Is patriotism plummeting in America? Alejandro J. Ramos explains

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
You know, the greatest generation in World War Two, guys
and granddads and great granddads growing up. I mean those
days it was USA, USA. Patriotism was alive and well
we're in a big World war then, no doubt about that.
And it seemed everybody, no matter what their personal opinion
on any political action or any party, you were along with.

(00:21):
You were on board for USA. But that is certainly
deteriorating in this country, and it seems to be almost
plummeting with the patriotism, especially among young people and joining
us now. A Young Voices contributor based at Cornell University, Ramos.
Alejandro Ramos is the founder and executive director of the
Ramos Research Institute and joins us to talk about this. Alejandro,

(00:43):
a wakem, welcome in, Thanks for being here.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
Thank you so much for having me jat So, why do.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
You think this is happening? Why are young Americans so disengaging?
And how do we reconnect them?

Speaker 2 (00:53):
Sure? Well, I think it's a sad sight of affairs
that were involved in. At the moment, thirty nine percent
of US adults extreme only you know that percentage is
extremely proud to be an American. You know, I'm the
son of immigrants, Cuban immigrants that fled their country, and
I was raised from a very young age to be
proud to be an American because this country gave us

(01:14):
so many incredible opportunities. I think that the disengagement that
we're currently seeing right now has to do with a
lot of facets of life. But I think that it's
just a general disconnect that young people are having with society.
We have so much technology these days keeps people distracted,
and people are only seeing the first things. You know,

(01:35):
when they open up social media, they're not digging deeper
into the information that they're receiving. So a lot of
what they're receiving is missing disinformation, you know, that they
take for facts and then foster and make opinions on Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
These bumpers, sticker posts that get out there, and you
know these you know one liners. You know that's in
every direction, it seems in our country. You know, well,
you're right, dig a little deeper, you know, that's one
side's opinion about it. Like this whole thing with the
Palestinian pro Palestinian Hamas movement and anti Semitism that's taken

(02:10):
place here. You know, let's not forget about October seventh.
You know, the terrorists attacked a festival in Israel and
they you know, brought hostages back and people are dying
because of that. And now that the war's broken out
and Israel standing up for itself in the United States
is always and will always back Israel. And you may
not like Netan Yahoo, but you know, Israel is a

(02:33):
nation that is an ally of ours and Hamas is
a terrorist organization. But yet you see all of the
craziness that was going on with the protesting on the campuses,
and if they do their research and look at history
on where this is, It's been going on for hundreds
of years and will continue to be disruptive in the
Middle East with Israel until Christ comes back. So with

(02:55):
all that said, when you see this pushback towards you know,
you know Jewish people, and you're like, oh, yeah, genocide.
This is what's going on in the United States is
supporting genocide. It's so misguided. But yet it's like a
brushfire on social media that you're you know, kind of
referring to. You know, young people get on social media.

(03:15):
It's it's their bible. It's there, you know, it's their
it's their news source. And it's, like you said, so messdirected.
So how do we combat I mean the role of
media and social you know, media, uh is kind of
just throwing a wrench in all of this, and it's
it's a wave that's tough to ride.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
Absolutely listen, JT. I just. I actually just wrote about
this on substact last week my my channels called The
Informed Observer, and I discussed hashtag activism where people are
very quick to use the hashtag right the free palacefying,
for example, and most of these people couldn't even point
it out on a map, right. I have no issue.

(03:54):
Am a firm believer in the First Amendment and believe that
people have the right to protests and to engage with society.
But I think it becomes very difficult to do so
when people are not fully informed and don't have the
full picture of things. I think that another thing that's
contributing to, you know, this issue is the overload of information. Right.
We live in a twenty four to seven US cycle,

(04:16):
and it's become very difficult for people, I guess, to
process this information. Right, We're constantly receiving buzzes on our phone,
and you know there's a bomb here, there was a
shooting there that you know, we constantly are receiving all
this negative information, but there's so much positive happening in
the world. So I think that if we start to
you know, as a young person, this is how I
see it, we start to change our mentality, start to

(04:40):
consume the positive with the negative, because you know, you
can't put yourself on a cocoon either, and you know,
live this life where oh nothing's going on and everything
is perfect, But to get both sides of it. I
think young people still, by getting this full picture, could
still do these other facets and really get a broad
understanding and also engage in a positive manner.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
Do you think schools could play a big impact in
this as well? Can schools teach patriotism without politics?

Speaker 2 (05:09):
I think they absolutely can. At the Raymost Research Institute,
that's the work that we're doing is developing frameworks and
curriculum to see how civics could be taught, you know,
without being political. I do believe that civics could be patriotic.
You know, it's become a contentious issue for both the
left and the right these days that you know, each

(05:31):
side sees it their own way as it being a
tool against them. But I think that we need to
unite as Americans and say, civics could be American and
could be patriotic and could bring us back to a time,
like you said at the top of the segment, that
we love our country. You know, I wake up every
morning and I said, God, I love being an American
when I travel. When I come back, there's nothing I

(05:52):
enjoy more than seeing the American flag hanging over the
airport and headed back home. So I think that there's
different tools that we have that could absolutely increase these
numbers and make people feel more patriotic without the politics, right,
because I think the politics is what's poisoning people to
you know, be scared of certain things or to have

(06:13):
you know, not have conversations. I really do think at
the end of the day, what we are missing is
to have courageous dialogue at the university level and you know,
even at the high school level, to be able to
have dialogue that in you know, common day society were
kind of taboo to have.

Speaker 1 (06:31):
Yeah, America is still the greatest nation on the planet
for sure. Alejandro Ramos, thank you so much. I really
appreciate your insight this morning. Check it out Ramos Research Institute,
great work.