Faith In The American Dream Essay

988 Words4 Pages

America is home to over 300 million people. It is home to dreamers, believers, and overachievers. Growing up here, we have always heard others tell us that America is the land of opportunity. We are free to become whoever we want to be, and if we work hard, there will be no limits to our success. These statements are practically ingrained in our memories, but as we grow up we realize that this is not the way reality works. Today, our faith in the American Dream is slowly diminishing. There are many factors that might have attributed this change, but I believe if we change our stereotypical mindsets and loosen government control, we can restore our faith in the American Dream. During my senior year of high school, we were assigned a final …show more content…

As a result of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, the government has since played an integral part in shaping our society into what it is today. However, in doing so, they have also created numerous rules and regulations that limit our individual rights. “The war ended the Great Depression, but the work of the New Deal added a new dimension to the American Dream: the broad expectation that government had a role to play in advancing individual lives” (5). The New Deal created jobs and opportunities during a time of economic despair, giving hope to Americans struggling to achieve their Dream. I support the development of federal programs that create jobs or provide aid to people with special needs, but there is a limit to how much authority the government has over our lives. Today, everything from our computers, to our foods, to even the water that we use in our homes, has been heavily regulated by the government. In an ideal world, it would have “free people living in a civil society, working in self-interested cooperation, and a government operating within the limits of its authority [to] promote more prosperity, opportunity, and happiness for more people than any alternative” (Levin