Walter Russell Mead, pictured, writes the "Global View" column that is published each week by The Wall Street Journal. On July 7, 2026, Mead's column was titled this way: "America Is More Than A Creed."
You are invited to click the link, to read the entire column. Mead's basic point is that we, as Americans, are "one people," but not because of any ethnic, or religious, or comparable connection, and not on the basis of any common "creed" to which we all conform.
I particularly liked Mead's quotation from the preamble to The Declaration of Independence, which he cites as evidence that Americans were "one people" even before we won the revolutionary war, and established our current government, as set out in The Constitution. Here's that quotation:
"When in the Course of human events...it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another.... (emphasis added)."
We are "one people" not because of any ethnic or comparable connection, and not on the basis of any common "creed." We are "one people" because of the political choice we made to announce ourselves as such.
That self-determined self-definition was challenged, but was then then renewed, at the end of the Civil War.
Abraham Lincoln identified, in his Gettysburg Address, the nature of that "political choice," that political choice that has made, and makes us, "one people."
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives, that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here, have, thus far, so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth (emphasis added).
Our connection, as Americans, the thing that makes us "one people," is our commitment to a government that is "of the people, by the people, and for the people." That commitment is being challenged today. It's up to us who are alive today to make good on our 250 year-old commitment to self-government.
That means that we need, each one of us, to find some way take some action that will help make sure that our government continues to be "by the people." By US!
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/america-is-more-than-a-creed-9c61f5d0
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