Cowards: What Politicians, Radicals, and the Media Refuse to Say
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[T]he Occupy Wall Street movement is gaining momentum because most Americans now understand that the American Dream is only for the wealthy and well connected. But, the Occupy movement is demanding more than equal opportunity. We are questioning the American religion of free market capitalism, and the extreme individualism that fueled the corporate takeover of America. We are exploring a new morality, one that acknowledges our interdependence with each other, and insists, no matter how much the right screams “socialism” that the least among us deserve to have their basic needs met.
Make no mistake, it’s the free market and capitalism that are on trial here; the very things that have powered the American Dream since the beginning.
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DREAMING UP THE DREAM
It’s 1930—the stock market has crashed, and Americans are beginning to realize that the Roaring Twenties might be gone forever. Author James Truslow Adams, who’d won the Pulitzer Prize ten years earlier for his book The Founding of New England, was in the midst of writing a one-volume history of the country and was obsessed with this concept of “the American Dream.” He was so obsessed, in fact, that he actually wanted to use it as the title of his new book. But his publisher had other ideas. They figured that nobody wanted to spend three bucks on a book about a dream, so a new title won out: The Epic of America.
But just because he was forced to change the title didn’t mean he’d lost his obsession. So here’s what Adams, in the midst of a major economic crisis, had to say about the Dream:
The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, also 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.
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 older civilizations, unrepressed by social orders which had been developed for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human being of any and every class. And that dream has been realized more fully in actual life here than anywhere else, though very imperfectly even among ourselves.
Two things are immediately clear. First, to Adams, the “Dream” was about equality of opportunity (“each according to ability or achievement”); and second, that it had nothing to do with material things (“not a dream of motor cars and high wages”).
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Defining the Dream: 1937
“President Roosevelt asked Congress today to save the ‘American dream’ of individual farm ownership.”
—ASSOCIATED PRESS
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Defining the Dream: 1939
“The American dream is to come over here in steerage with 10 fingers as baggage and work and become great.”
—THE MILWAUKEE JOURNAL
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But here’s the most shocking part: Adams himself was not exactly viewed as a libertarian. In other sections of The Epic of America he wrote about income inequality and saving the Dream by cracking down on business interests. It’s a fairly progressive message, with a lot of carping about the wealthy running the country and whining about the “intellectual worker or artist” falling behind “the “rising wage scale” of average workers. As one historian put it, Adams was “a typical liberal intellectual: a debunker of patriotic myths, a denouncer of Puritanism and Babbitry, a somewhat supercilious observer of the political scene.”
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Defining the Dream: 1944
“[A]merica is not finished. It need never be finished. America is at the morning of her destiny. If you believe with me, let us now resolve that we will never rest until we make the American dream a living and moving reality.”
—GOV. THOMAS E. DEWEY
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Imagine that—a “typical liberal” in the 1930s had a more conservative vision of the Dream than many actual conservatives do today. Of course, being a “liberal” back then didn’t mean what it does now—both parties, while having different ideas for the country, were still soundly rooted in traditional American principles. Adams was no exception. One source said this about his earlier book: “[Adams] put forth his idea of the cardinal American values: work, morality, individualism, fiscal responsibility, and dedication to duty. These were the values he saw present in the character of the early New Englanders. ‘Americans love property but hate privilege’ was his supporting theory.”
Work. Morality. Individualism. Fiscal responsibility. Duty. Property.
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Defining the Dream: 1949
“Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower warned last night that the American dream will turn into ‘the American nightmare’ if the people of this country become slaves of the Government. . . . [He said], ‘We believe in human dignity, in human rights not subject to arbitrary curtailment. We believe that these rights can be fully possessed and effectively exercised only so long as man asserts and maintains himself the master not the serf of the institutions he creates.’”
—UNITED PRESS
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Those ideals are okay with me—and maybe that’s why the idea of an “American Dream” caught on like wildfire. It was, at least at the beginning, uniquely mainstream American. The Dream may not have had a dictionary definition, but each person could insert their own hopes and aspirations onto its blank canvas and strive for a better life.
