According to a story from U.S. News and World Report, there’s new research showing that 4th of July celebrations boost the GOP. I have no idea if the methodology is sound, but the researchers found that attending Independence Day events influences voting behavior. Key findings include: “When done before the age of 18, it increases the likelihood of a youth identifying as a Republican by at least 2 percent” and “It raises the likelihood that parade watchers will vote for a Republican candidate by 4 percent.”
Here’s more from the USNWR story.
Democratic political candidates can skip this weekend’s July 4th parades. A new Harvard University study finds that July 4th parades energize only Republicans, turn kids into Republicans, and help to boost the GOP turnout of adults on Election Day. …”The political right has been more successful in appropriating American patriotism and its symbols during the 20th century. Survey evidence also confirms that Republicans consider themselves more patriotic than Democrats. According to this interpretation, there is a political congruence between the patriotism promoted on Fourth of July and the values associated with the Republican party. …Their findings also suggest that Democrats gain nothing from July 4th parades, likely a shocking result for all the Democratic politicians who march in them. …What’s more, the impact isn’t fleeting. “Surprisingly, the estimates show that the impact on political preferences is permanent, with no evidence of the effects depreciating as individuals become older,”said the Harvard report.
I’m interested in how to get people to believe in freedom, not vote Republican, so I’m not sure what to think about the Harvard study. But my Republican friends can probably make a few snarky observations about whether patriotism is inconsistent with being a Democrat. My thoughts on patriotism, meanwhile, can be found here.
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BTW, the Andreas Papandreou I mentioned in the previous post, is the father of George Papandreou, the current Greek prime minister.
In an ironic coincidence, the ancient Greeks coined the phrase “Αμαρτίες γονέων παιδεύουσι τέκνα” = “[The] sins of parents torment children”, which is still widely used in Greece today, though few refer to it in the Papandreou father/son context.
I wonder what the posterity slogan will be regarding Obama’s election and America’s turn towards the European political-moral framework. Perhaps somehting like:
“The morals of mandatory compassion bring the cruel outcome of group decline”
or
“After the carrot of greater prosperity through lower incentives to produce, come the futile sticks required to make an indolent population work”.
…of course that assumes that a nation recognizes the very reason for its decline, which realization, would allow it to take corrective action. So it won’t happen. Once everyone’s self-enslavement to the abstract collective is well underway, other reasons will be blamed for the misery (insufficient commitment to the community – more mandates needed, the most likely). I’ve seen this movie before.
But relax. In a mere three years, if you drop your contribution to America’s prosperity to less than about $90k per year, you get someone else to pay for most of your medical insurance. Salvation is near. Greek style!
“…relish the idea that the demise of the American culture is a good thing.”
Quite the opposite. But in order to forestall the suicidal tendencies of post-modern Yankees, they must first realize that Europeanization is synonymous with the demise of the American culture and, along with it, demise of the fundamental cultural endowment of individualism and self-reliance that made Americans the most prosperous country amongst two hundred.
In my view, by far, the greatest cognitive dissonance in American thinking I see today, is that most Americans are oblivious to both the extreme coincidence of having risen to be the most prosperous amongst two hundred nations in the world, as well as the fundamental American differences that led to that result.
So long as Americans do not realize that the road to Europeanization is synonymous with the road to decline, do not expect any salvation. As I have stated before, in my view, unfortunately, America seems to have passed the point of no return. 2008, when the American people decided to fix the distortions created by collectivism with even more collectivism, was the endgame of American prosperity, and the classic beginning of the vicious cycle of decline. I have seen this movie before. History shows that in such environments, voters trigger a vicious cycle whereby central planning and redistribution bring lower prosperity, which, in turn, causes a desperate and distressed electorate to vote for even more central planning and redistribution, since that is typically perceived as the quickest path to immediate relief. What better testimony for this vicious cycle than the 2008 election?
Thus Europeanization is irreversible. Greece provides the example that once down that road of hope and change (*) there is no return, with the rest of Europe, and now the America of “Hope and Change” all in line towards the central theme of western decline.
So happy 4th of July, though, as I said, I’m not sure what it stands for any more.
(*) Seriously, in a fact little known to Americans, in Greece, 30 years ago the path from statism to socialist-statism was initiated by the election of Andreas Papandreou under the central slogan “Αλλαγή” = “Change”.
I’m not surprised that Time magazine did not run an article on it. The only quick reference I found was on National Review (what a coincidence!)
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/270582/greek-way-sorrow-napoleon-linardatos
…not that this was the only thing that gave me the creeps about Americans electing the current administration.
In answer to zorba, there are many holes in your comment, the majority is not aspiring to the socalism of European values. Our current administration is aspiring to those values and worse. If our current administration is sucessful in it’s bid for re-election, America is doomed. You are obviously anti American, anti constitution and I believe you relish the idea that the demise of the American culture is a good thing.
In response to the article, I don’t believe that parades influence ones choosing of one political party over the other. I grew up in San Jose CA, everyone in those times went to fourth of July celebrations. Most of the people I grew up with are Dem’s and worse. I quess I was one of the lucky ones!!
As a European immigrant…
I’m more than a bit ambivalent as to what the 4th of July still represents in America today, other than a traditional holiday. Independence? From whom? The majority is aspiring to adopt 100% of European values. In a way there is a widespread American admission that it was foolish to resist European values all these centuries. In today’s predominant view, perhaps Americans played a role as unique renegade individualists in the past centuries, prospering to unprecedented levels, spreading freedom to other parts of the world, but the general Yankee feeling now seems to be that this role has been fulfilled and is time to return to the European values of central planning by majority.
So, to a large extent, the Europeans won in the end. More than a celebration, it is a reminder of the eventual defeat. Might as well shift to celebrating July 14, which is more in line with America’s dominant emerging values – and economic destiny.
Happy 4th of July!