Last week, while scrolling on Instagram Reels, I watched a video made by a young college student attending Stanford. The video was about why Americans should stop hanging American flags. She argued that the flag had become synonymous with racism, sexism, Islamophobia, and more. The flag that once united Americans across party lines is now seen by many as the emblem of a single political faction, meaning many Americans no longer want to claim it. That is a dangerous development. But this issue is much larger and much deeper than flags or symbols. At its core, it is about a false narrative of what it means to be American.
The issue arises in large part from failures within our own education system. History classes that dwell almost exclusively on the darkest parts of our past have produced students who can list America’s flaws but cannot name the successes that made it the greatest nation on earth. Take, for example, the AP U.S. History (APUSH) curriculum. The curriculum emphasizes the negative aspects of our nation’s history while omitting or minimizing positive aspects. In 2015, the National Association of Scholars published an open letter from 55 scholars charging that the College Board’s revised AP U.S. History framework framed American history as “the conflict between social groups” while neglecting the “sources of national unity and cohesion.” (1) Anyone who has taken APUSH will recall its disproportionate emphasis on slavery, Jim Crow, Indian Removal policies, and so-called “American imperialism.”
Students who absorb this narrative in high school rarely encounter a different one in college. These kinds of ideas permeate all levels of the education system but increasingly find their home at America’s most elite institutions. Years of indoctrination at these institutions have led many of our nation’s leaders to adopt the same attitude. This narrative does not stop at our history. It extends to the values on which the country was founded. Much of this narrative is now aimed at what critics call “Christian nationalism.” It is common to hear the constant refrain about the dangerous rise of “Christian nationalism” in America. This nation was founded on the biblical values of the post-Enlightenment West, and our social and political institutions still carry those values. Christianity fundamentally shaped Western society by establishing foundational concepts like human dignity and inalienable rights. But these values are under attack. To dismiss the biblical foundations of this country is to dismiss part of what it means to be American.
It wasn’t long ago that nearly every American said they were proud to be American. According to Gallup, that pride began to decline in the early 2000s, and the decline accelerated after Donald Trump’s election in 2016. Today, the proportion of Gen Z voters that have a positive attitude towards this country is the lowest it has been in decades.(2) (see figure below)
Source: Gallup Polls
So, why does any of this matter? Without pride in your country, you have no reason to defend its values, culture and heritage. Europe is a modern example of what happens when a civilization loses its sense of nationalism. Many European countries now struggle with unchecked illegal immigration and rising crime as a result. Europe lacks the will to enforce law and order in their cities and halt immigration from the Islamist world because they lack a desire to preserve their cultural heritage. If these issues are not addressed, our generation may experience the end of Western civilization as we know it.
When Ben Shapiro spoke at Penn last year, he offered his own diagnosis of this problem: a lack of gratitude. Gratitude is the foundation of national pride: it lets us acknowledge America’s flaws while still recognizing how much we have been given. Gratitude does not require pretending America has no flaws. It requires remembering that the freedoms we use to criticize this country were won and defended by people who loved it. The Founders, the soldiers who fought for the Union, and the civil rights marchers who appealed to the promises of the Declaration did not reject America; they demanded that it live up to its ideals. That is the inheritance our classrooms too often leave out. The student in that video is free to say the flag stands for racism and oppression. But the flag is the reason she is free to say it. Our generation has a choice: we can keep surrendering our symbols, our history, and our pride, or we can reclaim them. That starts with something simple: teaching the full story of America, including the parts worth being grateful for, and hanging the flag anyway.
References:
1. https://nas.org/articles/scholars_oppose_new_apush
2. https://news.gallup.com/poll/692150/american-pride-slips-to-new-low.aspx
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