Saving the American Dream

The American Dream isn’t about what you have. It’s about what America lets you become.

America isn’t only failing to keep its promises of democracy and social equality. It’s failing to keep its most sacred national promise: The American Dream.

The last few pieces talked about America’s three national promises supporting its legitimacy, and how it’s failing to keep its promises of democracy and social equality. What about its final promise of The American Dream?

WHAT IS THE AMERICAN DREAM?

The American Dream is the promise that everyone in America, no mater who you are, no matter your background, has a fair and equal chance to become whatever they dream to be.

A lot of people mistakenly believe the American Dream is just a promise of material prosperity—a decent job, a house in the suburbs, and two cars in the garage. To them, the American Dream is a dream of security and a solid middle-class life. To some, that is indeed their American dream, but the American Dream as a national idea is much more.

As the writer who coined the phrase American Dream, Truslow Adams, defined it in his Epic of America:

It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be 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 birth or position.

The American Dream, in other words, isn’t about what you have. It’s about what America lets you become.

The American Dream is the promise that every American should have the freedom to choose their path in life. If you work hard, develop your talents, and perhaps get a bit lucky, there should be no limit on what you can become in America. Whomever you dream of becoming, America promises you a fair chance to become it. Nobody gets to tell you who are you have to be—not your family, your neighbors, or your society. Nobody gets to put unfair impediments in your way. Nobody gets to lock you out of your dreams for petty reasons, like they don’t like where you’re from, who your parents are, what you look like, or how you talk. Nobody gets to tell you what you’re supposed to value, how you’re supposed to live, or what opportunities you get to chase. The American Dream promises that nobody decides your life but you.

For some, the American Dream is indeed a good job, new car, and big middle-class house to raise their family in security. For others, it’s to be a pop star, a writer, an athlete, or an astronaut. For some, it’s to start a business, invent a technology, or become an entrepreneur. For others, it’s to develop and spread new ideas that shake the world. For some, it’s to open an animal rescue, become a pastor, start a podcast, or live on a big farm. For others, it’s to jump into the arena, run for office, and someday toss in their hat to lead America as its president.

It doesn’t matter what your American Dream is, or whether it’s big or small. What matters is you, and only you, define it. Whatever you choose, America promises a fair chance to chase it no matter what anyone else thinks.

Many consider the best definition of the America Dream was in Thomas Wolfe’s novel You Can’t Go Home Again:

So, then, to every man his chance—to every man, regardless of his birth, his shining, golden opportunity—to every man the right to live, to work, to be himself, and to become whatever thing his manhood and his vision can combine to make him—this, seeker, is the promise of America.

THE PROMISE OF THE AMERICAN DREAM

What makes the American Dream so fundamentally American is our pioneer legacy. When America’s Founding generation won their war of independence and wrote a new Constitution creating a novel form of government, the American continent was mostly wilderness. For generations, American had to build this new country essentially from scratch.

Families packed into rickety Conestoga wagons and drove into the unknown to create new homesteads, which grew into towns, which grew into new cities. They moved into the Wild West, settlements far from authority and law, to build new lives. They reached the promised land of California, which burst with new opportunities. Americans built new cities. They invented automobiles, telephones, and airplanes. They created Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Immigrants streamed in from around the world and became new generations of Americans.

Nobody asked permission to build America. No one stopped Andrew Carnegie, a poor immigrant, from building his empire of steel. No one stopped the Wright Brothers from building their crazy flying machine because it wasn’t safe. No one stopped Mark Twain from mocking the powerful. No one stopped the entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley from disrupting the entire world.

In America, you can create your own religion. You can hitchhike across Route 66. You can write offensive jokes like George Carlin, or question authority and stir up trouble like Hunter Thompson, and when authority objects you can tell them where to go.

In America, you can just do things. Most important, for most of history when you told America you wanted to try something or go your own way, America didn’t fight you. It mostly had your back.

Making the promise of the American Dream reality essentially involved three interlocking truths.

• America was a middle-class society. Everyone who was willing to work hard had a chance to rise and live a good life. Even if you started poor. Even if you were born in another country. Even if you didn’t go to the right schools, speak the right way, or use the right fork. There was enough opportunity, prosperity, and dignity for everyone.

• America was an entrepreneurial society. Americans didn’t have to ask permission. Even if what you wanted was seen as crazy. Even if people thought that you’re wrong. Even if you might disrupt other people’s interests. Even when the establishment feared losing its control. You could invent your new technology. You could start you company. You could record your music or write your book. You could just wake up and change the world.

