Are you going to take that, New Jersey?

According to the latest ranking by Wallethub, New Jersey is the 49th most patriotic state, just barely edging out Massachusetts, once host to the Boston Tea Party.

New Jersey — where Molly Pitcher is said to have fought in the Battle of Monmouth. New Jersey — which sent Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart and Abraham Clark to sign the Declaration of Independence. New Jersey — into which George Washington crossed the Delaware and led his army to victory at the first Battle of Trenton.

What the heck happened?

Source: WalletHub

A lot of it comes down to how you measure "patriotism." In Wallethub's case, it ranked several indicators of military engagement (like how many enlisted residents or veterans we count among Garden Staters) and civic engagement (like how many people voted in presidential and primary elections, or participated on juries, or volunteered).

Some of the weights are more suspect than others — for instance, it gives a little credit if your state searches for the American Flag on Google a lot.

New Jersey ranked particularly poorly for having few military enlistees and veterans per capita, according to Wallethub. In general, Democrat-leaning "blue" states fell a bit behind Republican-leaning "red" states in the roundup.

Virginia was ranked most patriotic overall — though Alaska took the top top specifically for military service, and Vermont for civic engagement.

We suppose it could be worse. Last year, Wallethub put us in last place.

"You can point to the higher ranking states and see they have more sparse population centers and less to occupy folks. If you look at the map it's almost directly in line with who voted for Trump last year," New Jersey 101.5's Dennis Malloy wrote last year. "The northeast and California and a few big government midwestern states wanted more of the same and the rest of the country said "enough is enough"."

He said if you find that offensive, "it's because no one wants to speak the truth anymore about what's happened to our country, but it's true."

"I'd love to say we're more patriotic than that chart indicates, but there's just no good argument," Malloy wrote. "Just the sad truth."

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