But that’s not where the story ends.
When you get right down to it, the popularity of the phrase “the American Dream” really doesn’t have a darn thing to do with James Truslow Adams. He was just the messenger. He doesn’t deserve any more credit for people believing in “the American Dream” than Warren Harding does for Americans long revering their “Founding Fathers” (did you know that Harding actually invented that phrase in 1916?). Adams and Harding merely named something that tens of millions of people, generation after generation, already passionately believed in.
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Defining the Dream: 1956
“And I say that the only hope for continued progress toward the realization of the American dream, the dream that we always think of on Lincoln’s Birthday particularly, the dream of equal opportunity in every respect for every American, is through the election not only of a Republican President but a Republican House and Senate. . . .”
—VICE PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON
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Defining the Dream: 1963
“I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed—we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
—MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.
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Defining the Dream: 1964
“The American dream was not conceived in the conscience of conservatives but in the hope of enthusiasts. Yet in place of the American dream, we are now being offered an American nightmare by the peddlers of despair.”
—SENATOR HUBERT HUMPHREY, SPEAKING ABOUT BARRY GOLDWATER
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IN PURSUIT OF THE DREAM
Putting aside the specific term “the American Dream,” just how far back does this idea really go? Nobody knows for sure, but some scholars think it all started with the French political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville, when he visited America in the 1830s. In Democracy in America, Tocqueville wrote, “There is no man who cannot reasonably expect to attain the amenities of life, for each knows that, given love of work, his future is certain. . . . No one is fully contented with his present fortune, all are
perpetually striving, in a thousand ways, to improve it. Consider one of them at any period of his life and he will be found engaged with some new project for the purpose of increasing what he has.”
If you go back even further, to Thomas Jefferson in 1776, you’ll find these words written into the Declaration of Independence: “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.”
There it is, perhaps the earliest definition of The American Dream: the unalienable right to the pursuit of happiness. It was exactly the same message that James Truslow Adams would encapsulate (and name) more than 150 years later.
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The Pursuit of Happyness
In 2006 Will Smith starred in a movie called The Pursuit of Happyness, a great film that I think was really about not being guaranteed anything by “the American Dream.” It’s about a man who loses just about everything—his job, his savings, his wife, his home—and ends up in homeless shelters and sleeping with his five-year-old on a restroom floor. Despite it all he retains his self-respect. He doesn’t give up. He keeps working. He keeps trying. And it all pays off. He’s now the CEO of a brokerage firm that bears his name.
I know Chris Gardner, the real-life man featured in the film, and have spoken with him many times over the years. I can tell you, without a doubt, that this is one story Hollywood did not have to embellish much.
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POLLING THE DREAM
Today, the American Dream is seemingly whatever a politician or activist wants it to be. It’s no longer rooted in the Declaration or in our founding principle of equality of opportunity; it’s an amoeba that shape-shifts to fit whatever agenda is attempting to harness it.
When unions and far-left activists decided they wanted to form a countermovement to the Tea Party, they got together at the 2011 “Take Back the American Dream” conference. The agenda included sessions with titles like “The American Dream Movement,” “Starving the Dream,” “Stop Outsourcing the Dream,” “Jobs, Justice and the American Dream,” “Paying for the Dream: Progressive Tax Reform and Social Justice” (naturally the dream is expensive), and, my personal favorite, “How Hip Hop, Superheroes and Digital Shorts Can Hyper-Charge the American Dream Movement.”
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Defining the Dream: 1978
“More than a third of U.S. families interviewed in a study . . . said they had lost faith in the American dream because of economic problems.”
—ASSOCIATED PRESS
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Sounds like a great conference—I’m sorry I missed it. I think it would’ve been fascinating to hear exactly what the American Dream is that we’re “starving” and “outsourcing” and need all of this extra money to pay for. I naïvely thought that ideas and dreams were free.
Obviously, those running a conference like that have a different definition of the Dream than our Founders did—but the only question that’s really relevant is whom most Americans now relate to. After all, maybe those of us who think that the Dream is about opportunity are actually in the minority these days.
