Remarks made by Jason Galui to the Dallas Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, September 20, 2025 at the Dallas Athletic Club
I stand before you today as a patriot, and unapologetically so. I love my country, and I love my fellow Americans – all of them. I fell into a deep love with the United States of America in April 1989 – at age 12 – while on a youth hockey trip to the Soviet Union. Ironically, it was behind the Iron Curtain that I really learned what the American Dream was really all about, and it is where and when my love and devotion to this great American experiment was cemented. Patriotism, as one of my Bush Institute colleagues recently wrote, is “love for and devotion to one’s country.”
To be devoted to something or someone is to be committed to it, in good times and in bad. When I am devoted to someone or something, I persevere to help it become the best version of itself. My devotion to America has never wavered. My love for and devotion to America perseveres.
My hope today – as it was when I spoke to the John F. Greer chapter – is to inspire, in at least one of you, a renewed commitment to persevere towards our national ambition, which is the journey to a “more perfect union.”
When I think of “a more perfect union,” I think about a society in which citizens of varying backgrounds and beliefs commit to viewing one another as equal members of society. One in which we learn from one another, we honor one another, we commit to one another, we enable one another to pursue their hopes and dreams, recognizing that when we each do better, we all do better.
“We.” It is the first word in the Constitution. It is not I, me, you, or we except thee. It is “we.” It is first-person plural. Therefore, by deliberate construction, America was established as a pluralistic endeavor. What a remarkable idea.
The Constitution of the United States of America. Happy 238th birthday, by the way, to this most wonderful document that has guided the most ambitious human experiment – that of self-government.
A document that has persevered through intense trials and errors to overcome the selfishness of human nature and inspire intense collaboration, cooperation, and compromise.
A document that enshrines a genuine desire to make progress. The first 10 amendments – the Bill of Rights – express the desire to prevent “misconstruction or abuse of power” and to extend “the ground of public confidence in government.” Amendments XIII, XIV, XV, and XIX seek to deliver on the promises that all people are created equal and have unalienable rights.
It’s a document to which millions of Americans – in and out of uniform, including my wife and me – have sworn or affirmed an oath to support and defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic. A document for which hundreds of thousands of Americans – in and out of uniform – have given their lives, including many of our friends.
When thinking about how to talk about our Constitution in a setting such as this one, I could not help but think to frame our conversation today as one of perseverance.
While it is the fourth of my own personal core values – with the other three being love, integrity, and respect in that order – perseverance is a bedrock American value.
Eighty years ago, in 1945, a generation of Americans persevered to preserve freedom and democracy, which launched a period of unprecedented peace and prosperity that has given all of us so much.
Eighty years before that, in 1865, a generation of Americans persevered to preserve the Union and moved America closer to its founding ideals and promises – that all of us are created equal.
Eighty years before that, in 1785, the founding generation of Americans – the generation from which you all descend – persevered to establish this great American Experiment.
Today, in 2025, our generation of Americans must persevere if we wish “to secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity” – just as we claim to do in the Preamble to our Constitution. It is our turn to renew the founding American principles and values. It is our turn to honestly hold ourselves accountable. It is our turn to renew the national ambition of America. Such a renewed effort will demand perseverance.
Perseverance must begin by loving our fellow countrymen. Some of you likely know that “love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Therefore, perseverance must begin by loving our fellow Americans – all of them. For one cannot claim to love America – and thus be a patriot – while espousing contempt or hatred toward half of them. President Ronald Reagan, during his 1981 inaugural address, appropriately described such love when he answered his own question, “How can we love our country and not love our countrymen?”
He continued, “And loving them, reach out a hand when they fall, heal them when they’re sick, and provide opportunities to make them self-sufficient so they will be equal in fact and not just in theory.” He did not say to dishonor them. He did not say to be angry with them.
“Reach out…Heal…Provide opportunities….” That is how President Reagan described love of countrymen. Doing so is not always easy, which is why we must persevere.
America – at its core – is an idea. An idea penned by Thomas Jefferson – who aimed for the stars when he drafted the Declaration of Independence almost 250 years ago proclaiming that “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.—That to secure these rights, government are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
The Constitution, drafted in a sweltering Philadelphia summer in 1787, established a one-of-kind – never before seen – framework to put into practice the promises and ideals articulated in that Declaration from 1776.
The Constitution – in its 7 Articles and 27 Amendments – established a representative democracy as the way to allocate power. A system of government in which the Founding Fathers borrowed the concepts of a republic from the Romans and the concepts of democracy from the Greeks. Borrowing from the Greeks and the Romans, and writing just at the end of the Enlightenment, the Founding Fathers were well-aware of the fallibility of human nature.
They created a system of government in which power was distributed across a variety of institutions so that no individual, group, or faction could concentrate power. For they knew that human nature was predisposed to accumulating power for predatory self-interest. That power in the hands of any one group could, as James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 10, unite around “some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens.”
Our Constitution is a marvelous document that insists upon collaboration, cooperation, and compromise in order to move closer to that more perfect union.
To collaborate, to cooperate, or to compromise requires perseverance.
We need less fanfare, less stagecraft, less circumventing. We need to talk sensical, speak the truth, work hard, and remain faithful to the fundamental principles and values that make America American.
Americans are idealists. Just look at our founding documents.
Again, let’s just take the first word of our Constitution – “We.” First-person plural. The Founding Fathers knew that to form a more perfect Union required a collective effort. And achieving a collective effort would require overcoming the predatory self-interest of human nature. To overcome an obstacle is to persevere.
America’s promises and ideals are worthy endeavors to pursue. Our American reality falls short of its promises and ideals, and likely always will because we humans are a fallible bunch. We are imperfect creatures rife with hypocrisy and inconsistencies. But if we persevere together by loving one another – if we reach out when fellow countrymen need help, if we heal them when they’re sick, and if we provide opportunities for self-sufficiency – then we the people can, in fact, continue to challenge Dr. Benjamin Franklin’s quip when he responded to a question after the Constitutional Convention by saying, you have “a republic, if you can keep it.”
Americans before us persevered because they were bold and audacious. Time will tell whether our generation of Americans will follow in their footsteps or if we will choose to give away the boldest and most audacious human experiment ever launched.
It is up to us – “we.” It is a “we” problem. It is a “we” challenge. I am confident that we can do it. After all, we are Americans.
