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Poll Finds That Americans Care Less About ‘Community Engagement.’ Government Is Largely to Blame.
The ballooning of government has ‘crowded out’ institutions of civil society, says AEI’s Howard Husock
by David McGarry Reason.com
Americans value community engagement far less than they did a quarter-century ago, according to a new poll from The Wall Street Journal and research group NORC. The survey further found sizable declines in Americans’ attachment to other traditional American values, particularly since 2019. (Although the apparent sharpness of this trajectory, if not the poll’s assessment of Americans’ priorities, may be due to methodical inconsistencies, writes pollster Patrick Ruffini.) Republicans were more likely than Democrats to say traditional values are “very important”—e.g., “patriotism” (59 to 23 percent), religion (53 to 27 percent), and “having children” (38 to 26 percent). Not so for “community involvement,” which just 25 percent of Republicans labeled “very important,” compared to 32 percent of Democrats (27 percent overall).