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Sept. 16, 2025

The Consequences of Declining Patriotism in the United States

Neil N. Snyder
©2025 Neil N. Snyder

ABSTRACT: Patriotism, an important determinant of American civil-military relations, is in decline among many Americans. This article analyzes the results of an extensive national survey fielded to assess Americans’ attitudes and finds that more veterans value patriotism than Generation Z nonveterans, that Americans’ trust in their military is correlated with their value for patriotism, and that members of Generation Z are more likely to consider serving in the US military if they value patriotism. Though patriotism is normally a source of national unity, it may now be a source of division between veterans, nonveterans, and Generation Z.

Keywords: values, military service, military recruitment, political science

 

Recent survey results indicate fewer Americans feel patriotic than they have in decades. In one survey from 2023, roughly 38 percent of Americans reported that patriotism was very important to them. In another, 39 percent reported extreme pride in being American. Altogether, the share of Americans who feel patriotic has fallen by nearly 30 percent since the late 1990s.1

The decline of patriotism among Americans is perplexing because patriotism is considered a core American value and central to the American national identity. Patriotism is an important indicator of the relationship between Americans and their country because of the implications patriotism can have for civic engagement and politics among Americans.2

Patriotism is also significant to Americans’ relationships with their military. Though patriotism may be a symbolic gesture or a social norm, love of country can be an important source of confidence in Americans’ military, particularly during domestic division. Moreover, patriotism has traditionally been a reason why many Americans choose to serve in the military. However, recent data from the US Department of War (DoW) suggests patriotism is currently not among the top 10 reasons young Americans might serve in the US military.3

This article examines the consequences of declining patriotism for Americans’ relationships with their military. I focus on two important questions: 1) whether feelings of patriotism affect Americans’ trust in their military, and 2) whether feelings of patriotism affect young Americans’ likelihood of joining the military. I argue that patriotism is important to Americans’ relationships with their military because patriotism can be a source of motivation for military service and because patriotism is a basis for Americans’ confidence in their military. These dimensions of the civil-military relationship, however, may suffer when patriotism becomes less important to some Americans due to cultural changes, generational differences, declining veteran populations, or other reasons.

To test these ideas, I fielded a nationwide survey to gather data about the values and attitudes of Americans. I juxtapose patriotism with other traditional American values and find patriotism is an important value to most veterans and many nonveterans. However, the data show the generation of Americans born after 1996 (Generation Z or Gen Z) includes few who deeply value patriotism. Gen Z nonveterans are less likely to value patriotism than elder nonveterans and less likely to value patriotism than military veterans (including their Gen Z peers). Patriotism stands out from other values as an attitude that separates Gen Z from other Americans. Moreover, I find that feelings of patriotism are strongly associated with Americans’ trust in the military and, for Gen Z, whether Americans consider serving in the military. Finally, I conclude that patriotism is a source of division between veterans and nonveterans across all age groups.

National security practitioners will value this research because the decline of patriotism among Americans is likely to have profound consequences for who chooses to serve in a military uniform and who trusts the American military. This research is also important to the study of American civil-military relations because it builds on the existing research about service motivations and research devoted to civil-military gaps by providing new insights about how competing values shape Americans’ relationships with their military.4

This article proceeds as follows. First, I situate the concept of patriotism among traditional American values. Second, I develop informal expectations for why feelings of patriotism are likely to shape Americans’ attitudes about the military and military service. Third, I present survey results to test these ideas. I conclude with a discussion about the implications of this study and potential areas for future research.

National Identity, Values, and Patriotism

In his landmark book about the roots of nationalism, Benedict Anderson argues that nationality is an artifact of historical processes that lead the people of a territory to imagine themselves as a community. Although history, political geography, and psychology are important aspects of national identity, scholars continue to build on Anderson’s work and conceptualize national identity in terms of culture and values.5

Values, broadly defined as beliefs about ideals that can motivate behavior, are the cultural features of a society that enable scholars to identify, measure, or observe national identity. In the contemporary context, values are increasingly important to understanding a culture because national identity is one of many social identities individuals may have, including emotional attachments to a family, tribe, or other group. Moreover, there are good reasons to believe that, in many countries, national identity faces an array of intra-state and extra-territorial challenges. Given this complexity, if scholars and practitioners seek to understand what binds a people together and what divides them, then their values remain the key to understanding what unites a people.6

In the United States, a distinctive set of values structures Americans’ national identity and forms what Gunnar Myrdal called an “American creed.” Individualism, equality, freedom, self-reliance, and patriotism are routinely cited among American’s durable values, albeit in the absence of a consensus on the longitudinally stable and widely shared American values. The scholarly debate about American values is robust, including literature on issues about how to measure values; the relevance of values to Americans’ attitudes; and the more general debate about where values come from and what they do—whether values truly shape behavior. Although all Americans may not hold the same set of values, there is nevertheless a “prevailing American ideology.”7

