A previous post highlighted the dwindling sense of patriotism among young Americans in two distinct age demographics: Millennials (born between 1981 and 1996) and Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2012). Here’s a quick summary. While 89 percent of Americans in their late teens and twenties self-identified as “somewhat patriotic” or “very patriotic” in a 2002 poll by Harvard University, this proportion had dropped to 63 percent by 2020. In fact, a Gallup poll from 2018 showed that only 33 percent of young people were “extremely proud to be an American”, a concerning decline of 22 percentage points compared to a similar poll five years previous. And if that weren’t alarming enough, a survey conducted jointly by The Wall Street Journal and NBC News in 2019 revealed that only 42 percent of Generation Z and Millennials said patriotism is very important.
Watch out for anti-government violent extremists
To add to the burden that young Americans feel less proud of their country and know less about their history, the federal government introduced a “national strategy for countering domestic terrorism” in June 2021—an attempt to challenge “domestic terrorism activity” and “protect both the nation and the civil liberties of its citizens.”
The statement on the official White House website added that:
…expert assessment of the domestic terrorism threat found that … the two most lethal elements of today’s domestic terrorism threat are (1) racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists who advocate for the superiority of the white race and (2) anti-government or anti-authority violent extremists, such as militia violent extremists.
Suppose that the federal government’s intellectually genius and strategic minds are keen to devise a plan to tackle “domestic extremism” supposedly motivated by anger, disgust, spite, and the exclusion of perceived non-compatible groups from American society. In that case, more and more young Americans need to become not “somewhat patriotic” but “very patriotic” and “extremely proud to be an American”.
And no, not just those who are likely to vote Republican.
We’ll get to why that’s the case in a moment.
What does “domestic extremism” mean to many Americans?
Fiercely libertarian Americans and those with a conservative disposition might interpret “domestic extremism” as fellow Americans engaging in the following activities: not being left alone (continued)
Photo by Luke Michael on Unsplash
This post originally appeared on The Blue State Conservative.
