The Dream of America

Last week ABC News/Yahoo News put out a poll that showed that only 50% of Americans thought the American dream still existed, while 43% said the dream was no longer achievable. The pollsters defined the American dream as “if you work hard you’ll get ahead.” In a recent article titled The American dream: Is it slipping away?, Gregory R wrote that:

“the dream is the glue that keeps us all together. It’s the vague promise that our lot will get better over time that gives us the patience to endure whatever indignities we suffer at the moment. It’s the belief that our kids will have a better chance in life than we do that keeps the many elements of this diverse, highly competitive society from ultimately tearing each other apart. More than anything else, it’s the fabled dream that fuses hundreds of millions of separate, even competing individual dreams into one national collective enterprise.”

As the gap between rich and poor grows larger everyday and the middle class shrinks, what happens to the “glue that keeps us all together?” What happens to us as a nation if the poll numbers drop below 50%? Do we lose our social cohesion? Do riots break out in our city streets? Do we “ultimately tear each other apart?” These things are possible if we continue to define the American dream in such materialistic terms. If ABC and Yahoo had given a follow up question asking “Do you want to leave America because the American dream is no longer achievable?,” I would assume the numbers would have been drastically different. This is because I believe at our core, we are more than a nation who measures it’s worth by our material gains. When you peel back the many layers of America you find at its center the true glue that keeps us all together is the dream of America. The dream of America is what lead to Revolutionary war, gave Abraham Lincoln the strength to fight to preserve the Union, inspired women to demand the right to vote, brought a nation together to fight fascism, and offered blacks the dream of equality. Using the definition of the pollsters none of those things would have been possible.

At a time when kings and queens still ruled the world, patriots dared to dream an impossible dream, a dream that would become the beacon of hope in a fog of despair, a dream that would be the foundation of our nation. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” (Jefferson, 1776) These words have shaped the American consciousness from the beginning; they are the seed from which the bill of rights have grown, the magnet that has drawn thousands of immigrants each year to our shores, the foundation of our society, and the glue that binds us. Perhaps the numbers from the ABC News/Yahoo News poll is more of a reflection on how much we have lost focus on the true dream rather than our inability to achieve the “fabled” American dream. The American dream should not be defined by the desire of millions of individuals to get ahead; it should be defined by our ability to live in a free society. A society in which all it’s citizens remain equal and have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That is the true American dream.