Among Americans’ common values, patriotism has a unique role because strong national identity is universally associated with patriotism—a love of or emotional attachment to one’s country. Patriotism is a complex value that may reflect an individual’s altruistic ideas about their country and their subjective evaluations of the country or government. Consequently, individuals’ feelings of patriotism may change over time, and future research may benefit from examining why individuals’ feelings of patriotism change. Nevertheless, scholars think of patriotism as a source of unity for Americans who are otherwise fiercely independent: Americans’ individualism and self-reliance distinguish them as individuals, whereas patriotism reflects Americans’ unity as a nation.8

Patriotism has deep roots in American culture. Nearly 200 years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that early Americans were deeply patriotic. Their pride and strong pattern of civic virtue demonstrated their awareness of their belonging to the American nation and affirmed their deep attachment to the nation, a characteristic of national identity.9

Despite these deep roots, American national identity today involves unresolved tensions between Americans’ urges for autonomy and the unifying quality of their patriotism. Patriotism is unique among Americans’ core values (defined here as individualism, equality, freedom, self-reliance, and patriotism), as the value expressly involves collective attachment to the nation. For Americans, patriotism is a value and a group norm. Identifying as American can reinforce and perpetuate patriotism as an espoused value, even if Americans’ commitments to patriotism are somewhat superficial or symbolic. Regardless, the absence of other values involving collective attachment or national unity may create doubt about the durability of the national identity Americans have because Americans’ other values are strongly related to the sense of autonomy of Americans.10

Recent survey results suggest few Americans report high levels of pride in being American, and few Americans rate patriotism as a highly important value, raising concern about the unity of Americans during a period of domestic political divides and polarization. There are also indications younger Americans, specifically Gen Z, have particularly low pride in being American and depart significantly from attitudes and values of prior generations.11

Declining patriotism is likely consequential to Americans’ relationships with their military because patriotism is important to who considers joining the US military. Since 1973, the United States has relied on an all-volunteer force to fill the ranks. Because military service is national service, joining the military is commonly thought of as an act of patriotism—rendering service to the nation out of love for country. Patriotism has traditionally been a leading reason many young Americans consider voluntarily joining the military. The logic is that young Americans who are more patriotic may be more likely to consider joining the military than those who are less patriotic.12

While this logic is clear, the literature suggests the relationship between military service and patriotism is more complicated. In the 1970s and 1980s, Charles Moskos was concerned that, under the US voluntary service system, occupational motivations (reasons related to careers and material benefits) might eclipse institutional motivations (the desire to serve based on values like patriotism). In the early 2000s, survey evidence suggested a minority of servicemembers had reported a desire to serve as their most important reason for joining. Scholars concluded that although patriotism is associated with higher propensity to serve in the military, the US armed services were largely reliant on so-called low-propensity recruits—those who might be less likely to join based on values reasons but nevertheless motivated to serve for material or occupational reasons. However, the existing research about Americans’ propensities to serve does not include direct tests of whether the likelihood of serving in uniform is correlated with the importance of either traditional American or military values to young Americans.13

Consequently, the question of whether patriotism is a strong correlate of youth interest in military service remains unanswered. If patriotism is associated with a desire to serve in the military, then why do few people join the military for patriotism? An answer may be that military recruiters are forced to rely on youth with occupational motivations when fewer young people are patriotic. As an all-volunteer force, the US military recruits to fill the ranks. If there are few patriots among young people, the military will find other ways to incentivize service (a labor market solution) and patriotism will appear to be a less relevant cause of military service. Recent evidence from the DoD seems to bear out this theory, indicating patriotism is not among the top reasons young people consider joining the military.14

More broadly, scholars have recently given little attention to the relationship between the values of young Americans and their thinking about military service. There is rich literature devoted to understanding competing motivations for military service. Except for recent work on the role of honor culture in military service, recent studies avoid consideration of values and focus on operational matters like how to optimize recruiting practices or concerns with the shifting demographics of military recruits. As a result, whether patriotism affects young Americans’ thinking about military service is an important and unaddressed empirical question.15

Hypothesis 1 (Consideration of Military Service)
Young Americans are more likely to consider serving in the military when patriotism is important to them than when patriotism is unimportant.

