Yes, as with all polls and surveys, one should be wary of this one; still, Gallup is as close to non-partisan as one can get in 2026, and the results seem consistent with what we have been observing for a long time.
And true, confirmation bias comes into play. However, what we saw with the Democrats in Congress refusing to enthusiastically applaud the U.S. Olympic champion hockey team certainly seemed significant, especially since one assumed that if nothing else, the party knows its base. The core Democratic base looks, sounds, and behaves as if it is hostile to American values, traditions and history. With such quacking and waddling going on, it would take an ingenious argument to maintain that this isn’t a metaphorical duck.
I was drawn to the chart, which has been around for several months, because an “X” pundit wrote, “What’s going on here?,” the threshold question for all ethics inquiries. So what is going on here?
This:
Ethics Alarms 
Jack wrote, “The core Democratic base looks, sounds, and behaves as if it is hostile to American values, traditions and history. With such quacking and waddling going on, it would take an ingenious argument to maintain that this isn’t a metaphorical duck.”
I don’t know about the rest of you, but, the political left’s words and actions in the 21st century have shown me that they’re anti-American and pro-socialist or pro-communist, especially progressive (read regressive) minded leftists. So…
The left made their bed.
Here’s a good one showing the disingenuousness of the left. A woman on The View hinted that Trump must be gay and attracted to the men of the U.S. men’s hockey team. The View co-host Sara Haines cracks snide GAY joke about Trump while blasting him for inviting US men’s hockey team to the White House | Daily Mail Online When did accusing someone of being gay become acceptable? Wouldn’t Trump’s being gay or bisexual be trumpeted to the sky? Incredible. The left is simply exhuasting.
There was a straight decline among Democrats from the beginning of Obama’s second term to 2020.
On the bad presidents list, I’m not sure Bill Clinton is where to start. Wilson? FDR, Kennedy? Nixon? They all did their part at chipping away at the presidential gravitas. They just were not as out front and William Jefferson his own self.
That thought notwithstanding, an excellent thumbnail history of American decline.
Before it slips my mind, I can’t help noting that Hillary Clinton is testifying to a Congressional committee in a performing arts center.
Clinton was the lead-in act to 2000, when the graph starts cratering. It makes sense to start with him. Before him, the Presidency was more resilient. It withstood the bad apples. Clinton made respecting someone who was President just because they were President much more difficult.
Definitely not John F Kennedy. For all his moral shortcomings and foreign policy blunders, he embodied American exceptionalism and patriotism. JFK put us on the moon, and made the USA proud. And his inaugural speech “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country….” is a patriotic inaugural speech. As he is the first President in the TV era, and due to his assassination he is still one of the most beloved Presidents. The press covered up his adulteries.
Definitely not FDR and Truman. They are the victors in WWII which made the USA the most powerful nation in the world. There were people who sympathized with communism after WWII, but this group was small and their influence was overhyped by the HUAC and Sen. Joe McCarthy.
Nixon and Carter both harmed the Presidency, Nixon by Watergate and Carter by his faux humility. They both harmed the stature of the USA as well. The deflated national spirit during the Carter administration was restored by Ronald Reagan, whose foreign policy set in motion the end of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact. The first Gulf War undid the trauma of Vietnam.
Clinton did harm the moral status of the Presidency do to scandal, but not the stature of the USA. Clinton was lucky due to a booming economy and not having to fight a major war. Had Osama Bin Laden attacked the USA a year earlier the judgment of history of his tenure may have been completely different.
Teddy Roosevelt and definitely Woodrow Wilson propelled the USA onto the world stage. Both were lionized by the historians.
Here is a question to all: when did the USA become patriotic? Before the Civil War the states were more important to the people than the nation as a whole. I suspect that was true through much of the Reconstruction era as well.
Woodrow Wilson’s policies led to a reaction among Republicans who favored isolationism. Isolationism went down with the attack at Pearl Harbor.
Before the Civil War the states were more important to the people than the nation as a whole.
Very true. Remember, all the soldiers that were sent off to fight in the Civil War went off as members of their state’s regiments and they fought under their own banners. I guess maybe the question becomes when did the U.S. military became federalized?
The decision to invade Iraq based on a perfect storm of Saddam’s perfidy, U.N. corruption, intelligence failures and neo-con passion was (and is) presented to the public by the news media and Democrats (who knew better) as Bush 2 “lying” to get us into a war. Then the war was botched (though it didn’t have to be that way).
