Note: I wrote this in January and published it the day after the inauguration. I took it down, along with most of the other articles published here, as I rebranded this substack for a congressional campaign. I’m publishing it again now.
On August 2, 1990, just before I started second grade, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. The ensuing war absorbed my attention for the next six months: I was acquainted with figures like Colin Powell and “Stormin’” Norman Schwarzkopf, heroes on the evening news, and I spent hours poring over magazine spreads about American and Iraqi fighter planes and missiles.
With time, much of that period has faded from my memory, but what remains vivid is why America fought. That was the essential question, even then: I knew something about Japan or France or Russia, but Iraq and Kuwait were unfamiliar and, per the family globe, very far away. What was my country doing there?
President Bush's answer was clear: “The terrible crimes and tortures committed by Saddam's henchmen against the innocent people of Kuwait are an affront to mankind and a challenge to the freedom of all.” Even a child could recognize the imperative to stand against intimidation and ruthless aggression. Of course, I know now that our motivations were neither so simple nor so pure, but it matters that the President chose to make this argument and that the American people embraced it. That imperative resonated with our shared beliefs.
Still, the President’s statement only partially answered the question. People all over the world were angry and heartbroken at the plight of the Kuwaiti people, and indeed many nations joined the coalition that expelled Hussein's forces, but one nation led. Why?
The answer was an idea, implicit but understood: it was our responsibility. The Gulf War taught me that my country was something different than the others on the map. It is the earliest that I can remember feeling that to be an American was to stand for a great idea, to be responsible for that idea at home and around the world. I was proud of it then, and have remained so for all the years since.
That idea’s time is ending.
At last year's Republican National Convention, a passage in JD Vance's speech drew much attention:
One of the things that you hear people say sometimes is that America is an idea. And to be clear, America was indeed founded on brilliant ideas like the rule of law and religious liberty -- things written into the fabric of our Constitution and our nation.
But America is not just an idea. It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future. It is, in short, a nation. ...
Now that's not just an idea, my friends. That's not just a set of principles, even though the ideas and the principles are great, that is a homeland. That is our homeland. People will not fight for abstractions, but they will fight for their homes.
This division between the nation and the idea is compelling, and Vance is right that this country is more than an idea: it is a nation and a homeland, with "a shared history and a common future." I certainly share his feeling for America, its people, and its history. He speaks about a deep connection with Kentucky and Appalachia while, for me, home is Chicago and the Midwest. Both of us feel the connection to the nation at large. I know what it is to be rooted in this country, to feel that place and self are woven together and can’t easily be pulled apart. That sense of home is a powerful and precious thing, one not promised everyone, and I want to preserve it and pass it to my children.
But the idea is also precious. It is pitiable that the man who yesterday became Vice President has such a weak grasp of it, extending to two bullet points and these chosen to support his party position. Even taking only the Constitution as source, the American Idea is so much richer and more profound. In that short document, we can find self-determination, the right of ordinary people to shape our common future; equality, that no person should be set over any other or given a greater share in deciding that future; pluralism, that many ways of life can coexist and cohere; freedom of thought and expression, that ensuring each of us can think freely is essential both to liberty and the search for truth. We see that the purpose of the nation is the dignity of its people, not the glory or whim of its rulers. We see an understanding that history moves forward, and that the nation must adapt to serve its purpose. We see an appreciation of the fundamental fallibility of human beings, and a conviction that we can nonetheless build something enduring. In short, we see the belief, radical then and now, that every human life has value, and a plan for a nation built to defend that belief.
It hardly needs saying that over our history, we have perpetually fallen short of this idea. That failure begins with the Constitution itself, some of whose provisions grievously betray its own principles. The American Idea is a statement not of accomplishment but of aspiration. Every generation - and perhaps every administration - has found some way to abuse, exploit, or shrink from it, but also to nurture it, such that it was defined in the eighteenth century, tested and affirmed in the nineteenth, and, in the twentieth, extended as a promise to the world. At our finest moments, it has inspired us and propelled us forward. It is why we fought to ensure that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth; why we opened our shores to the world's tired, poor, and huddled masses yearning to breathe free; why we pledged to be the great arsenal of democracy; why we dreamed that one day our nation would rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed; and why we called on a tyrannical power to tear down its wall.
Our darkest moments have been those when we lost touch with it.
For a nation to represent an idea, to itself and to the world, is a rare distinction. Of the roughly two hundred sovereign nations in the world today, each with its own identity and heritage, each rich with meaning, each a home to its people, few stand for an idea. The same is true of the thousands of nations that have existed in human history. The ones that have are indispensable, because they help all of us to imagine what the world might be. America, imperfect as it is, has inspired peoples around the world to win and defend their freedom.
But an idea is not a light burden. What happens when the idea challenges the nation? What happens when egalitarianism runs up against widely-held prejudice? When pluralism runs up against fear for national security? When freedom of expression challenges the majority's sense of what is normal? For millions of Americans, these are not "abstractions," as Vance would say, but a source of daily struggle. In these moments, no document can protect the idea. It must live in the hearts of the people. They must love the idea, and fight for it, as much as they would their home.
They must, in fact, have the wisdom and strength to see beyond the distinction between idea and home, to recognize that the idea is inextricably part of their home. The idea makes it a home: for millions of Americans, this nation is only a place they can call home because of the work of generations to realize the idea, work that is far from complete. As a son of immigrants, I count myself in that number. The idea binds the home: of all the things I share with my neighbors, whether on my block or a thousand miles away, one that I cherish is our commitment to the American Idea. I have felt it as a volunteer for campaigns and causes, as a public servant, and in countless conversations and debates with friends and loved ones. The idea defends the home: America's commitment to our ideals, at home and abroad, inconsistent as it has been, remains one of our greatest strengths.
As we enter the second Trump administration, we have chosen a president who understands none of this, who holds none of this sacred. I have come to understand this administration, and the first term that came before, as a campaign to kill the American Idea, because they - we - cannot rise to its challenge. We cannot believe in self-determination when we trample our own democratic processes, and we cannot believe in the rule of law when a criminal uses his office to pardon the criminals who tried to steal it for him. We cannot believe in egalitarianism when the president holds court so that the wealthy can grovel and buy favors, or in pluralism when our government persecutes the minorities it deems undesirable, or in free expression when individuals and the press are threatened with retribution. And if we do not believe in the idea at home, we surely do not believe in it abroad. As we flatter autocrats and antagonize allies, both have come to understand that the United States now proudly stands for nothing.
I don’t believe that Trump means the end of our democracy. I expect our institutions will hold, and future leaders will be able to repair damage done to them. But while the nation can recover, the idea may not. The American Idea was hobbled in the first Trump term and may soon be a casualty of the second; perhaps it already is. We will persist as a nation, but for all of our wealth and power, we will be an ordinary and unexceptional one. If that comes to pass, I will mourn the passing of the country I've been proud to call home.