Declining patriotism may also affect Americans’ trust in their military, which existing scholarship links to the military’s performance (does the military win wars?) and professionalism (is the military a reliable, nonpartisan institution?), though there are indications that Americans’ confidence in their military may be a social convention or symbolic gesture. There are also indications that Americans’ trust in the military can vary with or follow from domestic political cleavages. Finally, longitudinal studies of Americans’ trust in the military indicate that trust in the military is generational. Early adult exposure to certain ideas or messages inform a person’s sense of the military in a way that carries forward in life, an issue revisited later because certain generations may be particularly less confident in the US military.16

Patriotism is an emotional attachment or love for country, and many Americans closely associate their military with their country. Consequently, Americans’ patriotism involves symbolic national attachment to their military. Americans’ trust in their military may stem from this emotional or psychological attachment to the country and, by extension, the military, rather than from highly informed views of the military’s performance or professionalism, given the limited contact between many Americans and their military.17

Yet, Americans with strong feelings of patriotism are likely to have trust and confidence in the military because trusting the military aligns with feelings of patriotism. Trusting the military avoids the emotional or psychological discomfort that would follow from lacking confidence in an institution associated with a deeply held value. Alternatively, individuals who do not feel patriotism is important are less likely to trust the military because their attitudes toward the military are not buffered or otherwise buoyed by their emotional and psychological attachments to the military.

While simple, this commutative logic for patriotism builds on the micro foundations of emotional or psychological attachment to the country. If an individual is patriotic, and because there are good reasons to believe the military is associated with the country and patriotism, then an individual’s patriotism will inform their trust in the military.

Hypothesis 2 (Trust in the Military)
Americans are more likely to trust the military when patriotism is important to them than when patriotism is unimportant.

Paradoxically, feelings of patriotism may divide Americans as much as it unifies them. First, if the consideration of military service hypothesis is true, Americans with strong feelings of patriotism are more likely to serve in the military than Americans who place less importance on patriotism. This paradox suggests a selection effect: people who serve or have served will appear more patriotic than those who do not serve. Second, existing research shows that military experience increases feelings of patriotism, along with other military values. This correlation between service and patriotism suggests a socialization effect. Serving may enhance servicemembers’ patriotism or even convert the unpatriotic, resulting in veterans appearing much more patriotic than nonveterans. This divide is likely observable, even if veterans share many other values and attitudes.18

Hypothesis 3 (Patriotism Gap)
Veterans and high-propensity young Americans are more likely to think patriotism is an important value than nonveterans.

Under the all-volunteer force and given the long-running decline in the percentage of Americans who are military veterans, this hypothesis suggests veterans and potential recruits with patriotic feelings and an affinity for the military are likely to be increasingly isolated from non-veteran Americans. Moreover, less patriotic feelings among nonveterans (and the lower service rates and trust in the military that follows from less value on patriotism) are likely to have broad consequences for Americans’ relationships with their military, affecting a civil-military gap in attitudes that may be magnified or perpetuated by the relatively low military participation rates required under the US all-volunteer system.

Differences between veterans and nonveterans, and the differences between young Americans who are open to military service and those who are not open to military service, could be problematic for the US military as an institution that depends on voluntary servants to remain connected with the American people. When military members have a different value set than the Americans they serve, the difference in values puts “society at odds with the classic military values of sacrifice, unity, self-discipline, and considering the interests of the group before those of the individual.” This concern, which provided motivation for the late 1990s literature on the so-called “civil-military gap,” centers on values differences between servicemembers and the Americans they serve. The existing literature on the civil-military gap, however, focuses on issues of partisanship, political ideology, foreign policy attitudes, and the ideological dimensions of the military profession, leaving a gap in the literature to address whether veterans and nonveterans have differences over values.19

Do Patriotic Feelings Affect Americans’ Relationships with Their Military?

To test these hypotheses and explore the relevance of patriotism to Americans’ relationships with their military, I analyzed the results of a large national survey fielded in 2024. Given the substantive interest in younger Americans’ attitudes about military service and the questions about attitudes of US military veterans, the survey involved gathering responses from samples of veterans, young Americans, and older Americans.20

I gathered three samples of the US population—military veterans across all age groups or generations (including Gen Z younger veterans), Gen Z nonveterans, and Millennials-or-older nonveterans (28 and older nonveterans). Each sample is generally representative of US national demographics by age, gender, race/ethnicity, and region (with the caveat that the Gen Z veteran sample is small, reflecting those few young veterans who were randomly recruited to complete the survey along with older veterans). The resulting sample included 2,521 respondents: 501 veterans, 657 Gen Z nonveterans, and 1,363 older nonveterans (28 years old or older). This structure allows us to explore young Americans’ attitudes and to compare the attitudes of veterans with those of nonveterans across demographic categories.21

I organize the survey results as follows. First, I present results of survey questions related to Americans values. Next, I explore the correlates of patriotism. Third, I examine whether key indicators of civil-military relations (propensity to serve and trust in the military) vary with an individual’s feelings of patriotism.

To assess Americans’ values, I asked respondents to rate a selection of traditional American and military values, on a scale of very important, somewhat important, or unimportant. The values set included four selected American values (individualism, equality, freedom, and self-reliance) and four selected military values (duty, honor, loyalty, and service), along with patriotism as the bridge between American values and military values.

