The Democrats’ Patriotism Problem
They Need a Lot More of It
Two weeks ago, I started revisiting my “Three Point Plan to Fix the Democrats and Their Coalition” from last October. A brisk tour of the polling and political data suggested the Democrats are still in need of serious reform and that the three point plan is as relevant as ever. Here’s the very short version of the plan:
1. Democrats Must Move to the Center on Cultural Issues
2. Democrats Must Promote an Abundance Agenda
3. Democrats Must Embrace Patriotism and Liberal Nationalism
Two weeks ago I discussed cultural issues and last week I discussed abundance. This week I’ll conclude by discussing patriotism.
The Patriotism Problem
In my October piece, I noted that:
Democrats have a bit of a problem with patriotism. It’s kind of hard to strike up the band on patriotism when you’ve been endorsing the view that America was born in slavery, marinated in racism and remains a white supremacist society, shot through with multiple, intersecting levels of injustice that make everybody either oppressed or oppressor on a daily basis. Of course, America today may be a racist, dystopian hellhole, but Democrats assure us that it could get even worse if the Republicans get elected. Then it’ll be a fascist, racist, dystopian hellhole.
As I opined then, that doesn’t seem very inspirational.
What, if anything, has changed since then? Not much, I’d say. Of course, not all Democrats, especially normie working-class Democrats, subscribe to this nightmarish version of their own country. But among Democratic activists and cultural elites such sentiments are very common—and among those who lean progressive, dominant. As Brink Lindsey put it in a recent essay on “The Loss of Faith”:
The most flamboyantly anti-American rhetoric of 60s radicals is now more or less conventional wisdom among many progressives: America, the land of white supremacy and structural racism and patriarchy, the perpetrator of indigenous displacement and genocide, the world’s biggest polluter, and so on.
That conventional wisdom is a problem. It’s why “progressive activists”—8 percent of the population as categorized by the More in Common group, who are “deeply concerned with issues concerning equity, fairness, and America's direction today”—are so unenthusiastic about their country. Just 34 percent of progressive activists say they are “proud to be American” compared to 62 percent of Asians, 70 percent of blacks, and 76 percent of Hispanics, the very groups whose interests these activists claim to represent. Similarly, in an Echelon Insights survey, 66 percent of “strong progressives” (about 10 percent of voters) said America is not the greatest country in the world, compared to just 28 percent who said it is. But the multiracial working class (noncollege voters, white and nonwhite) had exactly the reverse view: by 69-23, they said America is the greatest country in the world.
The uncomfortable fact is that these sentiments, and the view of America they represent, are now heavily associated with Democrats by dint of the very significant weight progressive activists carry within the party, which far transcends their actual numbers. Their voice is further amplified by their strong and frequently dominant influence in associated institutions that lean toward the Democrats: nonprofits, foundations, advocacy groups, academia, legacy media, the arts—the commanding heights of cultural production, as it were. It’s just not cool in these circles to be patriotic.
That’s not to say that Democratic politicians don’t still wear American flag pins on their lapels. They do. And the party’s “Designated Normie”, President Biden, can certainly be counted on to strike a patriotic tone from time to time. In his recent State of the Union address, he even emphasized a slightly nationalist approach, which he apparently felt was quite daring:
And when we do these [infrastructure] projects — and again, I get criticized for this but I make no excuses for it — we’re going to buy American. We’re going to buy American…
Tonight, I’m announcing new standards to require all construction materials used in federal infrastructure projects to be made in America. Made in America. I mean it.
Lumber, glass, drywall, fiber-optic cable.
And on my watch, American roads, bridges and American highways are going to be made with American products as well.
Nor is it unknown for progressive commentators to grudgingly admit there are—or at least have been—some good things about America before they return to their preferred theme of the country’s abundant and appalling sins. But they just don’t seem very enthusiastic about the actually-existing country of America.
It’s all pretty weak tea compared to what’s really needed: a robust revival of the American civil religion in Robert Bellah’s formulation. This is the nonsectarian, quasi-religious faith based around national symbols, founding documents and ideals, holidays, heroes, epic events, rituals and stories that has bound—and can bind—Americans together across social and regional divisions.
But, since the 1960’s, as Brink Lindsey observes:
[F]aith in American civil religion has been wrecked on the shoals of disillusionment…[T]the critical spirit of the mass adversary culture was able to break through the complacency of “national self-worship” and bring into much wider awareness the darkest and most tragic elements of the American past. Among progressives, this revisionist understanding of our history has led to an ebbing — and sometimes, an outright renunciation — of patriotism, in the latter case dismissing it as nothing more than another species of bigotry….For progressives to recover faith in their country, they don’t need to avert their eyes from its dark side. But they likewise cannot turn away from America’s world-historically unique promise — and the immense amount of good which commitment to that promise has made possible, both here and all around the world.
Reviving the American civil religion is a noble cause which is also a precondition for building the robust coalition across social and regional divides that Democrats seek. Democrats have tried uniting the country around the need to dismantle “systemic racism” and promote “equity”….and failed (and will continue to fail). Democrats have tried uniting the country around the need to save the planet through a rapid green transition…and failed (and will continue to fail). It’s time for Democrats to return to something’s that’s tried and true.
In our forthcoming book, Where Have All the Democrats Gone? (pre-order today!), John Judis and I put it this way:
[T]he New Deal Democrats were moderate and even small-c conservative in their social outlook. They extolled "the American way of life" (a term popularized in the 1930s); they used patriotic symbols like the "Blue Eagle" to promote their programs. In 1940, Roosevelt's official campaign song was Irving Berlin's "God Bless America." Under Roosevelt, Thanksgiving, Veterans' Day, and Columbus Day were made into federal holidays. Roosevelt turned the annual Christmas Tree lighting into a national event. Roosevelt's politics were those of "the people" (a term summed up in Carl Sandburg's 1936 poem, "The People, Yes") and of the "forgotten American." There wasn't a hint of multiculturalism or tribalism. The Democrats need to follow this example.
But will they? They will if they want to become once again the party of the ordinary American, rather than the cultural elites who would find all this stuff distinctly uncool, if not outright reactionary. We shall see.