Why do Democrats hate America?

That’s one way of framing the sentiment expressed in several recent polls in which Americans were asked whether they were proud to be American.

An NBC News poll found that fewer than 30% of Democrats have pride in being American, while 90% of Republicans do. A Reuters/Ipsos poll produced nearly identical results.

CNN’s Harry Enten reviewed the results and called it “one of the most stunning divides that we have seen.” Enten pointed to Americans’ habits of displaying the U.S. flag on the 4th of July. Back in 2001, both Republicans and Democrats were nearly even at 68% and 65%, respectively. However, over the last 25 years, things have changed significantly — at least for Democrats.

“Republicans basically are where they were 25 years ago, right? 64%,” Enten pointed out. “But look at that Democratic percentage absolutely plummeting. Just 27% of Democrats say they will, in fact, display the flag on July 4th.”

This holds for pride in being an American as well. Back in 2001, 90% of Republicans expressed pride in being American, as did 85% of Democrats. As I already noted, today, roughly 90% of Republicans remain proud of being American, but just 29% of Democrats exhibit that same American pride.

Part of this divide can be blamed on who resides in the White House. Yet there’s a fundamentally bigger issue at play here because, irrespective of which party controls the executive branch, there has long been the belief that America is much bigger than her politics. For Democrats, that’s no longer true.

A fundamentally different vision of America can explain the growing divide between the two major parties and, furthermore, why Democrats have such a negative view of America.

Historically, politics in Western democratic nations has been divided between conservative and liberal elements. Despite this divide also being true in the U.S., both sides embraced the nation, its founding, and — generally — our defining and guiding principles as delineated by the Constitution. At least for most of our nation’s history.

Yet over the last few decades, the Democrat Party has eschewed its classical liberal political views and replaced them with a growing commitment to Marxist socialism.

The trouble is, Marxism is fundamentally at odds with America’s foundational principles. Only by fundamentally changing the U.S. into something other than the U.S. can Marxism have any chance at running the government. Given this reality, Marxist radicals have pursued a decades-long cultural revolution to overthrow the fundamental value system that has informed the American mind since its founding.

What we are witnessing with today’s Democrat Party is its systematic takeover by Marxist radicals, while attempting to maintain the guise of being America’s traditional liberal party.

How else does one explain the massive anti-American sentiments now espoused by so many Democrats? A generation of young Democrats has been raised on the toxic, Marxist-based victimization ideology, where they are indoctrinated to view America and her history as evil and oppressive. They are taught that any praise of America’s Founders and history is not about the blessing of individual liberty, opportunity, and dignity, but solely about past or apparent failures. They have become blind to America’s unique greatness and, therefore, express shame rather than pride in being Americans.

In order for a Marxist revolution to become fully realized, the majority of citizens must be conditioned to hate their nation’s past leaders and reject any notion of historic honor and greatness.

Our Founders viewed the role of government as intentionally and strategically limited because they rightly understood the government’s propensity to abuse power. And our Founders, many of whom were men of strong Christian conviction, rightly sought to prevent the government from playing too big a role in the lives of the citizenry. They recognized that a free people must be a self-reliant people who instinctively turn to God, not government, for solutions to the myriad problems faced in life.

Sadly, over the 250 years of this nation’s history, the mission creep of government has expanded well beyond the Founders’ original intended boundaries. Now, most Americans see and feel the presence of government nearly everywhere, and, in turn, make ever greater demands on government. This has resulted in politics being increasingly injected into nearly everything.

Therefore, whichever party wins or loses elections is seemingly becoming an existential threat to one or the other side of the political aisle. Still, that’s far more true for Democrats, so when Donald Trump and the Republicans are currently in power, a majority of Democrats feel ashamed of being American. That’s because they have tied their American identity to who currently holds power in government rather than to our founding identity — which they want to utterly redefine, in any case.

It’s no wonder Democrats hate America.