Figure 1 presents the results of how Americans, by group, rate selected values. For simplicity, I collapsed positive value ratings of “very important” or “somewhat important” into a single indicator, the percentage of respondents who reported a value was important (very or somewhat).

First, there is consensus among Gen Z nonveterans, older nonveterans, and veterans on core American values—more than 90 percent of respondents, regardless of demographic, rated individualism, equality, freedom, and self-reliance as important values. Second, respondent groups varied dramatically in their rating of patriotism. Seventy-six percent of non-veteran Gen Z respondents rated patriotism as important, a contrast to the 92 percent of older nonveterans and the 96 percent of veterans who rated patriotism as important. Not shown on the figure for the sake of clarity (but perhaps important to readers), Gen Z veterans rated patriotism at similar levels to older veterans: 91 percent of Gen Z veterans reported patriotism was important, a contrast to the much lower rate among their nonveteran peers. Third, among military values, fewer nonveteran Gen Z respondents reported that duty and service are important to them than did older nonveterans or veterans.22

Percentage of survey respondents who rated selected values “very important” or “somewhat important.” This figure displays point estimates with 90 percent confidence intervals.
Figure 1. Percentage of survey respondents who rated selected values “very important” or “somewhat important.” This figure displays point estimates with 90 percent confidence intervals.
(Source: Created by author)

These results led to some initial conclusions. First, Gen Z nonveterans are much less oriented toward collective or self-transcendent values like patriotism, duty, or service than their elders and veterans. This result is broadly consistent with prior work about Gen Z’s views. Second, there are also values gaps for patriotism, duty, and service between veterans and nonveterans more than 27 years old. While veterans and nonveterans place importance on many of the same values, these values stand out as distinguishing attitudes between veterans and nonveterans.23

To assess whether Gen Z’s patriotism affects its thinking about military service, I asked Gen Z nonveterans whether they had considered military service on a five-point scale (definitely yes, probably yes, not sure, probably not, definitely not). This question identifies whether these young Americans had previously contemplated military service, an indicator of their interest in military service and whether military service is among the options they are considering for their futures. If patriotism is a reason some young Americans are likely to consider serving, then patriotism should correlate with increased consideration of military service.

Overall, nearly 47 percent of Gen Z nonveteran respondents had previously considered military service (17 percent reported “definitely” having considered military service and 30 percent reported “probably” having considered military service). Approximately 53 percent of Gen Z nonveterans were either uncertain or had not considered military service. Of note, this result suggests a significantly larger share of young Americans have contemplated military service than the US Department of War estimates. The Department of War has consistently estimated youth propensity at approximately 11 percent, since 2020. However, the Department of War estimates propensity by asking young Americans ages 16–21, “In the next few years, how likely is it that you will be serving in the military?” This question constrains the share of young Americans considered likely to serve because young people are asked to envision military service in a finite period, which might compete with their intermediate life goals—like education or other endeavors. Consequently, I attribute the difference between the results reported here (a favorable view of youth interest in the military) and the DoD results to a difference in methodology, because the question here centers on youth consideration of military service (rather than on their plans for service, as measured by DoD’s surveys).24

To assess whether Gen Z’s consideration of military service varies with its feelings of patriotism, figure 2 presents the percentage of Gen Z nonveterans who had considered military service by the importance of patriotism. Among Gen Z nonveterans who think patriotism is important, 52 percent had considered military service. In contrast, among those who rate patriotism unimportant, only 30 percent reported interest in military service. Overall, these results suggest that Gen Z’s thinking about whether to serve is strongly influenced by their value for patriotism.

Percentage of Gen Z respondents who reported “definitely yes” or “probably yes” to consideration of military service by importance of patriotism. This figure displays point estimates with 90 percent confidence intervals.
Figure 2. Percentage of Gen Z respondents who reported “definitely yes” or “probably yes” to consideration of military service by importance of patriotism. This figure displays point estimates with 90 percent confidence intervals.
(Source: Created by author)

Next, I asked respondents to report how much trust they have in the US military on a five-point scale (strongly trust, moderately trust, neither trust nor distrust, moderately distrust, or strongly distrust). Approximately 88 percent of veterans and 78 percent of nonveterans 28 or older reported strong or moderately strong trust in the military, in contrast to the 65 percent of Gen Z respondents who reported strong or moderate trust in the military. Initially, this result suggests a correlation between veteran status and stronger trust and a correlation between youth and reduced trust in the military.

To test whether feelings of patriotism affect Americans’ trust in the military, figure 3 presents the percentage of respondents who expressed trust in the military by demographic group and by their value for patriotism. For example, among the 76 percent of Gen Z respondents who expressed that patriotism is important, 75 percent had strong trust in the military. In contrast, for Gen Z members who do not rate patriotism as important, only 34 percent of respondents have strong or moderately strong trust in the military.

