Can patriotism survive cynicism? According to columnist Megan, the short answer is no — and the data backs her up. Patriotism and cynicism are, in her words, like oil and water: you can shake them together and briefly make it look like a blend, but the moment you let things settle, they separate completely. As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, that separation is becoming impossible to ignore.

A 2025 Gallup poll found that only 58% of Americans describe themselves as either extremely patriotic or very patriotic. That's not a ringing endorsement. And for a nation on the eve of a semiseptennial milestone, it raises a real question: how did we get here, and what do we do about it?

Can Patriotism Survive Cynicism in America?

To understand why patriotism and cynicism clash so fundamentally, you have to understand what patriotism actually requires: tenderness. Megan describes genuine love of country the same way you'd describe love for a family member. You might not like every attribute of that person, you might even disagree with choices they've made, but you're on their side. You're rooting for them. You love the whole thing.

Cynicism, by contrast, demands distance. To be cynical is to stand apart, to look at something from the outside with a kind of cool, detached skepticism. And that posture is almost exactly the opposite of what patriotism requires. You can't truly love something you've emotionally quarantined yourself from.

This doesn't mean patriots have to be blind. Acknowledging a country's flaws and loving it anyway isn't a contradiction — it's actually the definition of mature, enduring love. But today's cultural climate, saturated with social media's fault-finding reflex and partisan bitterness, makes that kind of warmhearted loyalty feel almost countercultural.

Why Are Americans Less Patriotic Today?

If you're looking for reasons to be pessimistic about America, you won't have to look far. But Megan makes a pointed observation: that's always been true. Every generation has had its catastrophes. The atom bomb terrified her parents' generation. Industrialization horrified people before that. The capacity to compile a list of grievances has never been the problem. The culture of grievance is.

Social media has turbocharged a very specific mode of public discourse — one built around gotcha moments, public humiliation, and the satisfaction of proving someone wrong. The vernacular is combative: you're owned, you're pawned. It's a posture that's almost allergically opposed to the warmth patriotism requires. When the dominant cultural language is adversarial, love of country becomes harder to express without feeling naive or even embarrassing.

Megan also identifies a particular kind of arrogance at work in contemporary culture: the assumption that people today are the first to ever honestly reckon with America's dark history. She calls this out directly. The founders themselves wrestled with the contradictions of building a land of liberty while permitting human bondage. Americans have been debating, fighting, and dying over these tensions for the entirety of the nation's existence. The Civil War was not a minor footnote. The idea that moral consciousness about American history was invented sometime in the last decade isn't just wrong — it's a symptom of the very lack of patriotic education the conversation is trying to address.

What Does It Actually Mean to Be Patriotic?

Patriotism isn't jingoism. It isn't the claim that your country is perfect or that it has never done wrong. It's something more honest and more durable than that. It's the decision to love your country the way you love a complicated family member — fully, loyally, and with clear eyes.

Megan puts it plainly: If we cease to love our country because our country is not perfect, where on earth can you possibly go? What country is perfect? What human endeavor is perfect? The answer, of course, is none. Holding out for a flawless nation before you'll offer it your loyalty isn't moral sophistication — it's a standard that guarantees permanent alienation.

Real patriotism, the kind that sustains a democracy across 250 years, requires the ability to hold two things at once: pride in what your country has achieved and honesty about where it has fallen short. It's a both/and, not an either/or.

How Do You Teach Kids Patriotism at Home?

For parents trying to raise children with a genuine love of country, Megan's advice starts with language. She says she now feels completely unabashed telling children directly: "We are really fortunate to be Americans." Not as propaganda, but as honest gratitude. America is huge, gorgeous, wildly diverse, and held together by a constitutional framework that took remarkable intellectual courage to construct. That's worth saying out loud.

Beyond conversation, she points to books as one of the most powerful tools available. Children's literature, in particular, has a long tradition of presenting American history with warmth and sincerity — not by hiding the difficult parts, but by framing the whole story with love rather than contempt.

What Are the Best Patriotic Books for Kids?

Megan highlights two sources worth knowing about:

  • Robert Lawson — A highly decorated 20th-century children's book author and illustrator whose work embodies a straightforward love of country. His books include Ben and Me (about Benjamin Franklin's mouse), Mr. Revere and I (told from Paul Revere's horse's perspective), and They Were Strong and Good, which ennobles the stories of American pioneers. Lawson's work is earnest without being saccharine, and it presents history with genuine affection.
  • The American Book of Fables by Matt Mian, illustrated by John Folley — A new release that Megan describes as operating on three levels simultaneously. For young children, there are playful rhymes and images that introduce the majesty of America's geography and diversity. For middle-grade readers, there are maxims and short stories. For older readers, there are longer pieces drawn from American history and adapted Aesop's fables set in the American landscape. Like Lawson's work, it doesn't hide the warts — but it presents the whole story with sincere, straightforward love of country.

What both of these resources share is what Megan calls ardor — a lovely, unpretentious enthusiasm for America that doesn't require you to pretend history is clean. They're useful precisely because they model the kind of mature patriotism parents are trying to pass on: honest, warm, and unashamed.

Is America Still a Great Country Despite Its Flaws?

This is the question underneath all the others, and Megan answers it without hedging. Yes. Not because America is perfect — it obviously isn't — but because no country is, and because the extraordinary, various, structurally sophisticated nation built over 250 years is something genuinely worth loving.

The founders knew they were working with contradictions. They built them into the architecture of the Constitution precisely so future generations could argue them out, legislate through them, and, when necessary, fight over them. That's not a flaw in the system. That's the system working as designed. Americans have been doing that hard work for two and a half centuries, and the fact that we're still doing it — still arguing, still refining, still holding the whole complicated thing together — is itself a remarkable achievement.

As the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence approaches, the cultural challenge isn't to pretend America's history is spotless. It's to resist the cynicism that mistakes clear-eyed honesty for contempt. You can know your country's full history and still choose to love it. In fact, that might be the only kind of patriotism worth having.