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Defining the Dream: 1982
“Owning a home is one part of the American Dream that, for many people, is becoming just that—a dream.”
—ASSOCIATED PRESS
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Defining the Dream: 1984
“American Dream Is Still Strong: A recent survey of 1,324 college students around the nation reveals that most of them dream of owning a home that is larger and more expensive than the home in which they grew up.”
—SPARTANBURG (SC) HERALD JOURNAL
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Defining the Dream: 1988
“One grim general conclusion was shared by two studies of the U.S. economy this Labor Day: The American Dream is fading for many people, especially young couples, as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.”
—UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
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Jack Chambless, an economics professor at Valencia College, had 180 students in his sophomore class write essays on what they thought the American Dream meant. The results were not pretty: only around 10 percent thought that government should stay out of the way, have low tax rates, and deregulate to allow people to fulfill the dream. Ten percent. Over 80 percent thought that the American Dream meant a job, a house, retirement funds, vacations, and other material things. Eighty percent wanted the government to provide “free” health care, tuition, a down payment on their first home, and “a job.” Oh, and to pay for it all, they wanted the government to tax the wealthy.
Those results are especially frightening when you consider that these sophomores are one day going to be parents. If they teach their kids that the Dream is about a free trip to the doctor’s office or a low-interest government mortgage, then what hope do we have?
If you talk to older Americans, including immigrants, you get very different answers than what those sophomores came up with. When Xavier University surveyed over a thousand U.S. adults in 2011 they found that “only 6 percent of Americans ranked ‘wealth’ as their first or second definition of the American dream. Forty-five percent named ‘a good life for my family,’ while 34 percent put ‘financial security’—material comfort that is not necessarily synonymous with Bill Gates–like riches—on top.”
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Taking It for Granted?
Here’s one eye-opening result from Xavier’s survey: “48% of immigrants rate the dream in ‘good condition’ compared to only 31% of the population overall.”
Could it be that those of us who’ve been here for a while have become a little bit jaded on just how good things are and just how much opportunity there really still is in America compared to the rest of the world?
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Even better: “Thirty-two percent of our respondents pointed to ‘freedom’ as their dream; 29 percent to ‘opportunity’; and 21 percent to the ‘pursuit of happiness.’ A fat bank account can be a means to these ends, but only a small minority believe that money is a worthy end in itself.”
That’s great, and it makes me more optimistic—but why is that sentiment almost the exact opposite of everything we hear in the media and from most activist groups? Could it be that maybe the traditional version of the Dream doesn’t rate on TV or bring enough people into conferences?
DON’T DEFINE IT, LIVE IT
Hatred of the American Dream is as old as the Dream itself. There always have been, and always will be, people who innately believe that America is evil. These are usually the “intellectual” or, really, the “pseudo-intellectual” elites who spend most of their time feeling guilty for being born here. But you know something? The “American Dream” has never been for elite snobs. They’ve never figured it out. They never will. The “American Dream” is for the rest of us—the people who get up every day and work hard in order to create a better life for ourselves and our families.
The American Dream is also just that: uniquely American. We should be proud of the fact that most other countries don’t even understand the concept of a Dream. For example, in 1959 IBM set up a large computer at an exhibit called the “American National Exhibition” in Moscow. The idea was to allow Russians to ask the computer questions about America and life over here.
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Defining the Dream: 1993
“The American dream that we were all raised on is a simple but powerful one—if you work hard and play by the rules you should be given a chance to go as far as your God-given ability will take you.”
—PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON
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After receiving nearly ten thousand inquiries from curious Russians, two stood out as being asked more than any other: What is “the price of a pack of American cigarettes and [what is] the meaning of the ‘American dream’?”
Imagine that—of all the ques
tions you could ask about America, these Russians wanted to know what “the Dream” was. Not how to get it, or how many had achieved it, or how they could get it—no, even that was too advanced—they didn’t even understand the concept of a Dream.
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Defining the Dream: Celebrity Edition
In 2007, Forbes asked a number of celebrities and politicians, “What is the American Dream?”