Over half of young Americans say Obama had bigger impact on US than George Washington, survey finds

Over half of young Americans — specifically those in Generation Z, ages 14 to 21 — believe former President Barack Obama had a bigger impact on the United States than George Washington, according to new survey on American patriotism.

Image source: FLAG State of American Patriotism report

While numbers showed that Americans across all age ranges (14 to 73+) believe Washington had a greater impact on the U.S. than Obama — 61 percent to 39 percent — over half of those in the Generation Z age ranges believe the opposite.

That was among many eyebrow-raising findings from well-known polling firm YouGov, which conducted the survey of 1,078 Americans for the Foundation for Liberty and American Greatness.

What else did the report find?

• One in five millennials say the American flag is a “sign of intolerance and hatred.”
• The majority of those in younger generations agree that America is racist and sexist — and 46 percent of millennials agree that “America is more racist than other countries.”
• 46 percent of millennials don't agree that “America is the greatest country in the world."
• One in eight millennials (14 percent) agree that “America was never a great country and it never will be.”
• 38 percent of younger Americans disagree that “America has a history that we should be proud of.”
• Over 60 percent of Americans in the 14-to-37 age range approve of athletes kneeling for the national anthem.
• Only one in six Americans across all age ranges can pass a quiz on basic American history.
• But believe it or not, those in Generation Z are more likely to know how many amendments are in the Bill of Rights and when the Constitution was ratified than older Americans.

“We suspected that we would find decreasing numbers of Americans well-versed in our nation’s most important principles and young people less patriotic than the generations that came before, but we were totally unprepared for what our national survey reveals: an epidemic of anti-Americanism," Nick Adams, founder of FLAG, said upon the report's release. "That half of millennials and Gen Z believe that the country in which they live is both ‘racist’ and ‘sexist’ shows that we have a major fraction of an entire generation that has been indoctrinated by teachers starting in grade school that America is what’s wrong with the world.”

FLAG is a nonprofit "dedicated to educating Americans about the values and principles that make our nation exceptional. To achieve this mission, FLAG promotes and provides high-quality civics education to K-12 students across the country, and impact American culture in a way that preserves our exceptional American value system for generations to come."

Here's a detailed breakdown of the survey: