'If You Can Keep It': American Values

0:07I'm Jen White. You're listening to the What A Podcast. And I'm Todd Zwilich, and we're back for the latest installment of our weekly politics series, If You Can Keep It. This week, we're taking a closer look at what Americans say they value most. Now, more than three-quarters of U.S. adults surveyed by Gallup and the Aspen Ideas Festival ranked respect, family, trustworthiness, freedom, kindness, health, integrity, and happiness as important values. That's according to the first-ever American Values Index, which the company's released in June. But which of these is most important? Aside from family, most Americans surveyed or split on which values they rank among their top three.

0:48So what do we know about the values Americans hold most closely right now? And as the country prepares for the impacts of President Trump's massive policy law, how closely does our political landscape align with what we say we value? We talk about all of it after this short break. Stay with us.

1:08Let's get into the conversation and meet our guests. With us in studio is Alana Ronlevy. She's the managing director of Gallup, the global analytics and advisory firm that conducts public opinion survey research. Alana, welcome to the program. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here. Also with us is David Brooks, opinion columnist for The New York Times. David, thanks for joining us. It's a pleasure. So, Alana, before we dive into the results, what was this survey trying to examine? This survey was the first time we ever took such a deep dive into American values, and we're very privileged to have done that with the AFSPIN Institute.

1:44We have so many surveys, and I'm looking forward to discussing them, that really get into other elements of American life, from American pride to life evaluation to confidence in institutions. But we really wanted to understand as a baseline and as a benchmark this complex topic of American values. What are the values that people feel are the most important? And then I think together we can think about how that affects other aspects of their behavior and their perceptions about American society. And you mentioned the complexity of the information you're trying to gather. So how did you carry the survey out?

2:25So we surveyed 2 ,000 Americans on our nationally representative probability base scale panel, but we presented 23 core values to our respondents. And first we asked them to just indicate which ones they thought were important. So that was a pretty long list. And then we asked them to prioritize and to pick the three that were most important. And that's what I think is going to be the most telling to understand how values shape American life. So here was that list that I mentioned just a moment ago, repeated three quarters of U.S. adults in your survey rated respect, family, trustworthiness, freedom, kindness, health, integrity, and happiness.

3:10All is important. I think any sort of moral fair-minded person would probably say that those are important. What do you think is the through line connecting those values? Why do people say those are important to them? I think the most sort of resounding, consistent insight from the survey is that family is the number one most important value. This cuts across age. This cuts across political identity. It even cuts across education levels for the most part. And one thing that we see in public opinion research is there's very little that unifies Americans right now. So to so clearly have family be consistently at the top, I think, is an important insight.

3:56Conversely, what we saw at the bottom of the list of the least important values or least likely to be most important also was pretty consistent. These sort of individual attainment or achievement-oriented values of beauty, wealth, achievement were very unlikely to be rated the most important. So families at the top and these individual goals at the bottom. Now, I think where there's more murkiness are some other kind of collective goals around freedom, kindness, integrity. Here we see some differences. Republicans much more likely to feel that freedom and faith are amongst their most important values.

4:43Democrats more likely to feel that integrity and kindness are amongst their most important values. Well, we asked you what values are most important to you, and here's what one of you shared. Hi, my name is Christy. Mine that stand out for me are the value and dignity of every person and all of creation. Secondly, openness through deep listening. and thirdly, community and belonging, which feels more inclusive to me than the value of family as a single woman. Christy, thanks for that message. We also heard from Vanessa who emails, my most important value is compassion. There seems to be great lack of compassion in this country.

5:27Well, I think our emailers got to an important question here and a lot of people probably have it on their minds as they listen to us, which is the apparent disconnect between what people say most important to them and what we see in a lot of our political life. And David Brooks, you write about political, social, cultural trends in America. You've heard the list of respect, family, trustworthiness, freedom, kindness, health, all of the things that Americans rate as the most important. What values do you see rising to prominence in our cultural landscape right now? Yeah, I think about values very differently, actually.

6:00I don't think you can get somebody's values by listing what they, giving them a buzzword, like family or faith. If I asked, do you value faith in your life? Osama bin Laden, Mother Teresa, and Vladimir Putin would all say yes, but that wouldn't tell me much. And if you say I value family, a patriarchal family is very different than a modern American family. And so a value to me is a constellation of moral principles. So the Sermon on the Mount is a value system. The last shall be first, the meek shall inherit the earth, blessed are the poor in spirit. Donald Trump represents a very different value system than that, even though he claims to speak for Christianity.

6:35He represents a more machismo kind of value system. The world is a dangerous place. The strong do what they can. The weak suffer what they must. So you need to be strong. You need to be tough. And there's a reason why he had Dana White, the professional wrestling guru, at the convention, because that's a very different set of value systems. But I don't think you could just give people a list of words and find out what the core of their moral values are. Well, David, in a main piece for The Times, you characterize the psychological and social atmosphere President Trump has created as, quote, pagan.

