It raised eyebrows when Michelle Obama said at a 2008 campaign rally, “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country.” (And all it took was her husband becoming a probable presidential nominee.) But she’s not alone in lacking pride. In fact, a 2025 Gallup poll found that only 36 percent of Democrats are very proud to be American. (This doesn’t likely result from a spiritual quest to develop humility, either.)
Critics may point out that much of this hinges on who controls government. Surveyed Democrats do, after all, register lower pride numbers now that President Donald Trump is in office.
Yet this gets at a reality: When speaking of loving America, which “America” is at issue? Is it the republic of our Founding Fathers’ dreams — or of Karl Marx’s? Is it the one we once were heading toward or the one we’re now heading toward? Is it America or Amerika? Leftists very well may like the latter, in theory. (The experience of it would be quite different. See the Kronstadt sailors, et al.) But speaking of what these United States are meant to be, a commentator recently asked a question:
“Why Do Democrats Hate America?”
They Really Care — But About What?
Illustrating his point, that commentator, J.B. Shurk, wrote April 24:
Earlier this week, Democrat Senator Chris Murphy highlighted a disputed news story claiming that a shadow fleet of several dozen Iranian vessels had successfully eluded the U.S. Navy’s blockade near the Strait of Hormuz. Above what appears to have been Iranian propaganda, Murphy wrote one word: “Awesome.” How much does a Democrat senator have to hate the country he putatively represents to root for a foreign enemy presently engaged in battle with the United States?
Of course, patriots can disagree with the Iranian military action, on a constitutional basis particularly. That’s far different, however, from issuing words that, literally taken, constitute cheering on a terroristic enemy.
This said, Murphy called his remark “sarcasm.” Yet one could wonder: Would such “humor” pass the lips of a mature person who loved his country?
Really, though, this is small potatoes compared to leftism’s worst ideological effluent. Back in 1967 already, left-wing feminist Susan Sontag wrote, “The white race is the cancer of human history.” This hateful comment’s spirit currently permeates the Left, too.
There now are expositions claiming “Whiteness hurts society” and on “deconstructing whiteness.” We hear of “white privilege” and “white supremacy” — all while whites are discriminated against via diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). But the point is this:
Will those who hate whiteness love a country and Constitution originated by white people?
Will they hold dear an America that traditionally has been, and still is, majority white?
Will they love the United States’ formative Western culture, also created by whites?
We don’t have to guess on the latter. In 1987, with “civil-rights activist” Jesse Jackson present, Stanford University students zealously chanted, “Hey hey, ho ho, Western Civ has got to go!” And what has this wrought?
Only “2 percent of colleges 1777744412 offer western civilization as a course requirement,” reported the Manhattan Institute (MI) in 2011. (And no top-50 universities did. Only about 34 of the top 50 even offered it.) “Remarkably, western civilization is rarely even required for history majors.”
“By contrast, most institutions from 1964 through the ’70s did have this requirement,” the MI continued.
And what has replaced it?
Programs “that either undermine traditions in the West or balkanize the curriculum,” the MI explains.
Way Down Rabbit Hole Way
This rot has long been reflected at schooling’s lower levels as well (get ’em young). So it’s no surprise when kids dislike the country. It’s also perhaps no shock Barack Obama got elected twice, despite his longtime pastor screaming “God damn America!” in church.
Note, too, something about Obama’s (in)famous call for “fundamental change.” Saying your wife needs “fundamental change” doesn’t just mean she requires a new wardrobe or hairstyle. Rather, you’re saying that the very essence of who she is needs transformation. Who, or what, you say this about you probably don’t much like.
This explains, too, what’s witnessed from today’s Left. There are “land acknowledgments,” implying that the U.S. sits on stolen territory. Leftists also would flood the country with millions of illegal aliens and then privilege them over citizens. And they have. There’s leftists’ supposition that America is institutionally or “structurally” racist. They embrace, too, “decolonizing methodologies” (e.g., decolonizing the curriculum), which “challenge Western paradigms” and replace them with “indigenous knowledge.” Yet they simultaneously actually seek the institution of another Western paradigm: socialism.
(Yes, Marxism/socialism was born and developed in the West.)
And what really drives these cultural devolutionaries? Some in upper-echelon leftist circles just want the power a socialist autocracy offers. And the Gramscian “march through the institutions” is necessary to facilitate this. Yet the passions are often real, and there’s a reason why.
Darkness Hates the Light
Measuring the two conceptions of our country, America and Amerika, with the objective standard for goodness — virtue — is instructive. That is, traditional America is simply a far more virtuous place. Yet not everyone loves virtue. As I explained in February, poor upbringings yield low-virtue people (LVP), most of whom in our time are called “leftists.” LVP will, too, hate the good for a very old reason: “What fellowship hath light with darkness” — or darkness with light?
Those who fancy virtue vice will hate a higher-virtue nation.
Going further, it’s apparent that many leftists are heavily invested emotionally in their ideology. Akin to a religion for them, it can be their raison d’être. Many also seem to believe that their happiness is dependent upon their agenda’s realization.
So the feminist may feel she can’t be happy until the oppressive “patriarchy” is purged. The environmentalist, not until the greentopian Earth-savior seed comes to flower. The radical egalitarian, not until inequality is incinerated. The racialist, not until “whiteness” is wiped out. And the socialist, not until capitalism is canned.
It’s much as with the first emperor of unified China, Qin Shi Huang, and his taking of “curative,” mercury-laden elixirs. The toxic metal only made him sicker. But what seemed the remedy?
Take even more of those mercury elixirs.
When you consider your reason for being, self-image, and happiness itself dependent upon the success of a cause that unbeknownst to you is making you miserable, you’ll destroy with a hellishly hot zeal anything standing in its way.
