Harvard Study: Patriotism Doesn’t Appeal to Democrats

The L.A. Times recently reported something that has been conventional wisdom with conservatives for close to 30 years, now. Democrats hate patriotism. It’s been a matter of faith for quite a while but now comes Harvard to help substantiate that little factoid.

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For the L.A. Times, Andrew Malcolm sarcastically makes his way through the Harvard study pointing out that it seems that only conservatives, Republicans, or people that lean toward those views find the celebration of Independence Day a joyous occasion. Democrats and leftists, on the other hand, are not too fired up about all that “July Fourth red-white-and-blue stuff.” Apparently the study finds…

If you’re into the national holiday by age 18, you are 2% more likely to identify as a Republican, 4% more likely to vote that way and 3% more likely to make political donations.

The study found a lot of other things, of course, but the upshot is that if you are a Democrat or you lean left of center then you aren’t too likely to attend patriotic celebrations. It also finds that people that do attend patriotic events will be more likely to vote against left-wingism. So, there we have it… if you at all believe in these sorts of “studies” that constantly flow out of our useless institutes of “higher learning,” the old conservative claim that Democrats hate the country is justified. OK, while I would love to sit here and celebrate these findings, I have to say that I just don’t want to be caught believing a university study about much of anything. I take these supposed studies with a grain of salt. In fact, I find the grain of salt far more useful than any university study. So, while I’d love to tout this study as “proof” of my biases I will not do so. For a long time I’ve felt that these studies are almost universally useless and because I have felt that way, I cannot justify throwing away that long-held position just because I like these results. But it sure is fun to think about it.