By all accounts, America’s 250th birthday celebration is already shaping up to be the greatest in our history. Hundreds of thousands of events across the country will host millions of Americans in all 50 states, culminating in the largest fireworks display in world history with over 860,754 shells launched from our capital.
For those of us who genuinely love this country, we view these festivities as fit for a nation celebrating 250 years of exceptionalism. But unfortunately, a growing number of younger Americans simply don’t see the purpose of our patriotism.
A new PRRI poll finds that just 39% of Americans say they are extremely or very proud to be American. Unsurprisingly, that number climbs to 83% among Republicans while sinking to 31% among Democrats, so the partisan gap is real. But the more troubling number is generational.
SOCIALISM IS BACK. AMERICA SHOULD REMEMBER WHY IT FAILED
Another poll in recent years found that only 18% of adults under 35 call themselves extremely proud to be American, against 50% of those over age 55. The reality is that patriotism is in retreat among our nation’s youth, leaving many to wonder why.
It’s tempting to assume that the problem is a lack of understanding of America’s history. We often hear that if young people just had a better understanding of America’s story, then they would suddenly brim with pride for their country. It’s true that they could greatly benefit from a deeper understanding of our founding and the stories of heroism that built our country into who we are today. But the next generation doesn’t just need more American history. They actually need world history.
I would bet that many people who question American exceptionalism probably can recite much of America’s story well enough. What they don’t know is how the rest of the world has actually lived, how fragile and how cruel most governments across history have been. If they did, they would look at what we built here with very different eyes.
Take our economy, for example. The roster of self-proclaimed socialists gaining momentum in the Democratic Party can lecture ad infinitum about the failures of America’s economic system, but you might notice that they don’t spend much time comparing it against socialism’s track record.
Sure, capitalism isn’t perfect, but there’s no secret why political grifters do little reflection on how their alternative has fared. Indeed, every single time socialism has been tried, it has failed.
That’s why it’s important for younger citizens not just to study America’s history of economic achievement, but to compare it against other forms throughout history. We must also tell the truth about the famines in communist China that killed roughly 20 million people, or Josef Stalin’s socialist regime that slaughtered millions of his own people. Across the last century alone, regimes built on the promise of a socialist utopia instead produced breadlines and mass graves.
It’s easy to cast aspersions on America’s system when you refuse to confront the truth of other alternatives. Even the darkest parts of American history must be placed in their proper context.
For example, almost every civilization that ever existed practiced some version of slavery. It was not an American invention, nor a Western one, nor the handiwork of any single race. It was a near-universal evil.
Yet a great many young Americans have been taught that their country is uniquely wicked, that the chattel slavery of the 1800s South was the only kind that ever existed. They have never heard the rest of the story.
If anything sets America and the broader West apart on this question, it is how hard we worked to end it. Legendary economist Thomas Sowell put the point sharply:
“What was peculiar about the West was not that it participated in the worldwide evil of slavery, but that it later abolished that evil, not only in Western societies but also in other societies subject to Western control or influence.”
THE MOST RADICAL IDEA IN AMERICAN HISTORY WASN’T DEMOCRACY
Ending it was not a matter of passing a law and moving on. Long after the United States banned the importation of slaves, the trade continued across the Atlantic, so the U.S. Navy’s Africa Squadron patrolled those waters for years as they fought to finally end an evil institution that infected the entire world for centuries.
So, to those who don’t see any reason to celebrate our history, go study the long and bloody history of human civilization and notice how rare and recent our freedoms really are. To those who rather sneer at the system that made this the most prosperous nation on earth, go abroad and see how other nations manage to provide for their people. Soon, you might understand what makes America not just worth celebrating, but worth dying for.
Jeremy Hunt, a West Point graduate, served as a U.S. Army intelligence captain. A former Georgia congressional candidate, Jeremy is now a fellow at Hudson Institute, where he writes on national security, politics, and American life.