Percentage of survey respondents who reported strong or moderately strong trust in the US military by importance of patriotism. This figure displays point estimates with 90 percent confidence intervals.
Figure 3. Percentage of survey respondents who reported strong or moderately strong trust in the US military by importance of patriotism. This figure displays point estimates with 90 percent confidence intervals.
(Source: Created by author)

Figure 3 yields two insights. First, patriotism is strongly correlated with trust in the military. On average, across all demographic groups, 81 percent of those who think patriotism is important trust the military, whereas 38 percent of those who think patriotism is unimportant trust the military. This affirms a linkage between Americans’ patriotism and their trust in the military. If patriotism declines, trust in the military is also likely to decline. Second, Gen Z nonveterans are likely to have less trust in the military than veterans—even among “patriotic” members of Gen Z. This correlation suggests a significant divide in attitudes and values between Gen Z nonveterans and veterans, noting that the veteran group includes some Gen Z respondents.25

These results have limitations. First, the results rely on a survey fielded in late 2024. As conditions change and Americans’ attitudes change, these results might not hold. Second, because the results rely on survey evidence, there is a limit to what we can infer from the results. Specifically, the results reveal which values are important to Americans but not why they are important or what American’s mean when they report that a certain value is important. Future research using alternative methods, such as focus groups or semi-structured interviews, may benefit from a deeper examination of which factors drive Americans’ values (which was not the subject of this article).26

One additional caveat is that the survey results presented here only include descriptive statistics. For example, estimates of how trust in the military varies with feelings of patriotism do not control for other factors that might influence why Americans have trust in the military. To address this specific concern, I estimated a series of regression models. I estimated the effect of Gen Z status on the value for patriotism while controlling for other correlates of strong patriotism (veteran status, gender, region/location, political ideological, political party affiliation). In the following section, I briefly cover the results of these rigorous statistical tests, which were performed with ordinary least squares regression models. All the results that follow affirm the main results—patriotism is an important determinant of Americans’ relationship with their military.

Through these statistical models, I find that Gen Z members are 16 percent less likely to strongly value patriotism than other Americans—after controlling for other factors (that is, a robust indication of the relationship between Gen Z and weak patriotism). I modeled trust in the military with similar methods. I found that, after controlling for demographic characteristics and respondents’ evaluations for all values in the data set (individualism, equality, freedom, self-reliance, duty, honor, loyalty, and service), Gen Z is 7 percent less likely to trust the military than older respondents and that strong patriotism is associated with a 29 percent increased likelihood of trusting the military. I applied the same modeling approach to youth propensity (consideration of military service) and found that, on average and after controlling for demographic factors and other values, strongly patriotic Gen Z members are 13 percent more likely to consider military service than other Gen Z members.

Finally, I also modeled youth consideration of military service on a factor commonly thought to inform youth propensity—direct family or friend connections to the military. Many people describe the military as a family business, with recruits disproportionately drawn from the pool of veteran’s children. In the survey, I asked respondents to report the number of family or friend connections. When I model Gen Z respondents’ considerations of military service on patriotism, demographic factors, and other values, I find that that strongly connected respondents (two or more connections) are 11 percent more likely to consider military service than those with no connections. This finding is consistent with the occupational inheritance or family business theory of military recruitment. While controlling for direct military connections, strong patriotism is still associated with a 12 percent increased likelihood of considering military service.

A few final questions concern patriotism—does the data reveal who the more patriotic Americans are? Are there demographic trends to who is patriotic among Gen Z nonveterans, older nonveterans, and veterans? To address this question, figure 4 presents the demographic composition of respondents who reported patriotism was very or somewhat important to them by group (Gen Z nonveteran, older nonveteran, or veteran).

Figure 4 suggests several noteworthy demographic trends to patriotic Americans across the three groups. First, most tend to be male. Sixty-one percent of Gen Z nonveterans and 75 percent of veterans were male, whereas there were fewer males (44 percent) among older nonveterans. Second, more than 60 percent of each group were White. Third, 40 percent or more of each group were from the South. Finally, 43 percent or more of each group identified as politically conservative. Overall, patriots were comparable to the US population demographics by race and region, but men and conservatives were overrepresented among respondents who reported patriotism is important.27

These demographic observations suggest stronger patriotism may be concentrated among conservative men in addition to the previously identified gaps between Gen Z or veterans and others. If true, and if other sociopolitical divides correlate with this gender and ideology-based gap in patriotism, the values differences identified here could contribute to broader social fissures in America—issues that may complicate civil-military relations, given the relationship between patriotic feelings and trust in the military or military service.

