Yesterday, results of a Wall Street Journal poll caused consternation among some conservative commentators and, perhaps, glee in some precincts of the American left. According to the poll, the percentage of Americans who believe patriotism is “very important to them personally” fell from 70 percent in 1998 to 61 percent in 2019 and then all the way to 38 percent this year. The percentage of Americans who believe religion is very important to them personally fell from 62 to 48 to 39 during the same years.
A similar decline was reported for those who believe having children is very important — 59 to 43 to 30. Meanwhile, the percentage of Americans who believe money is very important to them personally rose from 31 percent to 41 percent to 43 percent.
Since these results were released, there has been some pushback against the view that they show America’s traditional attitudes and values have eroded significantly. Abe Greenwald focused on the percentage of respondents who said patriotism, religion, marriage, and having children are “somewhat important” to them personally. He wrote:
If you tally the “very important” and “somewhat important” percentages and compare them to the combined “not that important” and “not important at all” ones, it’s a clear win for tradition and conservative values. On patriotism, it’s 73 percent to 27 percent; on religion, 60 percent to 40 percent; on having children, 65 percent to 33 percent. And on marriage, 70 percent to 28 percent.
That’s a majority of patriotic, religious, family-oriented people. Or at least that’s how they want to represent themselves, which isn’t nothing. Social acceptability can be a crucial factor in internalizing certain standards.
True, but the WSJ results suggest that patriotism, religiosity, and family orientation are all in steep decline. They also show that among younger Americans, there is less patriotism, religiosity, and family orientation than among Americans as a whole.
Patrick Ruffini adds another wrinkle. He argues that the decline from to 2019 to 2023 is probably the result of a change in polling methodology, rather than American attitudes:
The dramatically different results we see from 2019 and 2023 are because the data was collected differently. The March 2023 survey was collected via NORC’s Amerispeak, an extremely high-quality online panel. In the fine print below the chart, we can see that data from previous waves was collected via telephone survey.
How much does this matter? A lot, says Ruffini:
Surveying the exact same types of respondents online and over the phone will yield different results. And it matters most for exactly the kinds of values questions that the Journal asked in its survey.
The basic idea is this: if I’m speaking to another human being over the phone, I am much more likely to answer in ways that make me look like an upstanding citizen, one who is patriotic and values community involvement. My answers to the same questions online will probably be more honest, since the format is impersonal and anonymous.
So, the 2023 survey probably does a better job at revealing the true state of patriotism, religiosity, community involvement, and so forth. The problem is that the data from previous waves were inflated by social desirability bias—and can’t be trended with the current data to generate a neat-and-tidy viral chart like this.
Ruffini’s analysis makes sense. It seems unlikely that the dramatic declines the WSJ poll found from 2019 to 2023 — just four years, albeit eventful ones —are real. But there’s not much solace to be had if, as Ruffini says, the 2023 results are more reliable than those from 1998 and 2019.
Ruffini’s view that the WSJ poll overstates the decline in patriotism is supported by Gallup’s polling results. Gallup finds a five-point drop from 2019 to 2022 in the percentage of Americans who say they are “extremely proud” or “very proud” to be American — from 70 to 65 percent. But only 38 percent of U.S. adults say they are extremely proud to be American — the lowest in Gallup’s polling of the question, which began in 2001.
This brings me back to the issue raised by Greenwald’s relatively sunny view of the WSJ numbers. Should we be sanguine because — thanks to the large number of those who find patriotism, religiosity, and family orientation “somewhat important”— the numbers of those who think patriotism, religiosity, marriage, and having children is very important or somewhat important easily outstrip the numbers of those who don’t?
It depends. Is believing that patriotism is somewhat important (or being “very” but not “extremely” proud of America) sufficient to keep our armed forces strong and, if necessary, see America successfully through a major war?
Is believing that religion and marriage are somewhat important sufficient to sustain an ethical and emotionally stable America in which social pathologies are kept at bay? Is believing that having children is somewhat important sufficient to avoid serious demographic decline, preventable only through a highly disruptive level of immigration?
I don’t know the answer to any of these questions. But I firmly believe America could be considerably more confident about its future if the numbers from the 1998 WSJ survey prevailed today.
I am supremely skeptical of the sanguine readings. Almost anyone can sense that something has palpably snapped in the United States, since 2019 in particular. The nation has been consumed with all kinds of insanity since then, gripping wide swaths of the public. There are reasons to be optimistic that whatever nation remains in this part of the world will be prosperous for some time, due to the advantages conferred by geography. But will its values bear any resemblance whatsoever to what we have known, and to anything that can be considered admirable and decent? It seems that there is good reason to be despondent. We are going through a revolutionary moment, it would appear, that is tearing at the most fundamental fabric of the American identity and character. Abe Greenwald is almost certainly too optimistic. And it sounds trite to say this, but something is definitely not right with the youth.