American liberal democracy is being threatened in a way not seen in generations, in large measure, because white identity politics on the right, and racial identity politics on the left, make fights over policy seem existential. When policy battles appear to be part of a larger war rooted in a clash of ethnic and racial identity groups, both sides are more willing to disregard long-standing liberal democratic norms.
On the right, Donald Trump tried to disrupt the peaceful transition of power after he lost the 2020 presidential election, and he talks of suspending the Constitution if he becomes president again. Left-wing activists, meanwhile, shout down speakers and create a chilling environment where people feel they can’t freely speak their minds.
Pundits often assume that working Americans, who must prioritize kitchen-table economic concerns, don’t care about these systemic issues. In fact, however, working Americans are especially affected by the breakdown in national unity and the decline in patriotism that serve as root causes of the erosion in liberal democratic beliefs.
To begin with, the decline in American patriotism directly offends the value systems of many non-college-educated voters. Polls reveal a patriotism gap between progressive elites and working Americans of all races. While 69% of working-class voters said that America is the greatest country in the world, among progressive activists, only 28% agreed.
It is good news, therefore, that Vice President Kamala Harris has, in her campaign for president, embraced a full-throated patriotism that puts her on the side of working Americans. At the Democratic convention, Harris advanced a powerful visions of liberal patriotism that identified the United States as “the greatest democracy in the history of the world.” She said America is an inspiration to people across the planet because in this country, “anything is possible. Nothing is out of reach.” She called for national unity, declaring, “We have so much more in common that what separates us.” She didn’t mention white privilege, and instead focused on “the privilege and pride of being an American.” She concluded that America has “the most extraordinary story ever told.”
Some highly educated elites may believe their less elevated view of America is related to a greater degree of sophistication and knowledge of America’s sins. But in fact, racial minorities, who presumably have an acute cognizance of racial injustice, are very likely to express patriotic feelings. Some 62% of Asian Americans, 70% of Black Americans, and 76% of Hispanic Americans said they were “proud to be an American,” compared with just 34% of progressive activists.
To the extent that many non-college-educated voters have immigrant roots, their patriotism may actually be based on a higher level of sophistication about the realities of the world outside the United States than educated leftists who are quick to find fault with the United States. Polls find that immigrants have more patriotic beliefs than those who were born in the United States. This patriotism may well stem from their first-hand experience with the repressive systems of government that are found in many other countries.
In addition, the decline in American patriotism and social cohesion is bad for non-college-educated Americans because it inhibits their efforts to fight for a fairer society. Emphasizing racial division typically hurts working Americans. In fact, the oldest story of American politics is one in which conservatives use racial division to keep working Americans from cooperating across racial lines to smooth out the roughest edges of democratic capitalism. By contrast, the great advances for working-class people have come when Democratic politicians, such as Franklin Roosevelt, appealed to patriotism and national unity. As John Judis and Ruy Teixeira note in their book, Where Have All the Democrats Gone?, New Deal Democrats “extolled ‘the American way of life’ (a term popularized in the 1930s); they used patriotic symbols like the ‘Blue Eagle’ to promote their programs. In 1940, Roosevelt’s official campaign song was Irving Berlin’s ‘God Bless America.’” Only when Americans feel a sense of common mission is their sense of a shared responsibility for the fate of their fellow Americans activated.
Finally, non-college-educated voters are particularly hurt by a decline in American identity and patriotism because these realities are being used by right-wing advocates to undermine American public education — which has historically provided a critical path for social mobility for working Americans. In recent years, race-essentialist left-wing ideologies, such as critical race theory, which sees racism as endemic and permanent, and anti-racism, which posits that the only remedy to discrimination is more discrimination, have had an enormous impact on teacher schools of education, which then translates into what young public schoolchildren are taught. These approaches have understandably promoted a backlash. The appropriate response is to institute broadly-
supported teachings that frankly acknowledge America’s history of slavery and segregation, but also teach that because of our liberal, democratic structures, redemption has been possible.
Right-wing advocates, however, have used the cultural disconnect between what most Americans believe and left-wing indoctrination by some teachers as an excuse to discard the entire enterprise of public education. In the past few years, red states have adopted an unprecedented number of school privatization initiatives. Evidence shows that recent success with privatization efforts is driven by the perception that schools are feeding left-wing ideology to students.
Privatization, in turn, hurts working families in two ways. First, research shows that private school voucher programs can cause a decline in academic achievement compared with public district and public charter schools, robbing working-class students of the skills they need to advance. Second, a system of private school education, in which 80% of students will go off to be educated in particularly religious traditions, with no mandate to teach common American values, removes one of the few remaining vehicles in America for forging social cohesion and national unity.
What is to be done? In an in-depth Progressive Policy report, I outline nine ideas for local, state, and federal policymakers can adopt to help public schools — and colleges — return to the central goal of public education.11 The primary mission, encapsulated by the late president of the American Federation of Teachers, Albert Shanker, is to “teach children what it means to be an American,” by which he meant “a common set of values and beliefs” expressed most vividly in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.
