America at 250 Spring 2026

Who are ‘we’?

“We the people,” that resonant overture to the United States Constitution, strikes a note of unanimity, an assertion of a citizenry in this together from the ground up. The phrase has endured as the national aspiration through generations of us-versus-them discord about who, exactly, counts as “we.” That has been a matter of debate throughout our history — and even still, 250 years since the Declaration of Independence set us on a path to becoming a constitutional republic and established a template for expanding human freedom.

The first words in our foundational legal document, and the ways we the people have fallen short of its ideals, emerged as an unintentional recurring theme in the essays that follow. Invitations to writers were open-ended. What aspects of the American experience — personal or national, historic or contemporary — resonate for you in this milestone year of looking back and taking stock?

They answered with an eclectic, very American collection that encompasses history and religion, politics and culture, those contested spaces where the people have grappled since 1776 with the meaning of “we.”

• The Revolution in Question

• Church and State

• The Mischiefs of Faction

• The Western Canon

• Notre Dame’s Service to the Nation

• Shocks to the System

• Carrying a Torch

• Creative Freedom

• The Only Thing

• Our Fraying Social Fabric

• The Hole in the Sky

Changing the Equation

by Abigail Pesta ’91

How a Notre Dame initiative helps a tiny Indiana school advance its students’ aspirations

The Way We Were

Photography by Paul Joyce ’77, ’79M.S.

Scenes from a bygone campus