Yes, liberals are less patriotic

A Pew Research survey last year found that 46 percent of “steadfast conservatives” believed that the U.S. stands above all other countries; only 11 percent of “solid liberals” believed the same. Seventy-two percent of steadfast conservatives said they often feel proud to be an American; only 40 percent of solid liberals said they do.

Gallup headlined its write-up of a 2010 survey “One in Three Americans ‘Extremely Patriotic’: Republicans, conservatives, and seniors most likely to say so.” According to Gallup, 52 percent of Republicans and 48 percent of conservatives called themselves extremely patriotic; only 20 percent of Democrats and 19 percent of liberals did.

As a general matter, patriotic sentiment becomes more attenuated the further left you go. The late distinguished philosopher Richard Rorty, hardly a McCarthyite, once wrote a New York Times op-ed titled “The Unpatriotic Academy.”

He praised the Left on campus for its championing of marginalized groups, before stipulating that “there is a problem with this left: it is unpatriotic. In the name of ‘the politics of difference,’ it refuses to rejoice in the country it inhabits. It repudiates the idea of a national identity, and the emotion of national pride.”