The American Dream

We hear a great deal about "the American dream" and I know pretty well what people these days mean by that. However, I am equally unsure what "the American dream" really means. What dream and whose dream are we talking about? If we are talking about the original immigrants or colonizers of America, I suppose that the dream was life without religious persecution and land that was free for settlement. They did, of course, begin to persecute themselves; and there was the little matter of clearing off indigenous people in order to settle. Not too clear in retrospect how virtuous any of that really was. 

Perhaps the first great vision of an "American dream" was Jefferson's vision of a nation of landed citizens. Democracy made sense in that situation even though I am skeptical that real democracy ever existed in the US. Anyway, the Industrial Revolution removed people from the land. The US Census does not even track the population of small farmers anymore; the number is too tiny compared to the general population (less than 1%). Even farming is industrialized today. What that means is that no one has a natural path to survival anymore. Everyone must "work the system" in some way in order to survive. So, in a Capitalist world, that means that almost everyone is a "surf" in the new system of "corporate capitalism." You take the wages that you can get and you make do with what you have.

So I suppose that, having been dropped into a struggle for survival off the land or without any other free supporting body, we imagine "the American dream" to be this: that everybody has a reasonable chance at succeeding if they apply themselves. But this is where we encounter the great rift in American political thought. Those of a Democratic persuasion focus on "everybody has a reasonable chance" and those of a Republican persuasion focus on "apply themselves." Thus, for Democrats the failure of the American dream is the fact that only a few have a reasonable chance while many have no chance at all. For Republicans, on the other hand, the failure is the fact that people are lazy and just do not apply themselves. Democrats tend to ignore the fact that many people really are lazy and or conniving and take advantage of gifts. Republicans tend to ignore the improbability of reasonable chances. But since no one is willing to talk intelligently across this ideological divide, there is little chance of moderating the rift. Elections stack up to being almost 50/50 match-ups between diametrically opposite tendencies. There is, of course, one other important dimension to this rift. Democrats believe that government is uniquely situated to help the people achieve the dream, and Republicans do not want government to interfere. Taxation is theft and the government should be stripped of most of its powers. What Capitalists want is protection of property --- hence, a police presence and large military budget.

As we work our way toward the election of 2012, the real issue before us is what kind of society we want. When it comes down to basics, that is what government is really about. Government is the way in which a people (commonwealth) exercises its collective power to shape its own destiny. The choices before us are in stark contrast to each other. Democrats believe that part of the aim of government is to "promote the general welfare" of society as expressed in the Constitution ("We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."). In this respect, they believe that parents should be given aid in rearing their children to become good citizens, that young people should be provided the benefits of education, that workers should receive reasonable compensation for their labors, and that everyone should have the benefits of adequate health care.

What Republicans seem to want is a tax policy that enormously favors extreme wealth and withdraws all Federal programs for promoting the general welfare. I confess that I do not understand what this means as a "vision of a desirable society" except that it would seem we should simply watch people starve and die in our cities and ignore the whole thing as much as we can. If this is not the Republican ideal, then how do they really see this policy working out?