• America was a rebel society. America was a place you could thumb your nose at the system. You could question authority. You could mock it. You could form your counterculture that lived differently, believed differently, and ignored authority’s view of the public good. You could build your own community. You could create your transgressive art. You could be a cowboy, a prophet, a loner, a rebel, or a punk, and actually be celebrated for it.

These three truths made America markedly different from any other society in history. Most societies have class barriers. In most societies, you obey your parents even when the life they choose for you isn’t one you want. In most societies, you obey your community even when you’re different and find their beliefs and way of life alienating and crushing. In most societies, you have to obey the government and pay your official betters respect, even when everyone knows their authority is corrupt, selfish, dishonest, and wrong.

Most societies don’t celebrate iconoclasts and pirates. They round them up for the common good. In most societies, entrepreneurs who create new markets aren’t viewed as high status. They’re a little weird and dangerous for refusing to climb a prestigious company ladder. In most societies, you don’t get celebrated for telling the majority they’re wrong and proving it. You get punished.

WE’RE LOSING THE AMERICAN DREAM

Is America still this country? Is it still a country in which anyone can become anything they want? Is the national myth of the American Dream still true?

• Is America truly still a middle-class society? Economic inequality has been growing, and there’s no reason to believe it’s going to stop. The divide between the top and bottom of America seem likely to increase. New technologies like AI will likely destroy more of the middle class, while enriching those already doing well. As I recently wrote, Americans have good reason to believe the prosperity and security of the middle-twentieth century we took for granted is slipping away.

• Is America truly an entrepreneurial society? Of course, start-ups still exist in Silicon Valley. How about outside the technology start-up ecosystem available to Stanford graduates? Is this still a nation in which anyone can drive a wagon into the wilderness and build a homestead? Can you start up a little store in your small town and thrive? Can you start a newspaper and spread your truth? Can you become an inventor, a thinker, or an artist without being chosen by the few with institutional backing and support? Are we becoming a nation in which the only real choice available is to join a large bureaucratic corporation and subject yourself to its rules?

• Is America still a rebel society? Is this still a nation that celebrates outlaws and subversives? Is it one that encourages questioning authority? Is it one that encourages you to be who you want to be, think what you want to think, and tell the establishment where it can go? Is it a country that celebrates its George Carlins, Hunter Thompsons, and Daniel Ellsbergs, or is it one that would seek to bring them to heel?

I fear we have become a nation of rules and rule-followers.

It’s a nation with few opportunities outside the established system. It’s one that encourages you to become a good company man or woman, finding a job for a wage and then obeying managers and bosses. Even if you do, it will be hard to rise because there won’t be opportunities. You’ll never rise to the level of your bosses, and never earn as much. You’ll get laid off randomly. You’ll work forever, struggle, and never be free.

It’s also a nation that doesn’t cheer its iconoclasts but jeers at them. It demands you go with the majority. It roots out what the majority decides isn’t true as misinformation. It empowers national busybodies that know what’s best and demand you go along for the common good. It’s a nation that wants you to agree and follow the rules. It’s a nation that asks you to obey.

Americans aren’t supposed to be obedient.

I worry about the decline of the American Dream because it’s the final plank in America’s legitimacy. This dream is the invisible foundation driving American dynamism. It’s what encourages Americans to innovate. It encourages them to work hard and push boundaries. It encourages them to challenge authority and hold it to account, forcing authority to correct its mistakes, clean its corruption, and reform. Without the American Dream, America will cease to be America because Americans will cease to be Americans.

Some of what’s killing the dream are changes in the economy and world as we move into a new technological era. Some is the spread of new ideas about what building a good society requires. Some, however, is intentional. Some of what’s destroying the American Dream is a rising meritocracy of leaders who doesn’t understand the American Dream or its importance. This leadership class is increasingly drawn from rule-followers and hoop-jumpers who instinctively fear the chaos and disruption of rebels and would like nothing better than to bring them to heel to make the world more orderly and efficient. They think the American Dream is about a house.

What we should do instead is make sure the American Dream continues to thrive in this new era of history. We should ensure America remains a middle-class society in which every American who works hard can thrive. We should take on an affirmative responsibly to ensure all Americans have the tools they need to reach and build their dreams. Most important, we should make sure Americans remain Americans—a nation of innovators, pioneers, cowboys, and rebels pursuing their own dreams, no matter what anybody thinks.

What do you think about the decline of the American Dream? Join the community in the comments.