My view is that this analysis does not take into considerations the full ramifications of that war. From the research that I did (though it was not that much) I learned that the plans to wage warfare on Iraq had already been drawn much prior to the 9/11 events. And the level of collusion and also corruption that this war involved, and other wars in the Middle East involve, is particularly ugly and reflects severe breakdowns that do harm and will continue to do harm to the Republic and to the republican concept. See for example The Persian Gulf TV War (Douglas Kellner).
It was not simply President Bush that ‘lied’ to the nation, and rather it was an established elite (interconnected corruptions) that linked government, arms industries, and most importantly the propaganda industries (we now refer to them as the ‘mainstream media’) to present the war as a TV spectacle that was received and consumed by a gullible public who did not understand the degree to which their Republic had been ‘taken over’ by interests inimical to their own. (Not to mention the assertion that a specific foreign nation, with significant power in America, advocated with all sorts of means to involve the US in that war, and other wars in the Middle East).
Many in ‘conservative circles’ now seem, at least, to be able to talk about the ‘lying media’, but that seems to be because there is enough other people who use the term that they don’t have to feel too ‘naked’ making such radical statements. But only a few short years ago those same (“”) conservatives were fanatical jingoists. If you did not *support the war* you were not a patriot and you were anti-American.
The other absurdity, and I guess the thing that get you labeled as a ‘Leftist’ is you point it out is that the Iraq leader was for a long long time ‘our man”, and this seems to be the case in much of postwar history: Supporting the worst sorts of dictators if it was felt they could keep their domains in order and for the advantage of business-interests (who care about a rat’s ass about the conditions of other people in this world) was the way US political business was conducted. On one level the turn against such an ally (Saddam Hussein) could be looked at as an example of political duplicity on the part of the US government. What does it mean ethically to turn on those who was your previous ‘best friend’? Surely politics is a dirty business but the notion that the US is a ‘fair dealing player’ should be rejected by clear-thinking Conservatives. If the object is to become ‘clear thinking’ and to be conservative I suggest there is a looooooonnnnggg way to go yet. But if Conservatives can, now, talk about a ‘deep state’ and ‘government corruption’ now, well perhaps there is hope!
My present view is that it takes radical seeing, radical insight, to see just how and why the Republic has become as corrupt as it is. You cannot think either like a Leftist or like a Rightist to achieve that. It takes another sort of stance and platform.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W89-ikemXJE
I see Jack’s post as an indictment of American politics since at least Bill Clinton, and perhaps even Watergate. I do not see any issues with this indictment given the deplorable state of US politics and the visible rot in the institutions, however it does not at all explain the striking differences in patriotism between Republicans and Democrats. The Republicans have the most reason to be disillusioned about the cultural decay of the USA, however they are more patriotic than ever. How do w explain that?
The differences are more likely to found in world view. One world view prioritizes the local over the global. Vice President JD Vance stated in in interview in January 2025 “You love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world”. This is a reference to a classical Christian concept “Ordo Amoris” articulated by St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. This traditional view helps us understand why Republicans (mostly conservative) emphasize the importance of the family, favor traditional morals on sexuality, are protective of existing traditions and culture, and prioritize the national interest. There is belief in the superiority of the Judeo-Christian tradition and Western culture. There is pride and gratitude about the history of the nation. They seek restoration of rotting institutions.
The Democrats have a different worldview. They are cosmopolitan and globalist. They care a lot about international opinion and international law, and have deep faith in transnational organization such as the United Nations, the European Union and the NATO. The attitude towards the history and culture of their own nations and culture is one of critical distance, (and sometimes guilt and shame). Attachment to own culture, and patriotic displays such as waving the national flag are seen as crude and vulgar.
The cosmopolitan worldview is even more prevalent in Western Europe than in the USA. The European Union is an embodiment of the cosmopolitan worldview. The creation of the EU needs to been in the light of two World Wars, where out-of-control nationalism led to the suicide of the old political order in Europe.
Socialism and communism are cosmopolitan. Their famous anthem “The International” written by Eugène Pottier, a refugee from the Paris commune in 1871 embodies that spirit by calling workers from all nations to unite.
Multiculturalism is of course cosmopolitan, as it denies that one culture is better than another. (In practice, multiculturalists tend to disparage Western culture and history.)