Discussion

This article focuses on the consequences of Americans’ patriotism for civil-military relations. The key findings are as follows. First, I find that a larger share of veterans value patriotism than Gen Z nonveterans or nonveterans older than 27. Second, Americans’ trust in their military is correlated with their value for patriotism. Third, Gen Z nonveterans who value patriotism are more likely to consider serving in the US military than those who do not value patriotism. Each result supports the hypotheses developed in this article.

Demographic composition of respondents who reported patriotism as “very important” or “somewhat important”
Figure 4. Demographic composition of respondents who reported patriotism as “very important” or “somewhat important”
(Source: Created by author)

One strategic implication of this study is that, however paradoxically, patriotism may be a value that divides Americans as much as it unites them. In theory, patriotism should unify Americans. However, patriotism appears to be valued more by veterans (or would-be recruits) than nonveterans. In an era when pride in being American is in general decline in the United States, this article suggests that differences of values between veterans and nonveterans could become a serious source of division should Americans’ patriotism continue to decline. Leaders in the veteran community may benefit from exploring ways to mitigate values differences between veterans and nonveterans to preclude this gap from distancing veterans from other Americans.

A second implication of this study is that Americans’ changing values could jeopardize the viability of the all-volunteer force if recruiting practices do not account for young Americans’ relatively low patriotism. Gen Z nonveterans are less likely to be patriotic than older nonveterans (that is, those who came before them) or veterans, and less patriotic Gen Z members are less interested in military service. If the trend of declining patriotism in America continues, the military may increasingly rely on material incentives or persuasion unrelated to Americans’ values to fill the ranks. More pessimistically, the military’s ranks may increasingly be filled by young Americans who are not motivated by patriotism, a problem if some military members are unwilling to forgo pursuit of self interest under the burden of military duty because of their values. The military recruiting enterprise may benefit from enhancing its efforts to locate and recruit patriotic members of Gen Z.

 
 

Neil Snyder
Colonel Neil Snyder, PhD, is an assistant professor at the US Army War College, having earned a PhD in political science at Stanford University in 2020 as a fellow of the US Army Strategic Plans and Policy Program.

 
 

