VICTOR JOECKS: Why Democrats aren’t proud to be Americans

It’s time to add young Democrats who are proud to be American to the endangered species list.

On Monday, Gallup released its annual poll on how Americans feel about their country. The results were dismal. Just 58 percent of those surveyed were extremely or very proud to be an American. That was a record low and a nine-point decline from last year. In 2001, the first year Gallup conducted this poll, it was 87 percent. That jumped to 91 percent after 9/11.

There is a clear partisan difference in this statistic. Among Republicans, 92 percent are extremely or very proud to be American. Among Democrats, it’s 36 percent. That’s a massive drop-off. Donald Trump winning the White House only explains some of it. In 2024, Democrats’ pride was at 62 percent. In contrast, Republican pride dipped only to 84 percent during the Biden administration.

Age is another factor. Both millennial and Gen Z Americans are less proud to be American than older generations. If you combine these factors, you get results that are downright terrifying.

“More Gen Z Democrats say they have little or no pride in being an American (32 percent) than say they are extremely or very proud,” Gallup found.

As concerning as these findings are, they shouldn’t be surprising. Consider what the education establishment has been telling students, both in K-12 schools and universities. Teachers claim America is systemically racist. Land acknowledgments send the message that you live on stolen property and that America is illegitimate. Howard Zinn’s Marxist history textbook, “A People’s History of the United States,” has sold millions of copies. The factually flawed 1619 Project asserts that America’s true founding took place when African slaves were first sold in Virginia. A curriculum based on it has been taught in thousands of classrooms.

Further, the left accuses the United States of being a patriarchy. Every year, Democrat politicians decry the mythical gender pay gap. They claim women have murder their preborn babies in some states.

Kamala Harris didn’t lose because she was a lousy candidate, they say. It was misogyny and racism.

Leftists blame capitalism for income inequality. New York City Democrats selected an open socialist as their mayoral nominee. The left’s rejection of America’s Judeo-Christian values isn’t helping here either.

The common thread is a Marxist worldview that splits people into arbitrary groups, be it based on race, sex, income, religion or something else. The successful group is deemed the oppressor, while the victim group is labeled oppressed. This worldview holds that those in the successful group didn’t succeed on their merits. They exploited the less successful group to obtain their elevated status.

This is why the left celebrates victims.

It shouldn’t be hard to see how this applies here. America is the greatest, most militarily powerful and economically dominant country in the history of the world. Instead of being proud of that fact, many Democrats have embraced a worldview that makes them ashamed of it.

Victor Joecks’ column appears in the Opinion section each Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Contact him at vjoecks@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4698. Follow @victorjoecks on X.