This Saturday, our country will turn 250 years old. In my hometown, the nation’s capital, festivities started weeks ago with President Trump’s birthday UFC fight, and are slated to ramp up this weekend. Communities across the nation are planning grand celebrations for the quarter-century milestone, too.
Gen Z, though, has mixed feelings about celebrating America’s birthday. The anniversary comes at a complex time: A recent poll from Gallup shows that national pride is waning among the country’s youngest citizens. Plus, in our ever more polarized cultural climate, devout allegiance to the stars and stripes has become a point of pride for many conservatives — in turn, some liberals have moved away from patriotism as a core aspect of their political identity.
But patriotism among our generation is a more complicated issue than that partisan binary. Many liberals unabashedly declare their love for their country, even if they disagree with aspects of its leadership and history. Some conservatives prioritize their stances on specific social and economic issues over a prevailing belief in American exceptionalism.
The four articles listed below offer a peek into Gen Z’s views on patriotism, and how those views are contributing to their decisions of how to spend this holiday weekend. These pieces offer outlooks spanning the political spectrum, exploring Gen Z’s approach to the Fourth of July with tools like survey data, quoted interviews and writing coming directly from people our age.
From HerCampus: A college student documents her frustration with the country her generation has inherited.
In a personal essay, University of Central Florida student Caitlyn Vasey identifies exhaustion as a unifying quality of our generation: Exhaustion from operating in a system where the odds seem stacked against most people’s success, and exhaustion with a country which returns, time and time again, she writes, to the same patterns of inequality and hate. Vasey is quick to deny common stereotypes about Gen Z, writing that “Our exhaustion isn’t laziness…It’s the emotional consequence of growing up in constant volatility.” Vasey ends with a note of hope for America’s future, stating her determination to build a version of our country that “will not feel this heavy forever.”
Read the full article here.
From USA Today: A young conservative makes the case for enduring national pride.
In an opinion article published earlier this week, writer Dace Potas argues that justifying anti-patriotic beliefs by pointing to the U.S.’s past injustices ignores the work the country and its citizenry have done to overcome those injustices. Potas, president of a national-level conservative student publication and a Gen Zer himself, lauds the country’s push toward progress in upholding the promises of our Constitution. As he writes, “that document produced the framework to fully realize the rights of all, in time.”
Read the full article here.
From USA Today: A young liberal identifies less-than-obvious causes for a declining interest in patriotism.
An op-ed by Sara Pequeño, published this May, offers a slightly different perspective on national pride in young generations. Pequeño, a left-leaning member of Gen Z, acknowledges legitimate reasons young people may not wish to identify with their government: from the 2008 financial crisis to the COVID-19 pandemic to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Pequeño argues that our generation came of age in an era defined by national crises. In spite of these memories, though, Pequeño considers herself a patriot: “This country is not perfect; it is, however, worth saving,” she writes.
Read the full article here.
From Substack: A Gen Zer recaps a Youth250 event at the National Constitution Center.
Youth250 is a group working together to ask a big question as the U.S. reaches a big milestone: What kind of country can we build together? Earlier this year, members of the group offered possible answers during an event at the National Constitution Center where they presented “Our Declaration,” a 10-foot art exhibit that has since set out on a national tour. Alex Edgar, a Gen Zer affiliated with the group, documented the experience in an article posted on the Youth250 Substack. In Edgar’s telling, student presenters revealed three key insights through the event: That “We need younger and older leaders working together to solve our country’s problems”; that “The 250th connects with Gen Z when it is about ‘all’”; and that “Every young person has a message for America. They don’t need instructions. They just need a platform.”
Read the full article here.
