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 "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" (1963) quest for

the American Dream:

“We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the

eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands...when these disinherited

children of God sat down at lunch counters they were in reality standing up for what

is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judeo-Christian

heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which

were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the

4 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

Declaration of Independence.”5

The American Dream in different fields of the USA

Literature

The term is used in popular discourse, and scholars have traced its use in

American literature ranging from the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin,6 to Mark

Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great

Gatsby (1925), Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy (1925). Other writers who

used the American Dream theme include Edward Albee7, John Steinbeck,8 The

American Dream is also discussed in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman; the play's

protagonist, Willy, is on a journey for the American Dream. The American Dream has

been credited with helping to build a cohesive American experience, but has also been

blamed for inflated expectations. Some commentators have noted that despite

deep-seated belief in the egalitarian American Dream, the modern American wealth

structure still perpetuates racial and class inequalities between generations. One

sociologist notes that advantage and disadvantage are not always connected to

individual successes or failures, but often to prior position in a social group.

Since the 1920s, numerous authors, such as Sinclair Lewis in his 1922 novel

Babbitt, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, in his 1925 classic, The Great Gatsby, satirized or

ridiculed materialism in the chase for the American dream. For example, Jay Gatsby's

death mirrors the American Dream's demise, reflecting the pessimism of modern-day

Americans. A lot of people follow the American Dream to achieve a greater chance of

5 Brueggemann, John. Rich, Free, and Miserable: The Failure of Success in America (Rowman & Littlefield; 2010) 233 pages; links

discontent among middle-class Americans

6 J. A. Leo Lemay, "Franklin's Autobiography and the American Dream," Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography (Norton Critical Editions,

1986) pp ^ Harold Bloom and Blake Hobby, Eds. The American Dream (2009)

7 Nicholas Canaday, Jr., "Albee's the American Dream and the Existential Vacuum." South Central Bulletin Vol. 26, No. 4 (Winter 1966)

pp 28-34

8 Hayley Haugen, ed., The American Dream in John Steinbeck's of Mice and Men (2010)

becoming rich. Some posit that the ease of achieving the American Dream changes

with technological advances, availability of infrastructure and information,

government regulations, state of the economy, and with the evolving cultural values

of American demographics. The American Dream has been credited with helping to

build a cohesive American experience, but has also been blamed for inflated

expectations. In 1949 Arthur Miller wrote Death of a Salesman, in which the

American Dream is a fruitless pursuit. The novel "Requiem for a Dream" by Hubert

Selby, Jr., is an exploration of the pursuit of American success as it turns delirious and

lethal, told through the ensuing tailspin of its main characters.

Politics

Scholars have explored the American Dream theme in the careers of numerous

political leaders, including Hillary Clinton,9 Benjamin Franklin, and Abraham

Lincoln. In 2006 U.S. Senator Barack Obama wrote a memoir, The Audacity of Hope:

Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream. It was this interpretation of the

American Dream that helped establish his statewide and national reputations. Political

conflicts, to some degree, have been ameliorated by the shared values of all parties in

the expectation that the American Dream will resolve many difficulties and conflicts

Publics

Recent research suggests that the United States show roughly average levels of

occupational upward mobility, and lower rates of income mobility, than comparable

societies. Blanden et al. report, "The idea of the US as the land of opportunity

persists; and clearly seems misplaced." According to these studies, "by international

standards, the United States has an unusually low level of intergenerational mobility:

our parents income is highly predictive of our incomes as adults. Intergenerational

mobility in the United States is lower than in France, Germany, Sweden, Canada,

9 Dan Dervin, "The Dream-Life of Hillary Clinton," Journal of Psychohistory, Fall 2008, Vol. 36 Issue 2, pp 157-162

Finland, Norway and Denmark. Among high-income countries for which comparable

estimates are available, only the United Kingdom had a lower rate of mobility than

the United States." "This challenges the notion of America as the land of

opportunity."10

To a majority of Americans, the American Dream is more about spiritual

happiness than material goods. Majorities state that working hard is the most

important element for getting ahead. However, an increasing minority stated that hard

work and determination does not guarantee success. On the pessimistic side, most

Americans predict that achieving the Dream with fair means will become increasingly

difficult for future generations. They are increasingly pessimistic about the

opportunity for the working class to get ahead; on the other hand, they are

increasingly optimistic about the opportunities available to poor people and to new

immigrants. Furthermore, most support programs make special efforts to help

minorities get ahead.

