Americans Can’t Even Agree on What Our Country Is
While Americans grill burgers and hot dogs, enjoy a dip in the pool, and await the annual July Fourth fireworks display, I remain happily surprised that this day of communal patriotism is still widely accepted and generally celebrated. To be blunt, it feels like the country is coming apart at the seams and lacking some shared purpose.
And I’m not alone in feeling this way. About two-thirds of Americans say the country is “more divided than usual.” To make matters worse, young people are already behaving that way. A Generation Lab poll conducted for NBC News last year confirmed that young Americans are segregating themselves along partisan lines.
While this division is playing out across America, it is being stoked by political and cultural influencers on the left and right who, increasingly, have given up on the American experiment and/or reject the founders’ ethos. Indeed, the one thing that the left and the right seem to have in common these days is a belief that America isn’t all that great.
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Many on the left see America as a racist country whose present status is the fruit from the poisonous tree. They want to uproot our history and destroy any lingering reverence for our founders.
Many on the right now advocate a different sort of anti-Americanism (ironically cloaked in flag-waving nationalism) that says America is too weak, secular, and decadent to be a great nation.
Some even seem to hold authoritarian or illiberal regimes—like those in Russia and Hungary—in high regard. Others believe it’s high time for a national divorce.
To a lesser extent, these same themes are being mainstreamed by traditional conservatives. Consider, for example, Nikki Haley’s nostalgic yearning for better times that never really existed.
The consequences are hard to quantify. If you’re a progressive who believes America is evil and racist, then its laws are illegitimate, and its values surely aren’t worth exporting anywhere else. (Never mind the fact that this creates a vacuum where the values that get exported come from glorious bastions of liberal tolerance like China and Russia.)
Likewise, if you’re a rightwinger who believes that the left has taken over your nation, stolen elections, and indoctrinated (“groomed”) your children, then why wouldn’t you support an insurrection—or worse?
To those on the left, I would say that America has made progress. We may not be perfect, and we sure have more improvements to make, but we are a more perfect union that we were in the past.
To those on the right, America is still the greatest, freest country in the world. And the way to conserve traditional American values is by living your best life and supporting democratic processes and institutions—not via an illiberal power grab.
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These sentiments are unlikely to sway anyone on either side. America faces a serious identity crisis, and there are many reasons we have arrived at this destination. Both the news media and social media deserve some of the blame for exacerbating existing divisions in our country.
But I think the primary reason so many modern Americans have proven to be so susceptible to the siren call of illiberalism stems from fundamental values of liberal democracy no longer being inculcated in young Americans via civics class in school.
As The Wall Street Journal reported back in May, just “13 percent of eighth-graders met proficiency standards for U.S. history, meaning they could explain major themes, periods, events, people, ideas and turning points in the country’s history.”
To some degree, this tracks with an across-the-board decline in test scores that were a predictable result of COVID-19 school closures. Regardless, consider the stakes for our democracy. “These data are a national concern,” said Peggy Carr, National Center for Education Statistics commissioner. “The health of our democracy depends on informed and engaged citizens.”
Principles like the rule of law, constitutionalism, pluralism, individual rights, etc., are not obvious or hereditary. They must be taught, but clearly they are not. The atrocious results predate the COVID shutdowns.
According to one 2021 survey, “Two thirds of [college] students (66 percent) say it is acceptable to shout down a speaker to prevent them from speaking on campus, and almost one in four (23 percent) say it is acceptable to use violence to stop a campus speech.”
Good luck trying to persuade the politicians and influencers on the left or the right to start acting responsibly (and give up the votes and the clicks). But when it comes to teaching civics to the next generation of Americans, the good news is (a) this is possible, and (b) some of the work has already begun.
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I recently talked with Hanna Skandera, CEO and president of the Daniels Fund, a private charitable foundation that is working with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation to sponsor Civics Bees where 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students can compete to win cash prizes.
Skandera, the former secretary of education for New Mexico under Republican Gov. Susana Martinez, sees civics education as perhaps the best way to begin turning things around.
Restoring a belief in American exceptionalism and democratic values is not an easy or quick solution, but we have a shot if we can instill the values of liberal democracy in our American youths.
We didn’t get into this mess overnight, and we won’t get out of it overnight, either. This will be a generational struggle that requires an all-hands-on-deck mentality.
Otherwise, there may not be much to celebrate next Independence Day.
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