The American Dream

Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I have a dream’ speech has become iconic in American culture—so much so that for some American’s it has even become sacrosanct. Glen Beck was roundly thrashed recently because he presumed to publicly declare his dream for America—as if Mr. King was the only public figure allowed to have a dream, a vision for America. I think both of their dreams had much merit. I think every private person, each of us, must also have a Dream. “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” (Proverbs 29:18)

Preceding either of these thinkers’ dreams, though, was the ‘American Dream’ identified in the history books of many generations of America’s school children. Americans for two centuries have equated freedom with opportunity and, until the last half-century, with responsibility. Opportunity came with citizenship—opportunity, no matter who you were or where you came from, to pursue happiness, to make money or have power, or both. And the dream included the idea that our children could have it better than we had it—if they would work for it, as we did.

Historically, the tyranny of English ties was long broken and the only tyranny ‘we the people’ came to worry about was the tyranny of a minority, the elitists. Those who became the elite, the medical profession, the media controllers, the educational establishment, the political establishment, the relatively small number of people who try to determine the thoughts and ideas and direction that all people ‘should’, in their minds, possess—these have become the tyranny of our time.

Recently, the emergence of the ‘Tea Party’ is attempting to give voice to the strength of the larger great American ‘silent majority’ who still have The Dream, unorchestrated by the self-identified elitist controllers of our destiny.

But I have a concern. Look at who compose this emergent counter-point. From what generation do they come? Will they have the power and determination to sustain their opposition and present and follow up on viable alternatives to what they have identified as the source of our current national malaise.

But more to the point of this essay, I wonder if the American Dream has not collapsed for many. Especially I am concerned about the current generation. Do many of our ‘generation x’ really believe they can drive their own destiny, own their own home, even get a job? For those who have given up, do they think that the well of ‘entitlements’ will never dry up? Has the economic downturn brought about a meltdown of the Dream that had given motivation for us of the Boomer generation and of the Greatest Generation that preceded it? How long will those who are out of work or who no longer can have aspirations for a college education or who have never really bought into the ‘Dream’ maintain the self-respect which is fundamental to self-improvement? I see the emergence of many more who are defeated even before they have started, or at least started as we, of my generation, did.

Somehow the Dream must be kept bright. To do so I think that the light must be kept on—and kept focused on the ideas and ideals that got us through the previous Great Challenges that made strong men and strong women of our noble ancestors. I see the challenges of our time neither different in kind or in degree.

Let’s dust off the old solutions, maybe not the specifics but certainly the principles, and see how they can be adapted to today’s challenges. I think we may be surprised at how many of them will work.

The only way to make a dream come true is to have it in the first place.