7:08You write, quote, the pagan values of ancient Rome celebrated power, manliness, conquest, ego, fame, competitiveness, and prowess. And it is those values that have always been at the core of Trump's being. So when you take a step back, how, if at all, do you think those values have seeped into our culture at large? Well, just in the first place, if you take a look at George W. Bush for all his flaws, did try to cue to the Beatitudes, the Sermon on the Mount. And so he funded PEPFAR, a program that successfully saved the lives of 26 million people from HIV in Africa. Donald Trump doesn't believe in those values.

7:43And therefore, he had no trouble getting rid of PEPFAR because he has these pagan more. And when I see pagan, I mean Roman pagan. Romans really didn't have much of a concept of compassion and empathy. They had a concept of strength. And Donald Trump comes through that and was elected president because of a loss of faith in some of the old value systems. People decided that these lofty ideals were bogus and the institutions that claimed to speak for these lofty ideals were bogus. And they came to believe in power. And this is a value transition that's happening all around the world. We need power.

8:16We need some strong man to defend us from those who would betray us. It's a very different value system than we had in the 1990s. So there's been, to me, a stunning shift in American values over the last 20 years. So Ilana, David is pointing out what might be a flaw in your methodology. All polls have flaws. That's not a diss. Asking people on paper what their values are versus what they do in the world or what the world looks like. We'll talk about it some more. What do the data say, if there are any, about what David is expressing here, which is you can ask people a list on paper about what they say their values are.

8:52the balance of power in this country is almost precisely the opposite. I think when you look at the body of work of survey research, the power in survey research is looking at changes over time in consistent questions. So this was a benchmark. This was a baseline survey. I think the real interesting power will come when we're able to look 10, 20, 25 years to see if those most important values have shifted. And to give you a sense, public opinion can dramatically change in a 25-year period. When we look at Gallup tracking, we have trends going back to the 1930s. But if you look at topics like same-sex marriage, marijuana legalization, there's been dramatic changes across the American populace in the last 10, 15, 25 years.

9:50So any particular question may have methodological disagreements about the best way to ask, but the power in asking the same type of question consistently with high-quality representative samples to see the change over time, that's where I think things get really profound. We're going to be talking more about some of the changes in American Pride, for example, where we do have a very, very, I think, persuasive 25-year trend. And we're looking forward to be able to see the changes in values. Values are a complicated, complex topic, which is why that multi-response list, I think, can be more useful than a close-ended, shorter response list where people don't have as many types of values to choose from.

10:45Before we get deeper into how Americans view the country right now, I want to understand how some of this reporting may differ among age groups and those surveyed. So big picture, Gallup has seen huge differences over the last few years between the perspectives of younger Americans and older Americans. When we look at American pride, which is at a record low right now in our 25-year trend, Much of that is driven by much lower levels of American pride for younger Americans compared to older. Many other topics like life evaluation, how you feel about your life overall, younger people faring worse than older people, having a friend that you can count on in a time of need, worse for younger Americans than older Americans, optimism about the future and surpassing your parents' quality of life worse for younger Americans than older.

11:47So it's not a surprise that on the values level, younger and older Americans would look a little bit different. But that value of family actually did cut across the age generations. And that's unusual because we're seeing so many differences in life experiences and opinions based on age. Older Americans, probably not a surprise, were more likely to feel that freedom and health were more important to them, and younger Americans more about kindness and respect and integrity. David Brooks, you hear these data, at least what people say their values are the age divide between older Americans and younger Americans.

12:38How do you think it reflects or crosses over or doesn't to what we're seeing in America's cultural behavior? Yeah, I think it shapes our politics entirely. That is downstream from the really personal aspects of our life. Over the last 20 years, we've seen a rise in mental health problems, a sharp rise in suicide. 36 % of Americans say they feel lonely. Much of the time, 45 % of high school students say they're persistently hopeless and despondent. The number of Americans who say they have no close friends is up by fourfold since 2000. And so we've become sadder as a country and more distrustful.

13:12Social trust and interpersonal trust have been collapsing over the last two generations. And so when you feel sadder, you feel meaner because your loneliness is a form of insult to your dignity. And so you want to lash out. And what Donald Trump does and what populist authoritarians do around the world is say, you're in a land of chaos. I'm offering you order. I'm going to protect the things that are truly important, faith, family, flag. That's going to give you a sense of order and some ballast to your life. And so I think our politics flow directly out of sort of the decline we've seen in people's social, relational, and spiritual lives.

