Walter Mead

Walter Russell Mead is the Ravenel B. Curry III Distinguished Fellow in Strategy and Statesmanship at Hudson Institute, the Alexander Hamilton Professor of Strategy and Statecraft at the University of Florida, and the Wall Street Journal’s “Global View” columnist, writing on foreign policy, politics, religion, culture, and international affairs.

A Shared Civic Gospel Depends on Arguing Over Who Belongs

At the Aspen Ideas Festival, Jane Kamensky, Walter Russell Mead and David French examined whether the Declaration of Independence can still serve as a shared American civic gospel in a religiously plural democracy. Kamensky argued for treating the Declaration as a usable national creed, French said its rights language gives Americans an internal standard for condemning oppression, and Mead cautioned that American identity has always rested on belonging as well as belief. The panel’s central question was not whether Americans can recite “all men are created equal,” but why they assent to it, whom it includes, and how it can be taught without becoming sectarian rule.

The Aspen InstituteJun 30, 202620 min read