The Sad Decline of Patriotism in America

It will destroy us

Brian Tubbs
4 min readJul 2, 2024

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I grew up believing that the United States of America was a great country worthy of my love and civic allegiance. That is what I was taught by my parents. It was what I was taught in school. And it was a view generally reinforced in our culture and in the various communities I lived.

Young people seem to be growing up in a different America today.

A much more divided America — one where its future is uncertain and its past is buried in guilt, grievance, confusion, and controversy.

Last year, a survey conducted by The Wall Street Journal and the NORC at the University of Chicago found that patriotism was important to only 38% of Americans. That was down from 70% in 1998.

It was the pre-1998 America that I grew up in — a nation whose people valued patriotism. Unfortunately, that’s not the America of today.

If this article is noticed at all, it will likely draw comments from several voices who defend the modern (postmodern?) highly critical interpretation of America. Many people today — many Americans today — are quite happy with the decline in patriotism.

Since I can anticipate some of the pushback (it’s predictable), let me make a few things very clear…

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