13:53Well, a Gallup survey published in June shows, as you alluded to, Alana, the percentage of Americans who say they're extremely or very proud to be an American hit a record low in 20, 25 at 58 percent. That's down nine percentage points from last year. And the drop in reported pride was mostly driven by Democratic and independent respondents. But not everyone feels the same. Hi there. This is Rob from Indiana. And I'm proud to be an American because I believe that we will get past the xenophobia and hate and distrust and violence thing. I do believe it because our core values are stronger than all this hate.

14:32Rob, thanks for that message. So, Alana, I'll come to you first. How are you thinking about the complexities of American pride, how people feel about the country, and why it's fractured along party lines? So American pride, some call it a proxy for patriotism. We see it a little bit differently that there is a, you know, a distinguishment between patriotism and feeling proud to be an American. This is a question that we introduced in 2001, actually before 9-11. And what's really, I think, fascinating is that even before 9-11, there were very, very high levels of unification that people across the political divide felt proud to be an American.

15:17Right after 9-11, that pride spiked to 90 percent, which is very high. But since that point, we've been on a gradual decline since 2005. And as you mentioned, we're at a record low in this 25-year trend. Republicans have stayed consistently proud to be an American in terms of how they identify with that question. And both Democrats and independents have dropped and Democrats sharply so. But, you know, given the dialogue that we've been having about the difference between older and younger Americans, What I think might be the most compelling is that each generation has reported being less proud to be an American than the generation before them.

16:09David, I want to bring you in here and get your thoughts. Well, it's been a rough century. You know, American social fabric is down. We've lived through the financial crisis, Iraq, Afghanistan, the whole Trump phenomenon. So if this is what you know, well, then you're going to think that America is not the greatest country in the world. I happen to have grown up in the Cold War, and I can talk about American history and think we are the greatest country in the world. But I have a much longer life experience. Beth emails, my top values are supporting all people with integrity and empathy. I also value the common good in both public health and public education.

16:48And Patrick emails, to me, personal integrity and humility are foundational for all else. These can then lead to secondary values of community, society, patriotism, and awareness of the unity of all living things. We have to take a quick break, but we'll be back with more in just a moment.

17:09Let's get back into our discussion with this message from our inbox. This is Richard Knox in Sandwich, New Hampshire. My supreme American values are diversity, equity, and inclusion. Look no further than the founding declaration we just celebrated. All men are created equal, endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. All men covers diversity. Created equal certainly covers equity. It's no stretch to say the Declaration includes all in the fundamental right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of the American dream. After nearly 250 years, we still fall short in living these values.

17:49Richard, thank you for that message. I must say, I've never heard, quote, DEI put in that context before. Now, political affiliation also plays a role in which values Americans prioritize, as we've been hearing. We got this message from Julian Marietta, Georgia, who says, I have a politically mixed family, and that often makes family relationships complicated. I value family highly and hope to transcend politics to find common ground, even if it means our relationship is not as robust as it may have once been. I also value a well-balanced blend of tolerance and advocacy, and I hope it is one of the biggest values I'll pass along to my child.

18:28When you look at what this survey shows, Ilana, which is that two-thirds of Republicans rank family in their top three values. Nearly half of Republicans also selected faith as their top value. On the other hand, roughly four in ten Democrats and independents rank family as high and far fewer ranked faiths. So what does this signal to you about our political landscape right now? I think that there's going to be, over the next few years, you know, growing dialogue, research, and understanding about this pivotal role of faith. Often in our political discourse, I think we think about the politicization of faith.

19:08We think about faith entering, you know, policy decisions that some like, some don't like. But a growing body of research, Gallup, others, Pew, many scholars are really showing that identification of God-centered spirituality or religiosity in your life is leading to higher life evaluation, less loneliness, more social connections, lower levels of mental health crises. So it's my hope that the positive benefits of faith are discussed separately from the fact that there is a partisan and political identification difference in the proportions of people who identify as highly religious. And I just want to understand, when we talk about faith and the connected positive benefits, is it clear whether that's a result of the belief system itself or that people are practicing that belief system within a community?

20:17Excellent question. I think the jury is still out, and I think that that's the central question. We know that affiliation with organized religion tends to have many things that come with it. That can be community engagement at higher levels. That can be rituals in times of birth, in times of death, in times of sickness, where you feel more social support because of the attendant religious structures. That can be more emphasis on family. That can be more emphasis on discipline and structure and ritual, which we know have positive benefits for children in terms of mental health. What we don't know is how much is the belief in a higher power and a higher mission and purpose or all of those community, social and family structural benefits that come along.

21:18I confess I'm so I'm bewildered by this conversation not in a bad way it's fascinating I I hear you and I hear the how important it is to understand the trends of faith um and American values over time I look at the list trustworthiness freedom kindness health integrity David Brooks and then I look out across um across our politics just in the last week immigration enforcement is a policy choice. Fine. It's in the big, beautiful bill. That's a policy choice. How much border security do you want? It's also a choice to gleefully gloat that alligators are going to bite people and eat them if they try to escape.

