete Gwen Berry turned her back on the American flag and said she was “set up” because her own national anthem was played while she was standing on the podium, the Biden White House shockingly defended Berry’s actions.
The administration has also supported its United Nations Ambassador, who declared to the world that “white supremacy and black inferiority” are “weaved” into “our founding documents and principles.” Biden’s Department of Education has also adopted rules supporting the history curriculum of the discredited New York Times’ 1619 Project, which argues that America’s true birth date is not July 4, 1776 but rather August 1619 and that “racism runs in the very DNA of this country.”
American patriotism and belief in the greatness of the American founding were not always such divisive concepts. There was a time when both Republicans and Democrats celebrated the Founding Fathers and the American flag. It was Senator Biden who once authored legislation to criminalize the burning of the American flag, arguing in 1989 that the flag was “a national symbol of unity and we need unity in this country because we are so diverse.”
Now, Biden appears no longer interested in unifying the country around the flag or the legacy of July 4, 1776. On his first day in office, Biden canceled Trump’s 1776 Commission. The Commission’s purpose was to “better enable a rising generation to understand the history and principles of the founding of the United States in 1776.”
Biden also abolished the National Garden of American Heroes, a park that would have featured statues of great Americans. In addition, Biden scrapped Trump’s executive order authorizing federal prosecution of vandals who desecrated monuments. And he canceled the July 4 fireworks show at Mount Rushmore.
These actions showcase the wide and growing chasm between Democrat and Republican views concerning whether July 4th is really worth celebrating at all.
But perhaps there is another reason Democrats are increasingly cool toward the Fourth of July. As Harvard researchers found, simply attending July 4th festivities significantly increased the chances that both children and adult attendees would identify as Republican in the future.