How about defining "we" in the larger sense? "We Americans" springs to mind.

Sure, everyone belongs to an assortment of smaller groups as befits our interests, talents, backgrounds and incomes. But surely -- surely -- we are still capable of discussing our future as part of a larger group with common interests and a common experience, or at least with a common ambition and a common set of aspirations: to live up to the promise and the hope that the United States has offered to the people who have built it.

Until we can get past the idea that this nation is not greater than the sum of its fragments, an idea that has been nurtured relentlessly over the past 20 or so years, we will degenerate into a petty and increasingly irrelevant people who can't agree on what color grass is.

I'm pretty sure that's not the country you want to leave to your children. I'm damn sure it's not the country I want for mine.