A new Gallup report finds that pride in being American has fallen — again. That news may trouble the sentimentalist, but it shouldn’t surprise the realist. Pride is not a reflex. It is earned. And in recent months, America has done more to provoke shame than to inspire pride.
We are watching a slow, public unraveling of our democratic ideals — and people are paying attention. The images are undeniable, the policies indefensible.
In the Florida Everglades, a facility disturbingly dubbed as “Alligator Alcatraz” has reportedly become a new staging ground for detentions of undocumented immigrants. Officials say it's for “dangerous individuals.” Yet, what we see — what cameras and eyewitnesses reveal — are stories of 9-year-old children zip-tied outside of immigration hearings. Children whose only offense was attempting to enter the country legally with their families.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the country, four armed, military-grade ICE agents tackled a 4’11” woman on her way to work at a nail salon. Not because she was violent. Not because she posed any threat. But because she didn’t have the right papers. This is law enforcement? Or is this intimidation dressed in a badge?
Let’s be clear: if this was truly a targeted effort to dismantle organized crime or violent gangs, the news would be filled with scenes of ICE exchanging fire with cartel operatives — not dragging grandmothers out of homes or separating toddlers from their parents. Instead, the nightly images look more like scenes from a police state, not a constitutional republic. Not the America we claim to be.
If people are not proud of America, perhaps the more urgent question is not why — but why would they be?
We were once a country that welcomed the tired, the poor, the huddled masses. Now, we warehouse them. We were once a beacon of rule of law and due process. Now, we are suspending both in the name of security.
This is not a partisan issue. It is a moral one. There can be no pride in cruelty. No patriotism in persecution. No glory in a nation that punishes the powerless and protects the powerful. Pride in America cannot survive if America forgets what once made it worthy of pride to begin with.
We need to hold America to its highest ideals — not its basest instincts. Loving a country means insisting it live up to its promises and be the best it can without cruelty and heartlessness.
Because if we let go of those promises — liberty, equality, due process — then the Gallup poll won’t just show a lack of pride. It’ll show the loss of a republic. I won’t even go into the waste of $450 million of FEMA dollars on the concentration camp in Florida while persons struggle across several states from recent tornadoes and storms and denied FEMA assistance.
Editor’s note: Joseph McCain is the publisher of Winston County Journal, The Choctaw Plaindealer and Webster Progress Times. He has worked in the newspaper industry for over 30 years and may be reached at 662-803-5236 or email reporter@choctawplaindealer.com or newsroom@winstoncountyjournal.com