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Endnotes

  1. Aaron Zitner, “America Pulls Back from Values That Once Defined It, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds,” The Wall Street Journal, March 27, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/americans-pull-back-from-values-that-once-defined-u-s-wsj-norc-poll-finds-df8534cd; and Megan Brenan, “Extreme Pride in Being American Remains Near Record Low,” Gallup, June 29, 2023, https://news.gallup.com/poll/507980/extreme-pride-american-remains-near-record-low.aspx. Return to text.
  2. Wayne E. Baker, “Are There Core American Values?,” SSRN, June 2021, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3961608; Miroslav Nincic and Jennifer M. Ramos, “The Sources of Patriotism: Survey and Experimental Evidence,” Foreign Policy Analysis 8, no. 4 (October 2012): 374; and Nathan P. Kalmoe and Kimberly D. Gross, “Cueing Patriotism, Prejudice, and Partisanship in the Age of Obama: Experimental Tests of U.S. Flag Imagery Effects in Presidential Elections,” Political Psychology 37, no. 6 (December 2016): 883–99. Return to text.
  3. David T. Burbach, “Gaining Trust while Losing Wars: Confidence in the U.S. Military after Iraq and Afghanistan,” Orbis 61, no. 2 (2017): 154–77; Peter D. Feaver, Thanks for Your Service: The Causes and Consequences of Public Confidence in the US Military (Oxford University Press, 2023); Todd Woodruff et al., “Propensity to Serve and Motivation to Enlist among American Combat Soldiers,” Armed Forces & Society 32, no. 3 (2006): 353–66; and “Futures Survey,” U.S. Department of Defense Office of People Analytics, 2023, https://www.opa.mil/research-analysis/jamrs-recruiting-awareness/market-research/futures-survey. Return to text.
  4. James Griffith, “Institutional Motives for Serving in the U.S. Army National Guard: Implications for Recruitment, Retention, and Readiness,” Armed Forces & Society 34, no. 2 (Winter 2008): 230–58; James Griffith, “Contradictory and Complementary Identities of U.S. Army Reservists: A Historical Perspective,” Armed Forces & Society 37, no. 2 (April 2011): 261–83; Charles C. Moskos Jr., “From Institution to Occupation: Trends in Military Organization,” Armed Forces & Society 4, no. 1 (November 1977): 41–50; Charles C. Moskos et al., eds., The Postmodern Military: Armed Forces after the Cold War (Oxford University Press, 2000); David R. Segal et al., “Propensity to Serve in the U.S. Military: Temporal Trends and Subgroup Differences,” Armed Forces & Society 25, no. 3 (March 1999): 407–27; Jami K. Taylor et al., “An Exploratory Study of Public Service Motivation and the Institutional-Occupational Model of the Military,” Armed Forces & Society 41, no. 1 (January 2015): 142–62; Todd Woodruff et al., “Propensity to Serve and Motivation to Enlist among American Combat Soldiers,” Armed Forces & Society 32, no. 3 (April 2006); Todd Woodruff et al., “Revisiting Propensity to Serve and Motivations to Enlist: Insights and Implications for Contemporary Military Recruitment Challenges and Research,” Armed Forces & Society 51, no. 2 (June 2024); Jason K. Dempsey, Our Army: Soldiers, Politics, and American Civil-Military Relations (Princeton University Press, 2010); Peter D. Feaver and Richard H. Kohn, eds., Soldiers and Civilians: The Civil-Military Gap and American National Security (MIT Press, 2001); Suzanne C. Nielsen and Don M. Snider, American Civil-Military Relations: The Soldier and the State in a New Era (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009); and Kori Schake and James N. Mattis, eds., Warriors & Citizens: American Views of Our Military (Hoover Institution Press, 2016). Return to text.
  5. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (Verso, 2006), 4; and Montserrat Guibernau, The Identity of Nations (Polity Press, 2007), 10–13. Return to text.
  6. Steven Hitlin and Jane Allyn Piliavin, “Values: Reviving a Dormant Concept,” Annual Review of Sociology 30 (2004): 359–93; John P. Hewitt, Dilemmas of the American Self (Temple University Press, 1989), 138–42; Deborah J. Schildkraut, “Boundaries of American Identity: Evolving Understandings of ‘Us,’ ” Annual Review of Political Science 17 (2014): 441–60; and Guibernau, Identity of Nations, 26. Return to text.
  7. Gunnar Myrdal, The American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (Harper & Brothers, 1944); Wayne E. Baker, America’s Crisis of Values: Reality and Perception (Princeton University Press, 2005); Roy D’Andrade, A Study of Personal and Cultural Values: American, Japanese, and Vietnamese (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); Samuel P. Huntington, Who Are We?: America’s Great Debate (Simon and Schuster, 2005); John W. Kingdon, America the Unusual (Worth Publishers, 1999), 23–24; Seymour Martin Lipset, American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword (W. W. Norton & Company, 1996); Schildkraut, “American Identity”; and Hitlin and Piliavin, “Values.” Return to text.
  8. Leonie Huddy, “National Identity, Patriotism, and Nationalism,” in The Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology, eds. Leonie Huddy et al. (Oxford University Press, 2023), 769–803. Return to text.
  9. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 1 (Everyman’s Library, 1994); Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 2 (Everyman’s Library, 1994), 241–43; and Leonie Huddy and Nadia Khatib, “American Patriotism, National Identity, and Political Involvement,” American Journal of Political Science 51, no. 1 (2007): 65. Return to text.
  10. Hitlin and Piliavin, “Values,” 376; and Schildkraut, “Boundaries.” Return to text.
  11. Brenan, “Extreme Pride”; Zitner, “America Pulls Back”; Alan I. Abramowitz, The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization, and American Democracy (Yale University Press, 2011); Morris P. Fiorina and Samuel J. Abrams, “Political Polarization in the American Public,” Annual Review of Political Science 11 (2008): 563–88; Shanto Iyengar et al., “The Origins and Consequences of Affective Polarization in the United States,” Annual Review of Political Science 22 (2019): 129–46; Nolan McCarty, Polarization: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2019); and Jean M. Twenge, Generations: The Real Differences between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents—And What They Mean for America’s Future (Atria Books, 2023), 422. Return to text.
