The American Dream is a national ethos of the United States

The American Dream

Introduction The American Dream is a national ethos of the United States, a set of ideals in

which freedom includes the opportunity for prosperity and success, and an upward social mobility achieved through hard work. This includes the opportunity for one's children to grow up and receive a good education and career without artificial barriers. It is the opportunity to make individual choices without the prior restrictions that limited people according to their class, caste, religion, race, or ethnicity.

This term was first used by James Truslow Adams1in his book The Epic of

America which was written in 1931. He states: "The American Dream is "that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position." This idea of the American Dream is rooted in the United States Declaration of Independence which proclaims that "all men are created equal" and that they are "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights" including "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."2

The meaning of the "American Dream" has changed over the course of history,

and includes both personal components (such as home ownership and upward mobility) and a global vision. Historically the Dream originated in the mystique regarding frontier life. As the Royal Governor of Virginia noted in 1774, the Americans "for ever imagine the Lands further off are still better than those upon which they are already settled". He added that if they attained Paradise, they would 1 Adams, James Truslow. (1931). The Epic of America (Little, Brown, and Co. 1931)

move on if they heard of a better place farther west. In the 19th century, many

well-educated Germans fled the failed 1848 revolution. They welcomed the political

freedoms in the New World, and the lack of a hierarchical or aristocratic society that

determined the ceiling for individual aspirations. One of them explained:“The

German emigrant comes into a country free from the despotism, privileged orders and

monopolies, intolerable taxes, and constraints in matters of belief and conscience.

Everyone can travel and settle wherever he pleases. No passport is demanded, no

police mingles in his affairs or hinders his movements....Fidelity and merits are the

only sources of honor here. The rich stand on the same footing as the poor; the scholar

is not a mug above the most humble mechanics; no German ought to be ashamed to

pursue any occupation....[In America] wealth and possession of real estate confer not

the least political right on its owner above what the poorest citizen has. Nor are there

nobility, privileged orders, or standing armies to weaken the physical and moral

power of the people, nor are there swarms of public functionaries to devour in

idleness credit for. Above all, there are no princes and corrupt courts representing the

so-called divine 'right of birth.' In such a country the talents, energy and perseverance

of a person...have far greater opportunity to display than in monarchies.”3

The discovery of gold in California in 1849 brought in a hundred thousand men

looking for their fortune overnight—and a few did find it. Thus was born the

California Dream of instant success. Historian H. W. Brands noted that in the years

after the Gold Rush, the California Dream spread across the nation: “The old

American Dream . . . was the dream of the Puritans, of Benjamin Franklin's "Poor

Richard" . . . of men and women content to accumulate their modest fortunes a little at

a time, year by year by year. The new dream was the dream of instant wealth, won in

3 F. W. Bogen, The German in America (Boston, 1851), quoted in Stephen Ozment, A Mighty Fortress: a New History of the German

People (2004) pp 170-71

a twinkling by audacity and good luck. [This] golden dream . . . became a prominent

part of the American psyche only after Sutter's Mill.”4

In 20th century, Historian James Truslow Adams popularized the phrase

"American Dream" in his 1931 book Epic of America: But there has been also the

American dream, that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and

fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement.

It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too

many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of

motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and

each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately

capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous

circumstances of birth or position. The American dream, which has lured tens of

millions of all nations to our shores in the past century, has not been a dream of

merely material plenty, though that has doubtlessly counted heavily. It has been much

more than that. It has been a dream of being able to grow to fullest development as

man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in the

older civilizations, unrepressed by social orders which had developed for the benefit

of classes rather than for the simple human being of any and every class.

Martin Luther King, Jr., in his &quo …… 此处隐藏：15316字，全部文档内容请下载后查看。喜欢就下载吧 ……