A reporter for a Ukrainian television network asked to interview me this week for a 4th of July story they’re running on declining American patriotism. He had read a piece I wrote on the topic, and seemed genuinely baffled as to why so many Americans, like Olympians Gwen Berry and Megan Rapinoe and so many others, are down on their country.
It’s easy to understand his confusion. In the last six years, nearly five million Ukrainians hoping to move to the U.S. have applied for our green card lottery. How could I explain to this man why so many Americans don’t appreciate a country that millions of others around the world aspire to live in?
American pride appears to be at an all-time low. When Gallup first started asking Americans how proud they were of their country months before the 9/11 attacks, 87 percent claimed to be “extremely” or “very” proud and only 2 percent said they were only “a little proud” or “not at all” proud. In 2020, the extremely/very proud cohort fell to an all-time low of 63 percent, while the only a little proud/not all proud group swelled from 12 percent to 21 percent in a year.
There’s no magic bullet solution to remedy this problem, but I’d like to see more young people spend time abroad either studying, volunteering or just traveling, outside the places where American tourists typically venture. Countries are just like spouses; we tend to take them for granted. And the longer you stay in any country without a break, the easier it is to lose perspective.
If you dig down into the results of recent polling on declining patriotism, it’s clear that our younger generations are decidedly less patriotic. This speaks to our education system and the way American history has been taught in recent years. Young people who have been forced to sit through endless lectures about how America was founded by racists with zero context or perspective on the times, can’t help but have mixed feelings about the country.
Obviously we have to strip anti-American dogma out of curriculums across the country. But travel can also be the world’s best classroom, and there’s no substitute for seeing what life is like in other parts of the world with one’s own eyes. I’ve been to Ukraine and 70 other countries, some nice, some not-so-nice. And so, when I hear, for example, Joe Biden, recently refer to our “crumbling infrastructure” I laugh, thinking of all the truly crumbling roads and bridges I’ve seen overseas in my lifetime. When I repeatedly hear that our country is “systemically racist” I think of the many other countries I’ve visited and lived in that are light years behind us on civil rights issues.
I understand that not everyone has the resources or opportunities to spend time abroad. But anti-Americanism isn’t prevalent among the poor; it’s more of an affluenza disorder, common among elites. Those whom America has blessed the most, including countless athletes and celebrities, are often the least grateful.
Many of these folks have been overseas, but though they champion developing countries while decrying Eurocentric viewpoints, guess where they gravitate when they leave the country? You guessed it, Western Europe. I’d love to see Americans who are down on our country spend more time in the backstreets of Rawalpindi and Caracas and less time strolling their favorite arrondissements of Paris for some perspective.
Global travel can be as expensive or as cheap as you make it. As part of the research for my new book, Mad Travelers: A Tale of Wanderlust, Greed & the Quest to Reach the Ends of the Earth, I got to know many of the world’s most traveled people. While some of these folks are undeniably affluent, several have very humble backgrounds. For example, one of the world’s most traveled people is a Spaniard named Jorge Sanchez, who has been to every country in the world and financed it all by doing odd jobs, washing dishes, and other menial labor.
The world’s most traveled American is Don Parrish, who lives in a middle-class suburb of Chicago. He has been to not just every country in the world, but also every major region of every country plus scores of hard-to-reach islands and geographic oddities that only geography nerds have ever heard of. He’s often asked what his favorite country is. Don told me that his answer is always the same: the United States of America. His travels have given him an appreciation for home that he never could have acquired in Chicago.
I served our country as a Foreign Service Officer, working in American embassies in Macedonia, Trinidad, and Hungary. The long lines of people waiting to apply for visas were a constant reminder of our country’s enduring appeal, one that I’ve never forgotten. Living abroad, I also encountered American expats who are happy overseas and never want to return to our country. That’s their prerogative and if they’re happier elsewhere, good for them. But in my experience, many more Americans, particularly those who spend considerable chunks of time in less developed countries, appreciate America in a new way when they return.
Even if you can’t travel abroad, it’s easy to use the web to meet people from other countries and research what’s going on around the world. Our news media barely covers international news, so the onus is on us to seek out information in order to gain a global (not a globalist) perspective. The more you learn about the rest of the world, the more you realize that none of our problems are unique. As the French philosopher Auguste Comte once said, “Everything is relative; and only that is absolute.”
One thing that I’ve noticed in my travels is that patriotism is abundant even in the most troubled countries. Love of country is something I’ve seen in even the most dangerous, corrupt, impoverished places on the planet. Even when migrants flee these troubled countries, they often continue to fly the flags of their homeland, root for its sports teams and retain intense affection for their nations when they reach the U.S.
This phenomenon may seem counterintuitive—many of the people who live in the country people are fleeing to hold it in contempt, while those on their way here still love their dysfunctional homelands. The former isn’t normal, but the latter is. We may be the least patriotic country in the world. This is particularly problematic in a nation of immigrants, where all but Native Americans here have foreign roots somewhere in their family tree.
Americans can disagree on politics and just about everything else. But as we celebrate our independence this weekend, there is one thing we must agree on: love of country. Alexis de Tocqueville said, “The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.” It’s time for us to convince the not-so-patriotic among us that they don’t have to love everything about our country to appreciate how blessed we are to be Americans.
Dave Seminara is a writer and former diplomat based in Florida. He is the author ofMad Travelers: A Tale of Wanderlust, Greed & the Quest to Reach the Ends of the Earth.