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Amid Protests, Gallup Poll Finds Pride In America At Record Low

   DailyWire.com
Graffiti is seen on a wall after demonstrators clashed with law enforcement near the Seattle Police Departments East Precinct shortly after midnight on June 8, 2020 in Seattle, Washington.
Photo by David Ryder/Getty Images

A new Gallup poll conducted between May 28 and June 4 shows that the constant stream of anti-American rhetoric coming from the Left for decades has reached fruition; Gallup found that pride in America has dipped to the lowest point since Gallup first asked the question in 2001.

A majority of Americans are still proud of the nation, with 42% stating they were “extremely proud” and 21% “proud,” but those are the lowest figures Gallup has yet reported. 15% of respondents stated they were “moderately proud,” 12% “only a little proud” and 9% “not at all proud.”

Gallup noted, “The percentage of Americans expressing extreme pride in the country has been declining over the past 20 years, especially recently. Just over half, 55%, felt extreme pride in the initial January 2001 reading, prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In the three subsequent years, between 65% and 70% were extremely proud as the public rallied around the flag. By 2005, that reading fell to 61% and remained steady until 2015 when it dropped to 54%.”

Gallup noted that the decline in American pride preceded the Trump era, writing, “The current reading is the sixth consecutive year since then that it has fallen to a new low in Gallup’s trend.” WTOP noted that there had been “an accelerating decline in national pride after peaking at 92% around 2003.”

In July 2019, Gallup reported that 76% of Republicans were “extremely proud” to be Americans; 41% of Independents felt the same way, but only a paltry 22% of Democrats agreed.

Gallup opined that the demographic subgroups least likely to express extreme pride in America have traditionally been Democrat-leaning, including “young adults aged 18-29, women, college graduates and nonwhites.”

The percentage of women expressing “extreme pride” in America dropped from 50% to 34% since 2016; nonwhites agreeing dropped from 45% to 24%, with a 12-point plunge in the last year; respondents aged 18-29 had an interesting odyssey over the last four years as in 2016, 34% felt “extreme pride,” rising to 43% in 2017, then sliding to a current 20%.

Over the last four years, feeling “extreme pride” dropped in the 30-49 age group from 51% to 32%; among those aged 50-64 it dropped from 64% to 48%.

But respondents 65 and older remained steady, with a majority feeling “extreme pride.”

With the incessant attacks on the history of the American republic permeating the educational system, from leftists such as Howard Zinn to the current New York Times “1619 Project,” it’s not surprising that those who attended secondary schools and universities where they were inundated with a constant stream of anti-American rhetoric as well as attacks on Western civilization itself would be less likely to feel pride in the nation that has nurtured them; those over the age of 65 can likely remember when American civics was routinely taught in schools and American pride was as natural as saluting the American flag.

On Monday, the politics editor of Esquire magazine took note of the Gallup Poll and wrote:

It’s hard to say from this Gallup data alone how much of the hit to Americans’ self-conception can be tied to the disgraceful political leadership of the moment, and how much is rooted in the honorable task of long overdue truth-telling … If you want democracy, this moment reminds us, you’ve got to get out in the street and do it yourself. If you want the truth, you must insist on telling it. And then you pull down the Columbus statue … This movement, if it succeeds through sheer civic determination, will usher in a moment that will not be fun for many Americans … It will involve abandoning some aspects of our American civic religion, which has long begun with a conclusion—this is the greatest country in the history of the world, the crimes of which are mere accidents of the past—and built up an entire mythology to support it.

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