Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, an Air Force veteran, joined 360aoroko Saturday and reacted to a new poll showing American pride is at a 20-year low and also addressed the call to remove historical monuments and statues.
“I think it’s insanity and I think it’s maybe a symptom of, we have not emphasized our history enough,” Kinzinger told anchor Jon Scott. “There are some that are more interested in talking about how all these men and women were flawed. Well, we live on the Earth. Until we get to heaven, there’s going to be wars. There’s going to be shortcomings and we want to send a message to people that, you know, you can change and you can get better as a society. We can get better.”
Kinzinger said he agreed that most statues could come down if local governments agree to remove them. He also said he felt like the call to remove statues of past presidents was due to the fact that President Trump was in office.
“I think it’s a political thing. I mean, honestly… if President Trump was not president, the left would not be going into statues and talking about how terrible America’s history has been,” Kinzinger said. “It’s kind of like this angry moment where everything about America, frankly, angers some people and they want to turn it on its head.”
“This is where it’s important for all of us to push back, not to get angry and yell back, because if you yell at somebody, you’re never going to convince them,” Kinzinger added. “It just it just raises the temperature.”
The Illinois lawmaker also weighed in on Americans’ pride.
“It’s sad… 2020 is not been the best year, for sure,” Kinzinger said regarding pride. “But I think lately we’ve been obsessed with shortcomings.”
According to Gallup, 42 percent of adults in the United States say they are “extremely proud” to be Americans and 21 percent say they are “very proud” — marking the lowest percentages since the analytics company began taking the measurement in 2001.
Kinzinger compared the Unites States’ recent social unrest to that in China, saying that given the opportunity, people from other countries would come to the U.S. in a “heartbeat.”
“We talked about, for instance, the unrest on the streets… But if you look in China, for instance, they kill people to go out on the streets. They don’t even allow them to go out on the streets. They don’t allow them on social media. There’s a whole minority, called the Uyghurs, that are in concentration camps,” Kinzinger said.
“So I think sometimes we have to say, OK, you know, there are miserable moments. This is one, we have a pandemic and all this. But you have to look at it and say, OK, let’s look around the world. And I’ll tell you, there’s billions of people that in a heartbeat would come to the United States of America if given that opportunity.”