22:01For our political leaders to release images of alligators smiling, wearing ice hats. That's also a choice. And it reflects a value system that is It's the precise opposite of the list I just listed. And yet if you ask those people if they value family and trustworthiness, they'll probably say yes. David Brooks, I confess I'm fascinated but bewildered by this conversation. Welcome to the world of human hypocrisy. You know, I once wrote a book where I made a distinction between the resume virtues and the eulogy virtues. And the resume virtues are the things that make you good at your job, whether you're a good lawyer, doctor, journalist.

22:39The eulogy virtues are the things that say about you after you're dead, whether you're courageous, honorable, capable of great love. And we all know the eulogy virtues are more important. Yet our schools and our society are based on the resume virtues. They focus on the jobs and career. And so there's just this basic hypocrisy in the center of our society. And I think one of the things that's happened in America, some people in MAGA, including J.D. Vance, have a trope that seems obscure at first. They say America is not an idea, or is only partially an idea. America is mostly a homeland. And that is a very important shift because basically it demoralizes the purpose of America.

23:21To me, it takes away the highest aspirations of our national project. Richard, I think from New England, quoted the declaration earlier in the show. And that idea that all men are created equal or endowed by inalienable rights, if America's an idea, then we have responsibility to side with democracies like Ukraine against when they're attacked by dictatorships like Putin. If America's an idea, then anybody can come to this country and subscribe to that idea and become an American, no matter what their skin color, their ethnicity, or anything else. And so the denial of American ideal, to me, is central to the MAGA project.

23:57and when you take away the highest reaches of human nature, the things that make us our best selves and you reduce everything to a struggle of all against all, you're reducing the moral register of the whole country and you can be happy when people, you're threatening people or joking at least about people being eaten by alligators. You're less bothered by putting people in cages. And so to me, you know, it's always risky to say America's in moral decline. I'm not sure I believe that. but I think there are dark, degrading, and morally corrosive forces that are out in the country, and they play to a world where there's been this loss of faith, loss of trust, and people take a much darker view of the world around them than they did in other times past.

24:45And if I could just end on one optimistic note, you know, the 1770s were no joke. That was a horrible time, and democracy was under threat. 1830s, when Andrew Jackson did the Indian Removal Act, that was no joke. The 1860s were no joke. The 1890s, political corruption, desperate poverty, lynchings, no joke. 1930s, 1968 was no joke. There were 4 ,000 bombings on American campuses, assassinations. America goes through these periodic moments of convulsion. And so far, we've always come out of them. And one of the callers said, I think our values are still there. The underlying core idea of America is still there.

25:23And as in the past seven cases, I do think we'll come out of this. But it's a spiritual fight as much as an economic and political fight. We heard from Nancy in Charlottesville, who emails, some people care deeply about people who need help but don't believe that government is the entity that should provide it. They believe that churches, individuals, and philanthropists should help the poor, other countries, etc. It's a debate about government's role, not necessarily about generosity and caring for others. David, your response? There's some truth to that. what should government be doing. Nonetheless, when you eliminate PEPFAR, to me, this was a successful program that was saving millions of lives for pennies on the dollar.

26:07And that was passed by Republicans who believe in limited government. And when you eliminate that, and there's a guy at Boston University who's counting up the cost, and I don't know the exact numbers to this date, but it's hundreds of thousands of people already dead and we're only like, what, five months into this administration. To me, that's not being libertarian. That's not being Milton Friedman thinking government should not play a role. That's something else, something on top. And so I'm sort of a conservative, so I appreciate that point about limited government and that sometimes civil society does a better job than government, though I don't think civil society can ever do what government does because the numbers just aren't big enough, the dollars aren't big enough.

26:48You said that. I'm not that libertarian. I just want to drill down, David. You said that's something else, that's something on top. What is that something? I think it's a, well, I think xenophobia would be one word, but also just a sense of callousness, of narrowing the circle of concern. That some of the, I'm a big Bruce Springsteen fan, and he has an album called We Take Care of Our Own. And on the one hand, the meaning of that phrase is beautiful, that we take care of people around us. But on the other side, there's a negative side to that phrase. We only take care of our own. We only take care of people like us.

27:25And so I do think there has been a narrowing of the circle of concern in society that we're loyal but only to people like us. Well, we got this message from Alexander in Massachusetts who says, My top three values are stewardship of this beautiful planet, connecting and looking out for each other through community and compassion for each other. and for those different from us. And we got this message from James in Ohio who says, it's laughable to say that Republicans value freedom. The only value, they only value freedom for themselves and people who agree with them. They're stealing freedoms of women to do what they want with their bodies.