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The Death of Patriotism
[Daily Reckoning] From 1998 to the present, the percentage of Americans who say that patriotism is an important value has crashed from 70% to 38%. The bulk of the fall has happened since 2019.More results will be discussed in a bit but let’s first focus on this issue of patriotism. The poll doesn’t define for the respondents what patriotism is but reflect on the word. It can mean love of country and homeland. It’s perhaps true that this has fallen. That’s believable since the U.S. in three years ceased to place freedom as a first principle. Indeed, there is a growing cultural movement, extending from academia to the mainstream, that encourages loathing of American history and its achievements. No "Founding Father" is safe from being called the worst-possible names. Hatred of this country has risen to be an expected norm. But the problem goes even deeper. When you are locked in your home, your business is closed, your church is shut, your neighbors are screaming at you to mask up, then the doctors come at you with shots you don’t want, and you are further prevented from leaving the country to anywhere but Mexico, and the president calls the unvaccinated enemies of the people, sure, one can imagine that affections for the homeland decline. AMERICANS HAVE LOST FAITH IN THEIR INSTITUTIONS But there is another important pillar of patriotism. It is about trust in the civic institutions of the country. These include schools, courts, politics and all the institutions of government at all levels. Civic trust in these are surely at rock bottom. The courts did not protect us. The schools shut, particularly the public ones, which are supposed to be the crowning achievement of Progressive ideology. Our doctors turned on us. And let’s say that we consider the media to be part of civic culture. It has been that way since at least FDR’s Fireside Chats. It’s always been the mouthpiece for what we are supposed to be thinking about as a people. The media too turned on regular people for three years, calling our parties super-spreader events, jeering pastors who held worship services, demonizing live concerts and screaming at everyone to stay home and stay glued to the tube. Yet at the same time, they encouraged mass protests in the wake of the death of George Floyd. Think about the logic, or lack thereof. Yes, such evil antics tend to lessen public respect for all the institutions involved, especially when objections to these policies were censored by all the institutions we were supposed to trust with our data and friend networks. They turned out to be wholly owned too. Posted by: Besoeker 2023-04-03 |
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