In ages past, Democrats were the party of the blue-collar man, fighting for fair wages for American workers against the interests of elite capitalists who weren’t particularly concerned about anything more than making a buck, by any means necessary. Nowadays, the Democratic Party has become some kind of post-national, identity-less, amorphous political blob, ashamed of the heritage and history of the United States and actively fighting against the interests of the American people.

The slaughter of America’s young via abortion, the replacement of the American people via mass immigration, the defense of illegal immigrants at the cost of American lives and security, a crusade to combat perceived discrimination against ethnic and sexual minorities and to punish straight, white men for being straight, white, and male, the denigration of America’s historic traditions and customs — these are the platform planks of the Democratic Party of today.

It stands to reason then that the supporters of this non-American — even anti-American — radicalized movement share at least some of the same principles, including an absence of national pride. Data backs this up. An Elon University national poll conducted last week found that, overall, 48% of respondents say that they are “very” proud to be American, 20% say that they are “somewhat” proud, 15% say that they are indifferent on the matter, and a total of 17% say that they are not proud to be American. Among Democrats, however, only about one quarter (26%) of voters say that they are “very” proud to be American, 22% say that they are “somewhat” proud, and a total of 30% say that they are not proud to be American. Additionally, more than half (55%) of Democrats say that they would rather live somewhere else than the U.S.

Why is it that Democrats, who comprise one of America’s two major political parties, are seemingly so ashamed to be American? Part of the reason is demographics. As of 2020, foreign-born, naturalized U.S. citizens made up roughly 10% of the American electorate, but they make up a larger share of registered Democrats, at approximately 15%. In California, where a tremendous sum of immigrants coalesce, more than 55% of naturalized voters are registered Democrats, compared to only about four in 10 U.S.-born voters. Broader studies have also suggested that naturalized voters are about twice as likely to say that the Democratic Party best represents their views and values, rather than the Republican Party, even amongst those who are Independent voters.

That only accounts for naturalized citizens voting legally. The number of illegal immigrants who, in Democrat-run “sanctuary” jurisdictions, cast ballots illegally is not known precisely, but it does happen, and there is little doubt that the lawbreakers vote in support of the party promising to protect them from prosecution and allow them to live in the U.S. illegally, displacing American workers, defrauding American welfare programs, and stealing the American dream from Americans. Under President Donald Trump, federal authorities have moved to expose and prosecute many of these instances, although the shadowy nature of illegal immigrants voting illegally means that many more instances will likely remain undiscovered.

However, another explanation for the Democrats’ suicidal sense of self-loathing and shame can be found in the tumultuous 1960s. In his book “The Age of Entitlement,” Claremont Institute Senior Fellow Christopher Caldwell suggests that the civil rights movement established an alternate constitutional system within U.S. law and government, one which is often at odds with the nation’s official, founding Constitution. “At some point in the course of the decades, what had seemed in 1964 to be merely an ambitious reform revealed itself to have been something more,” Caldwell wrote. “The changes of the 1960s, with civil rights at their core, were not just a major new element in the Constitution. They were a rival constitution, with which the original one was frequently incompatible — and the incompatibility would worsen as the civil rights regime was built out,” he continued. (Emphasis original.)

“Much of what we have called ‘polarization’ or ‘incivility’ in recent years is something more grave — it is the disagreement over which of these two constitutions shall prevail: the de jure constitution of 1788, with all the traditional forms of jurisprudential legitimacy and centuries of American culture behind it; or the de facto constitution of 1964, which lacks the traditional kind of legitimacy but commands the near-unanimous endorsement of judicial elites and civic educators and the passionate allegiance of those who received it as a liberation.”

In fact, the disproportionately rising share of foreign-born voters aligning themselves with the Democratic Party and the party’s vociferous proliferation of mass immigration, all displacing and replacing America’s native culture and people with those who have no connection to the nation, take no pride in her history, and have little or no real investment in her future wellbeing — all of this is merely a byproduct of the parallel constitution crafted by the “civil rights regime” of the 1960s and championed as the supreme law of the land by the Democrats.

Many Americans supported the civil rights movement in the 1960s, championing the Declaration of Independence’s assertion that “all men are created equal” and recognizing that their fellow human beings — and fellow Americans, at that — are worthy of being treated with dignity and respect as human beings, instead of discriminated against on the basis of the color of their skin. Yet, as the proverb goes, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. What may have begun as a nationwide effort to protect and uphold the dignity of a minority of oft-abused Americans has spiraled into a national nightmare, one which roughly half of the country considers a dream worth realizing.

One of the pioneers of the Left’s parallel constitution, the radical activist and author Saul Alinsky, explicated the infernal aspect of the civil rights regime’s transformation and attempted coup of the nation’s heart and soul. In a 1972 interview in Playboy magazine, roughly three months before his death, the Chicago-area architect of “community organizing” was asked for his thoughts on the afterlife:

“I don’t know whether there’s anything after this or not. I haven’t seen the evidence one way or the other and I don’t think anybody else has either. But I do know that man’s obsession with the question comes out of his stubborn refusal to face up to his own mortality. Let’s say that if there is an afterlife, and I have anything to say about it, I will unreservedly choose to go to hell. … Hell would be heaven for me. All my life I’ve been with the have-nots. Over here, if you’re a have-not, you’re short of dough. If you’re a have-not in hell, you’re short of virtue. Once I get into hell, I’ll start organizing the have-nots over there. … They’re my kind of people.”

While America’s Founding Fathers may have been the underdogs of their day — a fraternity of farmers, merchants, lawyers, journalists, and ex-military officers taking on the undefeated might of the British Empire — they would not have been what Alinsky would call “have-nots.” They were not suffering persecution for the sake of their sexually aberrant lifestyles or the color of their skin, they were not the impoverished products of a social system that singles out minorities for misfortune. They were straight, white men, and therefore inherently oppressors, historical villains whose descendants must pay for the wrongs of their ancestors.

In short, the reason that so many Democrats are ashamed to be American is simply because they are not Americans, in the traditional sense. They do not respect the Constitution but wish to see it replaced by the parallel constitution of the 1960s. They are not grateful for the society preserved by so many generations of Americans, a society which rewards hard work and virtue; they instead prefer a society that rewards minority groups for their minority status. The America that George Washington and so many patriots fought to define nearly 250 years ago is not the America that Democrats of today wish to live in.

Like Alinsky, the Democrats of today want no part in the America that our Founders envisioned. They would prefer a nation dedicated to have-nots. Like Alinsky, they would prefer Hell over Heaven.