Influence of the American Dream on other parts of the world

The aspirations of the "American dream" in the broad sense of upward mobility

has been systematically spread to other nations since the 1890s as American

missionaries and businessmen consciously sought to spread the Dream, says

Rosenberg. Looking at American business, religious missionaries, philanthropies,

Hollywood, labor unions and Washington agencies, she says they saw their mission

not in catering to foreign elites but instead reaching the world's masses in democratic

fashion. "They linked mass production, mass marketing, and technological

improvement to an enlightened democratic spirit....In the emerging litany of the

American dream what historian Daniel Boorstin later termed a "democracy of things"

would disprove both Malthus's predictions of scarcity and Marx's of class conflict." It

was, she says "a vision of global social progress." Rosenberg calls the overseas

10 Sandra L. Hanson, and John Zogby, "The Polls—Trends," Public Opinion Quarterly, Sept 2010, Vol. 74 Issue 3, pp 570-584

version of the American Dream "liberal-developmentalism" and identified five critical

components:

“(1) belief that other nations could and should replicate America's own

developmental experience; (2) faith in private free enterprise; (3) support for free or

open access for trade and investment; (4) promotion of free flow of information and culture; and (5) growing acceptance of [U.S.] governmental activity to protect private

enterprise and to stimulate and regulate American participation in international

economic and cultural exchange.” 11

Britain

The American dream regarding home ownership has little resonance before the

1980s. In the 1980s, the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher worked to create a

similar dream, by selling public-housing units to their tenants. Her Conservative party

called for more home ownership: "HOMES OF OUR OWN: To most people

ownership means first and foremost a home of their own.... We should like in time to

improve on existing legislation with a realistic grants scheme to assist first-time

buyers of cheaper homes."12 Guest calls this Thatcher's approach to the American

Dream. Knights and McCabe argue that, "a reflection and reinforcement of the

American Dream has been the emphasis on individualism as extolled by Margaret

Thatcher and epitomized by the 'enterprise' culture." 13

Russia

Since the fall of Communism in the Soviet Union in 1991, the American Dream

11 Cullen, Jim. The American dream: a short history of an idea that shaped a nation, Oxford University Press US, 2004. ISBN

0-19-517325-2

12 Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World (2009) p 252

13 David E. Guest, "Human Resource Management and the American Dream," Journal of Management Studies (1990) 27#4 pp 377-97,

reprinted in Michael Poole, Human Resource Management: Origins, Developments and Critical Analyses (1999) p. 159

has fascinated Russians. The first post-Communist leader Boris Yeltsin embraced the

"American way" and teamed up with Harvard University free market economists

Jeffrey Sachs and Robert Allison to give Russia economic shock therapy in the 1990s.

14The newly independent Russian media idealized America and endorsed shock

therapy for the economy. In 2008 Russian President Dmitry Medvedev lamented the

fact that 77% of Russia's 142 million people live "cooped up" in apartment buildings. Conclusion

To me the American dream is the liberty offered to its citizens; the freedom to

attend school, to start a business, to work, to pray if you want to, and not how many

things I own. The American dream is to have all the basics that all people share, but I

worry the dream is dying because government is debasing the currency, taxing income,

and selling children into debt slavery at far too fast a rate to benefit bond holders and

rich people. The American dream is not embracing diversity or racist affirmative

action quotas for Hebrews, Africans, women, homosexuals, immigrants, and

minorities. The American dream is merit, doing a good job, well done. The dream is

in danger because so many incompetent people have been promoted to meaningless

high paying jobs like airport underwear inspectors. Government has to change. It is

devouring the American dream.

14 Richard M. Ryan et al., "The American Dream in Russia: Extrinsic Aspirations and Well-Being in Two Cultures," Personality and

Social Psychology Bulletin, (Dec. 1999) vol. 25 no. 12 pp 1509-1524,

References:

1 Dan Dervin, "The Dream-Life of Hillary Clinton," Journal of Psychohistory, Fall

2008, Vol. 36 Issue 2, pp 157-162

2 Dalton Gross and MaryJean Gross, Understanding The Great Gatsby (1998) p 5 H.

W. Brands, The age of gold: the California Gold Rush and the new American dream (2003) p. 442.

3 Deborah F. Atwater, "Senator Barack Obama: The Rhetoric of Hope and the

American Dream," Journal of Black Studies, Nov 2007, Vol. 38 Issue 2, pp 121-129

4 Edward J. Blum, "Lincoln's American Dream: Clashing Political Perspectives,"

Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, Summer 2007, Vol. 28 Issue 2, pp 90-93

5 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

6 Hayley Haugen, ed., The American Dream in John Steinbeck's of Mice and Men

(2010)

7 J. A. Leo Lemay, "Franklin's Autobiography and the American Dream," Benjamin

Franklin's Autobiography (Norton Critical Editions, 1986) pp

8 Nicholas Canaday, Jr., "Albee's the American Dream and the Existential Vacuum."

South Central Bulletin Vol. 26, No. 4 (Winter 1966) pp 28-34

9 Sandra L. Hanson, and John Zogby, "The Polls—Trends," Public Opinion Quarterly,

Sept 2010, Vol. 74 Issue 3, pp 570-584

10 Richard M. Ryan et al., "The American Dream in Russia: Extrinsic Aspirations and

Well-Being in Two Cultures," Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, (Dec. 1999) vol. 25 no. 12 pp 1509-1524,