America feels more divided than ever. But is it? | Opinion

Share. Wash your hands. Don’t push. Be kind.

These are the lessons I’ve tried to impart to my 3-year-old daughter (with mixed success). They’re simple rules of the road, meant to help her navigate the world and become a contributing member of any community she joins later in life. They’re also universal. No matter our creed or nationality, we expect people to treat one another with a basic level of care and responsibility.

But there is another set of more specific expectations that applies to us as Americans.

Benjamin Franklin famously described our nation as “a republic, if you can keep it.” His point was not that the Founding Fathers had secured our future for us, but that they had entrusted it to us. The survival of the American experiment would depend on whether citizens could sustain the values, norms and behaviors that make self-government possible ‒ what Alexis de Tocqueville called “habits of the heart.”

Those civic habits feel especially urgent as the country approaches the 250th anniversary of its founding in 2026.

Americans strongly agree on a core set of civic duties

It’s easy to adopt a “set it and forget it” approach to civic life: Pay your taxes, vote when elections roll around and assume you’ve done your part. But at a moment of intense political polarization and eroding social trust, democracy depends on far more than episodic participation. It depends on all the little ways in which we show up in our neighborhoods, schools, workplaces and communities.

To better understand how Americans think about these responsibilities, my colleagues and I at the Beacon Project conducted a large-scale study of 5,000 people across all 50 states. We asked which behaviors they consider civic responsibilities ‒ actions we are duty-bound to perform as members of a shared national community ‒ and compared responses across political affiliation, race, generation and other demographics.

What we found was not a country divided over whether citizenship matters, but one that holds different ‒ and often complementary ‒ ideas about what good citizenship looks like.

Across the political spectrum, Americans strongly agree on a core set of civic duties. A vast majority of Democrats and Republicans alike say we have a responsibility to vote, pay taxes, serve on juries, respect the Constitution, defend freedom and help our communities.

But there are also meaningful differences: More than 4 in 5 Democrats (83%) say “supporting equality” is a civic responsibility, compared with about two-thirds of Republicans (64%). Meanwhile, nearly three-quarters of Republicans (72%) view “loving America” as a civic duty, while fewer than half of Democrats (47%) say the same. These gaps reflect real and enduring fault lines in our politics.

Generational differences are also striking. More Generation Z Americans say “connecting across difference” is a civic responsibility compared with baby boomers. The reverse is true for “honoring the flag.” Younger Americans are also significantly less likely than older ones to say that “supporting democracy” itself is a civic responsibility ‒ a sobering indicator of declining confidence in democratic institutions.

By contrast, differences across race, gender and geography were relatively modest, suggesting that these identity markers matter less than we often assume when it comes to how Americans understand citizenship.

It would be easy to read these differences as evidence of civic decay. I see something else.

Being American has never been about being the same

Taken together, the data reveal two layers of civic responsibility. The first is a shared core ‒ a bedrock of duties that Americans broadly agree are essential to our democracy. The second is a set of outer, more subjective responsibilities ‒ values that people weigh differently based on their experiences, identities and moral intuitions.

Far from weakening our democracy, this pluralism may be one of its greatest strengths. It suggests that many Americans hold a richer understanding of citizenship than what’s found in a Civics 101 textbook ‒ one that allows people to contribute in different but meaningful ways.

Americanness has never been about sameness. From the beginning, this country has depended on people who show up differently, bring different gifts and express commitment in different ways.

As we kick off a year of celebrations for America’s 250th birthday, the challenge is not to force agreement on the one "right" way to be a citizen, but to recommit to the common ground that makes our disagreements survivable. Recognizing that there is value in our different contributions as citizens may be one of the most important civic habits we can practice ‒ almost as important as washing our hands.

Daniel Yudkin is the founding director of theBeacon Project, an organization seeking to advance a new civic vision for America’s Exhausted Majority. Want to explore how your views on civic responsibility compare with other Americans? VisitCivicProfile.us.