  12. Bernard D. Rostker, I Want You! The Evolution of the All-Volunteer Force (RAND, 2006), https://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG265.html. Return to text.
  13. Moskos, “Institution to Occupation,” 377–82; David R. Segal, “Measuring the Institutional/Occupational Change Thesis,” Armed Forces & Society 12, no. 3 (Spring 1986): 351–375; Dempsey, Our Army, 46; Woodruff et al., “Propensity to Serve; and Woodruff et al., “Revisiting Propensity to Serve.” Return to text.
  14. “Futures Survey.” Return to text.
  15. Griffith, “Institutional Motives”; Griffith, “Contradictory and Complementary”; Moskos, “Institution to Occupation”; Taylor et al., “Exploratory Study”; Woodruff et al., “Revisiting Propensity to Serve”; Jarrod E. Bock et al., “To Honor and Defend: State- and Individual-Level Analyses of the Relationship between the U.S. Culture of Honor and Military Service,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2024.; Beth J. Asch, Navigating Current and Emerging Army Recruiting Challenges: What Can Research Tell Us? (RAND, 2019), https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR3107.html; Michael S. Pollard et al., Identifying Opportunities to Recruit More Individuals above the Age of 21 into the U.S. Army (RAND Corporation, 2022), https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA824-1.html. Return to text.
  16. Burbach, “Gaining Trust”; Andrew Hill et al., “ ‘Self-Interest Well Understood’: The Origins and Lessons of Public Confidence in the Military,” Daedalus 142, no. 2 (2013): 49–64; Charles C. Moskos, “Patriotism-Lite Meets the Citizen-Soldier,” in United We Serve: National Service in the Future of Citizenship, ed. Dionne et al. (Brookings Institution Press, 2003), 33–42; Feaver, Thanks; Michael Robinson, Dangerous Instrument: Political Polarization and US Civil-Military Relations (Oxford University Press, 2023); and David C. King and Zachary Karabell, The Generation of Trust: How the U.S. Military Has Regained the Public’s Confidence since Vietnam (The AEI Press, 2003). Return to text.
  17. Christopher S. Parker, “Symbolic versus Blind Patriotism Distinction without Difference?,” Political Research Quarterly 63, no. 1 (March 2010): 97–114; and Hill et al. “Self-Interest,” Daedalus 142, no. 2 (Spring 2013). Return to text.
  18. Volker Franke and Lindy Heinecken, “Adjusting to Peace: Military Values in a Cross-National Comparison,” Armed Forces & Society 27, no. 4 (Summer 2001): 567–95; and Gwendolyn Steven et al., “Military Academies as Instruments of Value Change,” Armed Forces & Society 20, no. 3 (Spring 1994): 473–84. Return to text.
  19. Thomas E. Ricks, “The Widening Gap between Military and Society,” The Atlantic, July 1, 1997; Feaver and Kohn, Soldiers and Civilians; Dempsey, Our Army; Nielsen and Snider, Civil-Military Relations; and Schake and Mattis, Warriors and Citizens. Return to text.
  20. Details about the survey fielding, the survey instrument or questionnaire, and the survey demographics are available from the author on request. The survey was developed as part of a US Army War College integrated research project on the military and society, for which the author was a director. The survey was fielded to an opt-in panel recruited by QualtricsXM. The survey was fielded from October 22, 2024, to November 13, 2024, to a convenience sample of American adults over 18, broadly representative by age, gender, race/ethnicity, and region. Return to text.
  21. Sample demographics are available from the author on request. For example, for the sample overall (Gen Z nonveterans, older nonveterans, and veterans), the sample demographics are: 48 percent female and 52 percent male; 29 percent Gen Z, 23 percent Millennial, 21 percent Generation X, 24 percent Boomer, and 3 percent Silent; 59 percent White and 41 percent minority (15 percent Latino, 16 percent Black, and others); 39 percent from the South, 23 percent from the West, 21 percent from the Midwest, and 16 percent from the Northeast. Return to text.
  22. For comparison to recent alternatives regarding patriotism or pride in America, these aggregate numbers compare favorably. For example, in 2023, a poll by The Wall Street Journal/NORC found that 73 percent of respondents rated patriotism very or somewhat important and a Pew Research Center study reported 67 percent of Americans reported being either extremely or very proud of being American. While the aggregate result here is somewhat higher (89 percent reported patriotism as very or somewhat important across all demographic groups), the focus is on the contrast between samples (that is, veterans versus Gen Z) rather than on the absolute measure, which could have been influenced by variation in question wording or other survey methodological features. Return to text.
  23. Twenge, Generations. Return to text.
  24. “Futures Survey.” Return to text.
  25. Of note, Gen Z nonveterans have significantly less trust in the military than Gen Z veterans. For example, 80 percent of Gen Z veterans with strong patriotism reported trust in the military, a contrast to the 75 percent of Gen Z nonveterans with strong patriotism. Among Gen Z members who rated patriotism as unimportant, 100 percent of veterans and 34 percent of nonveterans reported trust in the military—with the caveat that the sample of weakly patriotic Gen Z veterans was extraordinarily small (7 of the 735 Gen Z members). Return to text.
  26. “Futures Survey.” Return to text.
  27. I also examined whether stronger feelings of patriotism correlate with party affiliation. If patriotism correlates with conservatism, affiliation with the Republican party is likely to as well because, in a polarized era, conservatives tend to be Republicans (See McCarty, Polarization; and Fiorina and Abrams, “Political Polarization”). The results affirm a correlation between strong patriotism and Republican affiliation across each demographic group (Gen Z nonveterans, nonveterans older than 27, and veterans). Future research may benefit from exploring why patriotism trends higher among Republicans and conservatives. See also “United States Population Growth by Region,” United States Census Bureau, n.d., accessed February 26, 2025, https://www.census.gov/popclock/data_tables.php?component=growth; and “QuickFacts, United States” United States Census Bureau, 2025, https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045224. Return to text.