Democrats Don’t Especially Like America

From the Gallup Organization, the results of a question that asked “How proud are you to be an America — extremely proud, very proud, moderately proud, or not proud at all?” Gallup then tabulated the percentages in each group who said “extremely proud.” The results are presented below:

Democrats are 21% less likely to feel “extremely proud” than are Republicans. Gallup did not provide tabulations for liberals and conservatives, but had they done so, the cleavage would doubtless have been wider.

So why are Democrats less patriotic? They would insist they are most sensitive to the social injustice that they consider an endemic part of American life. This is just a rationalization. What liberal Democrats don’t like about America is that they have less power than they think they should. Being elitists, they are resentful that ordinary Americans — people who oppose abortion, gay marriage, gun control and so on — contest with them for power, and on a much more equal basis than they would like.

The classic statement of this elitism came from Barack Obama, who said:

You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. . . . And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Yes, these bitter clingers have too much power.