About that flag thing

Monday, July 28, 2014

Among the many interesting observations made by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt in his book The Righteous Mind is that liberals often come off as less patriotic than conservatives, to their electoral detriment.

Haidt, himself a liberal and former speechwriter for John Kerry, recounts how difficult it was to put a small American flag sticker on his car after 9/11 because he thought "flag waving and nationalism are for conservatives." He solved his dilemma by pasting a United Nations sticker across the windshield from Old Glory for purposes of balance. As he put it, "That way I could announce that I loved my country, but don't worry, folks, I don't place it above other countries, and this was, after all, an attack on the whole world, sort of, right?"

Haidt's concerns about the left's "flag problem" came to mind because of a recent Pew Research survey which appears to justify them. Although the poll, titled "Beyond Red vs. Blue," actually seeks to more broadly explore differences between liberals and conservatives, the part that the media picked up on was the response by the "solid liberals" among the respondents to the question of whether they "often feel proud to be an American."

Only 40 percent said they did, in contrast with 72 percent of "steadfast conservatives" and 81 percent of "business conservatives." That same solid liberal cohort also was less likely than the seven other groups in the survey to see themselves as "typical Americans" and were one of only two groups in which more believed that "there are other countries better than the U.S." than believed "the U.S. stands above all other countries."

Given all this, we might be forgiven for agreeing with the headline of a Washington Post article on the survey to the effect that if you're proud to be an American you're probably not a true liberal.

In any case, the liberal cohort that seemed to have a rather dim view of their country and their fellow countrymen tended to be the best educated of the eight groups, the most urban, the third most affluent, and the most female (56 percent). They were least likely (other than "bystanders") to have a gun in their homes, the least religious, and third most likely to follow politics closely.

Of perhaps greater interest, the "solid liberals" were also the group by far most supportive of President Barack Obama, with a remarkable 84 percent approving of his performance as president at a time when his Real Clear Politics composite rating is only half that and the results of a recent Quinnipiac poll pegged him as the worst president since World War II.

Based on such data, we are left to speculate that Obama has had such a polarizing effect on the electorate because of vastly different conceptions within it over the nature of America and the values it should represent. At the least, it seems peculiar for the leader of a country to be so wildly popular among those who are most critical of that country.

Still, the broader question posed by the Pew survey is, of course, exactly why our most liberal citizens are so much less proud of America than the rest of us.

Several possibilities suggest themselves off the top of the head--maybe a college indoctrination experience that featured a bit too much Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, or the desire to not appear excessively xenophobic and nativist, or perhaps even the reflexive tendency for lefties to oppose whatever conservatives support, in this case America.

But the explanation which seems to make the most sense is that contemporary liberalism tends to be increasingly critical, alienated, and adversarial in nature, with an ingrained propensity to see injustice of some sort just about everywhere. The left exists largely to pester their less-enlightened neighbors and indict the society around them for various failings. It is, after all, impossible to sustain a belief system constructed around serial grievance-mongering without lots of grievances, both real and imagined.

Unlike conservatives, the left doesn't so much compare America to other nations or assess its achievement within the broader sweep of history as see the American project itself as woefully incomplete. The defects stand out in their eyes more than the virtues, and what remains to be done dwarfs that which has been. Thus, the left uses a yardstick that is inherently theoretical, idealistic and even utopian.

For liberals there shouldn't be too much flag-waving lest we ignore the need to "transform" America (in Obama's words) into a better place. Most on the left will probably never be all that proud of their country because it will never be "perfect," or at least perfect in the way the left defines such things.

In short, if you see America as a nasty, racist, sexist and homophobic place, especially in "flyover country" and its rural hinterlands, with a history pervaded by genocide and oppression, you probably wouldn't feel very good about her either.

Which still leaves us with a final mystery--what do the 60 percent of "solid liberals" in the Pew survey who don't often feel proud to be Americans do every year on the fourth day of July?

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Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.

Editorial on 07/28/2014