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Today’s Opening Argument goes back to Newburgh, New York, in 1783 — when unpaid Continental soldiers were pushed to the edge by a Congress that would not keep its promises.

The lesson still matters:

When Congress refuses to carry its constitutional burden, somebody else carries the risk.

War power belongs to the people through Congress. And when Congress goes silent, silence is not peace.

Silence is permission.

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Before America knew Theodore Roosevelt as a symbol of courage, he was a little boy struggling to breathe.

In this episode of This American Character, Tony Michaels tells the story of young Teddy Roosevelt — a sickly child with severe asthma who learned early that fear could live inside the body. But Roosevelt’s story did not end in weakness. With the encouragement of his father, he began building the strength, discipline, and courage that would later define his life.

Before the Rough Rider, before the presidency, before the “strenuous life,” there was a frightened child in a dark bedroom fighting for the next breath.

And that is where courage began.

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Before America knew him as George Washington... he was just a young man hoping someone would tell him he belonged.

Long before he crossed the Delaware...
Long before he became the first President...
Long before he refused a crown...

George Washington desperately wanted the approval of the British Empire.

He never got it.

In this first episode of This American Character, we tell the forgotten story of the young man who rode hundreds of miles seeking a royal commission—and how one disappointment helped shape the character that would one day shape a nation.

This isn't a history lecture.

It's a story about character.

Because history remembers great Americans.

We're here to remember the moments that made them great.

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📜 This American Character is a new series exploring the defining moments that shaped the men and women who shaped America.

Not the legends.

The people.

Not the victories.

The moments that built their character.

If you enjoy timeless American stories, constitutional principles, and the people behind history, subscribe and join us for the next chapter.

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Birthright citizenship is not a presidential permission slip.

In today’s Opening Argument, Tony Michaels tells the story of a barbershop just outside Atlanta, Georgia, where three American stories collide: one family from Ireland, one family brought here in chains, and one American born here to parents from Haiti.

The question is simple, but dangerous:

Who gets to decide who belongs?

Donald Trump’s attempt to challenge birthright citizenship was not just an immigration fight. It was a test of whether a president can narrow the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment by executive order.

The Constitution already gives the answer:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”

The debate is legitimate.

The shortcut is not.

No president gets to stand over the Fourteenth Amendment with an eraser. Citizenship is not something granted by presidential approval. It is a constitutional promise.

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America didn’t wake up in a ditch overnight.

Like a washed-out country road, the damage to our republic has been building beneath the surface for years.

Today’s Opening Argument begins in a small American town where a road has washed out, a mayor is standing in the mud, and everyone wants the same thing:

“Fix it.”

But one person cannot rebuild a road, run a town, spend public money, and answer to the people all by himself. That is not weakness. That is self-government.

And somewhere between towns like Maple Creek and Pennsylvania Avenue, America forgot that lesson.

The presidency was never supposed to be an Iron Throne. Congress was never supposed to be a Small Council. And the American people were never supposed to be subjects choosing which political house gets to rule over them.

We do not need a better king.

We need our republic back.

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A Letter From 1914 Saw AI Coming

A woman sat at her kitchen table in Detroit in 1914 and wrote a letter to Henry Ford.

She wasn't asking for more money.

She wasn't demanding that the assembly line be shut down.

She was asking a question every generation eventually has to answer:

What do we owe the people standing beside the machine?

Today, the machine isn't an assembly line.

It's artificial intelligence.

The technology has changed.

The constitutional question hasn't.

In today's Opening Argument, we explore a remarkable letter from the wife of a Ford assembly-line worker and what it teaches us about AI, concentrated power, working people, and the responsibility of American citizenship.

Because before we decide who should own the machine...

We should decide what kind of citizens we intend to be beside it.

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Every war has a cost.

Most Americans assume that cost is measured on a battlefield.

But long before most of us ever see the headlines, working families begin paying in another way—at the gas pump.

Today's Opening Argument tells the story of Jake and Ashley, a young couple just trying to build a life together. They don't make foreign policy. They don't sit in the Situation Room. Yet the decisions made in Washington still find their way into their checking account.

After the Opening Argument, we dive into General's latest Coffman Chronicle article examining Congress's brief effort to reassert its constitutional war powers and why Article I matters far beyond the halls of Congress.

This isn't just a conversation about presidents, senators, or political parties.

It's about whether the great American working class still has a constitutional voice before the costs of war arrive at their doorstep.

If you're good enough to build this country, you're good enough to have a voice in how it's run.

Stay Free.

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When the government cannot prove the crime, it often reaches for the label.

In today’s Opening Argument, Tony Michaels tells the story of Lucy Parsons sitting in a Chicago courtroom, watching her husband Albert Parsons face trial after the Haymarket bombing — not because the government proved he threw the bomb, but because his words, politics, and associations made him useful to punish.

Then we bring that lesson forward.

A crime should be prosecuted. Violence should be prosecuted. But protected speech, unpopular politics, poems, pamphlets, journals, associations, and labels cannot become a shortcut around evidence.

The First Amendment was not written to protect speech the government already likes. It was written for the speech the government is most tempted to punish.

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A family trucking business in a small Midwestern town is doing everything right—but every trip to the diesel pump gets more expensive.

Most people blame the president.

But what if we're blaming the wrong branch of government?

Today's 5-minute Opening Argument tells the story of one truck driver, one gas station clerk, and the forgotten role Congress was created to play. When fuel prices rise because of war, who is actually responsible for stopping it?

Maybe the clerk had the best answer of all.

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The war with Iran did not begin with the latest bombs.

It did not begin with one president, one missile strike, or one nuclear dispute.

It grew out of decades of foreign interference, authoritarian rule, sanctions, hostage crises, proxy wars, retaliation, and one constitutional failure America keeps refusing to face: Congress surrendering its war power to presidents.

Today’s Opening Argument begins with an American family, a flag-draped casket, and a question Washington never wants to answer until it is too late:

Why are American families still paying the price for wars Congress will not fully own?

Read General’s full piece in The Coffman Chronicle:
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