Full Text of the Lanahan Reading in the American Polity 6th Edition
What is the American Dream?
The "American Dream" is a sort of ethos or set of beliefs that bulldoze many U.Due south. citizens as they work toward creating a life for themselves. This set of ideals – which includes notions of individual rights, freedom, republic, and equality – is arguably centered around the belief that each private has the right and liberty to seek prosperity and happiness, regardless of where or into what circumstances they were built-in. A key chemical element of the American dream is the belief that through hard piece of work and perseverance, anyone tin can rise "from rags to riches", condign financially successful and socially upwardly mobile.
American writer and historian, James Truslow Adams, best captured the definition of the American Dream: "Life should be ameliorate and richer and fuller for anybody, with opportunity for each according to power or accomplishment," with neither social class nor the circumstances surrounding their nascence existence a bulwark to success.
The Origin of the American Dream
The American Dream is rooted in the U.S. Declaration of Independence. That document, created by America'south founding fathers, says two key things that are largely responsible for shaping what the archetype American Dream is. The declaration says that "all men are created equal" and that each human/woman has the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
Information technology's of import to note that the U.S. Constitution – the legal foundation that delineates how the regime shall operate on a daily basis – reiterates this idea in its Preamble, noting that its purpose is to help "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity."
The Many Versions of the American Dream
Throughout the history of the U.Southward. – both before and later information technology became an independent nation – the American Dream has changed, going through a variety of forms and meanings while maintaining as its essence the cadre beliefs of freedom and happiness in place.
In its earliest years, the dream was centered effectually the lure of westward expansion and frontier life within the U.S. In 1774, Virginia'southward Governor, John Murray, said that almost Americans were constantly imagining that "the Lands further off are all the same meliorate than those upon which they are already settled." He also noted the constant dissatisfaction and desire for even more and even better when he said that, "If they attained Paradise, they would move on if they heard of a better place farther west."
xixth Century America
In the nineteenth century, the beginnings of mass emigration were affected by and affected the American Dream. A perfect case of this is the emigration of many highly-educated Germans, who ran to the U.Southward. after the failure of the 1848 German language revolution and the attempt to interruption down hierarchical standards. They were drawn by the political and economical freedoms embraced in the New Earth, and the fact that America did not operate on the same class system, nor did it subscribe to the notion that a person could only reach as much as their class dictated.
The American Dream was also significantly shaped and perpetuated past the discovery of aureate in the xixth century. The 1849 discovery in California drew in hundreds of thousands of men believing that they, besides, could pan a fortune overnight. While near did not, and in fact, many men spent their families' entire savings to find nothing, several men did become rich in a matter of days. While it has changed through many years and different political and economic circumstances inside the state, the belief that personal success is possible for anyone to achieve is a dream that however motivates Americans today.
The 20thCentury American Dream
The term "American Dream" became even more pop in the xxthursday century, partly on the back of James Truslow Adams' 1931 book, "Epic of America." Adams noted how the American Dream had inverse over fourth dimension and how it was difficult for European elite to sympathise its value or why it drew so many immigrants to the states.
Adams went on to say that the American Dream is, "not a dream of motor cars and loftier wages merely, but a dream of a social society in which each homo and each adult female shall exist 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 their birth or position."
The American historian too stressed that, despite the growth of the state, the explosion of the rich and successful, and how such families established a sort of social order where those coming from a position of wealth tended to succeed and have greater opportunities, that the belief was that, regardless of this, anyone could find success and happiness. He noted that the American Dream is and has been "… much more than that. Information technology has been a dream of beingness able to grow to fullest evolution as man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in the older civilizations, unrepressed past social orders which had developed for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human existence of whatsoever and every class."
Without getting into a lengthy word of politics, several political movements – such every bit the motion for the right of women to vote, also as the civil rights movement that flourished in the 1960s – were all parts of what was shaped past, and so farther shaped, the American Dream.
Conclusion
Ultimately, the American Dream maintains a cadre set up of behavior: the right to sure freedoms that enable every individual to pursue a life of success and happiness. What success and happiness mean to 1 person is not necessarily what they hateful to another. In the cease, it is up to each American to decide what the Dream looks like to them, with the knowledge that America affords them the opportunity to pursue it freely.
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