Rethinking The American Dream

Throughout the course of recorded history people have always had ambitions of living a safe and secure life free from excessive control. The discovery and expansion of America created a melting pot for people from all over to immigrate and begin new lives. The people migrating to America dreamed of a new beginning and a flourishing lifestyle, driven by hard work and dedication. The American dream can be accomplished through perseverance and hard work to achieve our goals; and the strong sense of community to increase the well-being of everyone, not just oneself. In Alexis de Tocqueville’s, That the Americans Combat the Effects of Individualism by Free Institutions, it is made clear that the American dream can be accomplished by oneself through

The legacy and policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt changed the idea of the American dream in a positive direction. Roosevelt continued to further the idea that the American dream can be accomplished through the freedom of all people and the help of one another to achieve one’s goals. “More soberly and less bombastically, Roosevelt, in his 1941 State of the Union address, prepared America for war by articulating the “four essential human freedoms” that the U.S. would be fighting for: “freedom of speech and expression”; “freedom of every person to worship God in his own way; freedom from want”; and freedom from fear”.” Roosevelt knew that if U.S. citizens wanted to achieve their American dream they would need to be free from personal persecution and

This stems from the hard work that Americans dedicate to turn their American dream into an American reality. “The home dream is only one of the deepest American illusions which, since they can’t be changed, function as cohesive principals to bind the nation together and make it different from all other nations. It occurs to me that all dreams, waking and sleeping, are powerful and prominent memories of something real, of something that really happened”. The American dream has always been a powerful idea throughout American history. This notion has been backed by this country’s core values since its conception. Dreams turn into realities through the hard work and time spent in making them come true, American’s have always been known to have this mentality and mindset, which leads us to become successful as individuals, communities, and as a nation. “A national dream need not, indeed may not be clear-cut and exact. For Americans to the wide and general dream has a name. It is called “the American Way of Life.” No one can define it or point to any one person or group who lives it, but it is very real nevertheless, perhaps more real than that equally remote dream the Russians call Communism”. The American way of life is not something simply defined, but instead it is a social challenge that calls on us to refine our current state as individuals and as a nation of