Millennials and Patriotism

A previous post discussed a Pew poll of millennials. Lloyd Green writes at The Daily Beast:

Of course, regaining the youth vote is a hard sell for the GOP, regardless of who its 2016 nominee will be. The last time younger voters went Republican was in 1988. Since 1992, voters under 30 have cast their ballots for Democrats in six consecutive elections.

Then there’s the diversity thing—younger Americans are ethnically more diverse, and socially more tolerant. Non-Hispanic whites are only 61 percent of the “selfie-generation,” whose members are more likely to describe themselves as supporters of gay rights than as patriotic, religious, or even as environmentally sympathetic.

All of that poses a problem for the Republican Party, but it is also a problem for the U.S. Yes, the U.S.Younger Americans expect activist government, but less than half of them consider themselves patriotic—in stark contrast to baby-boomers (75 percent), older seniors (81 percent) and even Generation X (64 percent). And that’s a far cry from the late John F. Kennedy’s “My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” Expect the culture wars to continue.