Saving The Idea Of America

Will we abandon our constitutional order in silence?

(Note from Adam: I don’t often do guest articles, but this is different. Michael Wood is a friend, but more importantly a real American fighter. He bled on the battlefield, fought the good fight in the political arena, and still fights to this day. I found this quite compelling and hope you do as well. He is a veteran, small business owner, and resides in Fort Worth with his family.)

Let us begin not with the United States, but with our sister republic and oldest friend—France— and one of her greatest heroes, Charles de Gaulle. In the opening lines of his memoirs, de Gaulle famously wrote:

"Toute ma vie, je me suis fait une certaine idée de la France."
"All my life, I have had a certain idea of France."

What a simple and yet powerful sentence, one that any patriot would recognize as his own—not only about France, but about the place he calls home.

That line has rattled around in my head for years, because I too have always had a certain idea of America. It's the land of the free and the home of the brave. The City on a Hill. A light to the nations. The last, best hope of mankind, and a million other clichés that were never clichés to me.

Most of human history is darkness—tyranny, slavery, brutality, indifference to the weak. For me, America represented something different. Liberty. Freedom. A liberal republic where individual rights were respected and leaders held accountable by the only true sovereign of a free country: The People.

I bled from all four limbs while deployed with the Marines and it was the greatest honor of my life, not merely because I love our land and its people—though I do—but because I love that idea of America we inherited from Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and all our forefathers.

And I still love my country. My patriotism is bone-deep—you’d have to end my life to separate it from me.

But over the last decade, that love has been tested. Donald Trump has spent years chipping away at what Lincoln called our “inestimable jewel”—the constitutional system that made the idea of America more than just words. Maybe there’s not much I can do about that, but I won’t let him destroy my childlike love of country.

Still, I look at that de Gaulle quote differently now and with more cynicism. De Gaulle is a national hero not only because of his courage and rhetoric, but because he stood nearly alone. The truth is, most of France went along with their occupiers. When push came to shove, most people couldn’t be bothered to defend the rule of law, or basic public decency, or even the idea that the truth matters.

Maybe our current reality-show would-be caudillo can’t organize a military parade, let alone a dictatorship, but the next guy might. Now that so many Americans have assented to the hollowing out of the very institutions that made the idea of America a rough, imperfect reality—can we really believe we’ll withstand the next, more competent Caesar?

Are we an ordinary country now? Have we given up the pretense of exceptionalism—and with it, the responsibility? Do we really believe a narrow Democratic House majority in 2027 will be enough to stop a slide into an elected (for now) kingship?

An American patriot shouldn’t be having these thoughts, let alone writing them for all the world to see. I’ve opened a vein and bled all over this page, so here it is: Trump didn’t take the idea of America from me. He took the belief that many of my fellow Americans still care about the idea.

And yet. I still hear the voice of Thomas Paine, warning me not to be a sunshine patriot or a summer soldier, not to shrink from service to my country just because it’s hard or bitter or lonely now.

Maybe—just maybe—we’re on the verge of a quiet republican renaissance. Maybe there are still patriots across this land, waiting for the storm to pass, still believing in the idea. Maybe this ugly chapter will one day look like a blip in the long story of the American experiment. Maybe The People will rise again and send representatives to Congress who actually believe in Congress and the Constitution; who “more than self their country love,” as the old song goes.

Maybe. It’s a nice thought. A beautiful idea. But that stuff doesn’t happen by accident, or inertia. It happens because real people stand up, speak out, and actually call out the regime’s destructive policies. Right now, just not enough people are choosing to do that. And plenty are actively enabling these excesses—especially the so-called elite institutions that once could have been expected to serve as democracy’s greatest bulwarks.

The daily violence that Trump and company do to our constitutional order requires a vigorous, concerted response. Instead, so far during his second term, we’ve seen media companies, law firms, tech billionaires, and others silence themselves, rush to pay him off, acquiesce to ludicrous agreements, and willingly trade away their power and leverage in hopes that the strongman will simply leave them alone and turn his gaze to the next unlucky victim.

Trump’s policies are making a mockery of our republican tradition and immiserating people’s lives right now. Are we really the worthy inheritors of Paine’s legacy if we’re too timid to even offer a word of protest? To speak the truth in the face of near-constant lies? To simply be brave?

After watching millions of my fellow citizens embrace the lies, I can’t help but wonder:
Will America remain only an idea?

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Michael Wood