The Rot of Rooting Against America

By Judson Berger

Friday, June 19, 2026

 

A telling moment occurred last week when Democratic Representative Adriano Espaillat and primary rival Darializa Avila Chevalier were asked on a New York news channel which country they were rooting for in the World Cup.

 

Mexico and Senegal, respectively.

 

What? Both politicians are Dominican American, so it’s not like they were honoring ancestral heritage. It evidently just didn’t occur to them to root for the country they live in and want to represent in Congress.

 

This, sadly, is an attitude that extends far beyond sports. Every year around this time, pollsters dutifully report new data illustrating how patriotism and affection for America is declining. So it is in 2026, as the nation turns 250. National pride among Democrats is plummeting. Especially on the left, but also on the right, the public arena is becoming populated with figures who root against America or who hold up [insert trending nation of the moment] as more desirable. Who want to ditch the precepts that underpin our system and rebuild. Who declare the country fundamentally — perhaps irredeemably — flawed, racist, unjust, unequal, and so on.

 

This is a failure to distinguish between problems common to most countries and problems so baked into a nation’s DNA as to be an essential part of it. At National Review, we unequivocally reject the notion that America’s flaws are inherent. We’re here, year-round, defending and advancing the American experiment, even when we don’t get everything we want — because genuine patriotism is not provisional. It’s certainly not inflexibly pessimistic. Will you help us continue this work as part of our “Defending America” webathon?

 

We’re not going to pretend all is hunky-dory. The left is drifting dangerously toward an anti-prosperity, antisemitic, resentment-fueled mindset that history has shown to be toxic to civilizations in every instance. The Trump administration is becoming consumed by the president’s vanity projects and revenge missions. But neither will we indulge the fiction that never before or elsewhere has humanity been so oppressed as it is in the United States of 2026, where the ease of starting a business, the quality of higher education, the economic opportunities, the national parks, the diversity of cultures, and the sheer overflowing creative energy of our people, among other things, are the envy of the world.

 

Gratitude is an abiding theme of this publication. It’s something that guides us as we make the affirmative case for the American project and shoot down the misguided ideas of those who would chip away at the features that define it. It’s at the heart of NR magazine’s monthly feature, “Our Spacious Skies,” for which we travel the country to share what we love about it.

 

Earlier this week, Noah Rothman cautioned Republicans against seeing the left’s disaffection as something merely to be exploited. Rather, “Republicans should do their utmost to make celebrating America an inviting prospect.”