The results of cosmopolitan philosophies can be seen all over Europe, as witnessed by uncontrolled migration from non-Western civilizations, plus the taboos in openly discussing Islamic extremism, and immigration related crime (e.g. Pakistani rape gangs in the UK).
The attitude of the Democrats mirrors that of the cosmopolitans in the UK and EU. They disparage Western culture and the Judeo-Christian tradition. They are for open borders. They embrace ideologies with Marxist origins. They reject the traditional family.
Both nationalism and cosmopolitanism have their pros and cons. Extreme nationalism and patriotism are implicated in the start of elective wars with disastrous consequences, such as WWI and WWII. In 1982 the junta of Argentina started the Falkland wars with Great Britain, to deflect the publics attention from the poor economy, and appealing to patriotic zeal. And in recent USA history, we have to reconsider the wisdom of invading Iraq, and question whether our patriotic impulses have dulled our critical sense.
Right now I think cosmopolitanism shows its disadvantage as in practice it means that the interests of foreigners (often illegals or asylum seekers) are often prioritized over the interests of the own citizens. As the UK is showing, this leads to social instability, loss of national identity, and rumors of impending civil war.
The Religious Right was a big part of the problem …
As the Ultra-Zionist Evangelical Right is, if the truth could be told, extremely dangerous still. Few are willing to talk honestly about Evangelical Zionism and to really examine the particulars of Christian Zionist belief. (I.e. the reestablishment of Israel, the in-gathering, represents the beginning of the end of the world! What a lovely hope to hold to!)
Al-Aqsa flood — flying monkeys landing and assassinating stoned Israeli youths high on LSD — was a reaction to extremist Zionism that plans to detonate the mosque and rebuild the Judean Temple. Not a joke. The plans are outlined by rabbis speaking mostly in Hebrew.
Alizia, I have to question the “extremely dangerous” label. In terms of risk analysis, we don’t only analyze how devastating a particular consequence could be, but also how likely that consequence is to happen. There are many, many dangerous ideas and intentions out in the world, but most don’t have a snowball’s chance in Hell of ever being enacted.
Would you be willing to place the ideas of the Ultra-Zionist Evangelical Right on a danger scale of 0 to 5, and a likelihood of occurring of 0 to 5? In terms of danger, I would rank 0 as no danger at all, 1 as mild danger only to self, 2 as moderate danger to self or mild danger to a few others, 3 as high danger to self or moderate danger to a number of others, 4 as high danger to handful of people, and 5 as high danger to large population. In terms of likelihood, I would rank 0 as never going to happen, 1 as could happen in 1000 years, 2 as could happen in 100 years, 3 as could happen in 10 years, 4 as could happen within a year, and 5 could happen any moment now. These are all still pretty arbitrary, but I was hoping to see a bit more of your reasoning on the Ultra-Zionist Evangelicals. My take is that they are a bunch of end-times enthusiasts (not even fanatics) who are set up for an 1844-style Great Disappointment.
Now bombing the mosque on the Temple Mount, I would rate as a risk factor 5, but with a likelihood of 2. There are a lot of safeguards in place to prevent someone from accomplishing said bombing, not the least the sudden reversal of whatever goodwill remains for the nation of Israel in the international community. This would give an overall assessment of low risk, but with enough concern that maybe additional action should be taken to mitigate the risk further.
The graph simply shows that when their guy hold the presidency they are more proud to be an American. It also shows that when their party is out of office the Democrats are far more volatile on this issue. There is a dip among Republicans during the Obama and Biden years but not nearly as large as the decline in pride among Democrats when Democrats are out of power.
My assessment is that the Democrats have a distorted view of why one should be proud of their own country. Perhaps its is because they feel that their lack of power exacerbate pre-existing nihilistic perspectives.
Looking at the graph I have to disagree with your assessment. Th Democrats are lower on patriotism than the Republicans even during the Obama and Biden administrations.
We also have to keep in mind that the tracking starts in 2001, when 9/11 probably artificially propped that percentage quite high among democrats.
you see, Jack, it is this kind of Pro-Trump, Anti-Democrat rant that has driven away progressives and turned this blog into an echo chamber.
-Jut
Yeah, I know. I am a disgrace.
I am proud of the country and history, but ashamed of the bureaucracy and the judiciary. Today, I found out that the Biden FBI secretly wiretapped Trump’s former chief of staff, Susie Wiles. They wiretapped her while she was talking to her attorney. Her own attorney knew and consented to the recording, but concealed it from Wiles. That is not the America I am proud of.