I have been listening to the voices of Americans across the fruited plains this week. Their voices are everywhere: across social media, at political gatherings, on various non-Mainstream Media News outlets. The conclusion is quite clear.
Conservative Americans want to live in a nation that will uphold certain ideals and values, in order to ensure that their children and grandchildren will be able to secure the same blessings and opportunities that America has provided them.
What is the American Dream?
According to Encyclopedia Brittanica, the American Dream is the:
. . . ideal that the United States is a land of opportunity that allows the possibility of upward mobility, freedom, and equality for people of all classes who work hard and have the will to succeed.
Of course, the early American colonists such as the Pilgrims (1620) and all the other successive waves of pioneers which came from England and Europe to North America – all shared certain ideals.
First, they sought opportunity and the chance to rise above the station into which they were born on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. In other words, they sought an ideal now known as meritocracy. Meritocracy is the antithesis of the traditional European rule of aristocracy, which asserts that there is a fundamental division between the gentry and the commoner.
This economic system dominated the Middle Ages and persisted until the middle of the 17th century in England. In short, those early pioneers sought both escape from the feudalism in England and Europe, but also the opportunity to make something of themselves through hard work and determination.
Second, this idea to leave the past system of feudalism behind, on the other side of the Atlantic and to pursue a new opportunity for advancement, without the restraints of lack of pedigree, title, lands and wealth was the key driving force that propelled these early pioneers to cross the Atlantic and begin a new life.
Third, many early settlers such as the Pilgrims, Puritans, Quakers (Friends) and others, sought the liberty to practice their religious beliefs, apart from the heavy hand and restrictions of the English Anglican Church.
Abraham Lincoln and the American Dream
Abraham Lincoln’s story inspires Americans to this day.
Lincoln had everything going against him. His mother died at an early age. His father did not encourage his son to seek an education. He was living in poverty on a farm with little access to resources that could raise his station in life.
Everything changed when his step-mother taught him to read. Young Lincoln then began to voraciously read borrowed books and learn about the world from some of the greatest minds of his day. Once he reached adulthood, he left his father’s farm and ventured out on his own – studying for the bar and subsequently becoming a lawyer.
Biographies and stories regarding Abraham Lincoln continue to be best sellers in America – only to be bested by sales of the Bible.
Of course, Lincoln’s legacy became solidified when he became President of the United States, abolished the institution of slavery with the passing of the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, and subsequently won the Civil War.
Abraham Lincoln embodies the American Dream – advancing from an uneducated poor family on a farm in Indiana to becoming the President of the United States in 1861.
According to Brittanica here are a few books that inspired young Abraham Lincoln:
These included Parson Weems’s Life and Memorable Actions of George Washington, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, and Aesop’s Fables.
The Political Left Rejects the American Dream
What we see in America today is an assault on the American Dream. The founding fathers are under attack by Progressives and Marxists.
The progressive Saul Alinsky in his quintessential revolutionary work: Rules for Radicals, lays the foundation for the modern progressive wing of the Democrat Party in America. The goal of Alinsky’s book is to overthrow the current system of representative government in the United States and to replace it with a tyrannical Marxist regime.
As a young university student in 1969, Hillary Clinton wrote a thesis paper on Saul Alinsky in which she idolized his ideals and vision for redefining America. The paper was titled: “There is only the Fight: An analysis of the Alinsky Model.”
Clinton wrote: “Although Alinsky calls Chicago his “city”, the place really represents to him the American Dream–in all its nightmare and its glory.”
According to yahoo!news, young Hillary Clinton corresponded with Saul Alinsky. It was Alinsky that pioneered the concept of “community organizer,” an epithet that Barak Obama embraced on his resumé, in his campaign for President of the United States.
The Left has Shown Their Cards and Americans are Rejecting Their Ideas
In August of 2019, The 1619 Project was launched by the radicalized New York Times. The project is the brainchild of New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones.
The 1619 Project is The New York Times Magazine’s award-winning reframing of American history that placed slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative.
According to National Public Radio, Hannah-Jones intends to rewrite America’s origin story and dismantle the traditional concept of the American Dream. Nikole Hannah-Jones, a key editor and author of the New York Times, 1619 Project wants to fan the flame of racism, racial tension and segregation in America, by reframing “the American story through the lens of slavery.”
Apparently, she is not aware that slavery was abolished during the Lincoln administration and that the Civil War, which was based upon an economic system that was supported by slavery, was won by the free northern states that opposed slavery and harbored the abolitionist movement.
In a scathing rebuttal to The 1619 Project, secondary school teacher Emily Sclafani writes:
“I hesitate, though, to characterize the arrival of the first unfree Africans in Point Comfort, Virginia, as a moment of original sin that ossified our nation’s character and fate.”
The goal of course, is for The 1619 Project to become a staple of the American Education system and to rewrite America’s origin story.
There is now a fierce debate among scholars regarding the claims of The 1619 Project. One example is the book: 1620: A Critical Response to the 1619 Project, by anthropologist and former professor Peter W. Wood.
In Wood’s book he argues that the proper starting point for the American origin story is the signing of the Mayflower Compact in 1620. Woods rejects the radical revisionist history which The 1619 Project represents and profound fallout effects that it will have upon future generations of Americans.
Conclusion: The American Origin Story Reaffirmed
What has been the effect of the Obama era, community organizing and the Saul Alinsky style of dismantling American ideals?
The British based YouGov is an international data mining and research firm. Their stated mission is to “supply a continuous stream of accurate data and insight into what the world thinks, so that companies, governments and institutions can make informed decisions.”
Accordingly, YouGov has analyzed the question of the American Dream. Here is a summary regarding the question: Do Americans still embrace the concept of the American Dream?
Americans are more likely to believe in the American Dream now than they were last year. A June 2023 poll found that 61% of Americans say there is such a thing as the American Dream, up 18 percentage points from 43% in July 2022.
If anything, The 1619 Project and other attempts to dethrone the American Dream and rewrite America’s origin story has failed.
Overall, Americans want to believe in a better future for their families and their children. They do not want to disparage our traditional 1620 origin story and replace it with race-baiting and a continuous fanning of the racism banner whenever there are disagreements in our society.
America has always thrived in our system of plurality of opinions. Part of the American Dream is the ability to actively engage in discourse in the public sphere – that is one of the unique features of American society – our 1st Amendment right of free speech, assembly and unabridged religious observance. Notice that religion and the free exercise thereof was the first right enshrined in the first amendment. It was followed by freedom of speech, the press, the right of the people to peaceably assemble and to petition the Government for redress of grievances.
Americans understand that these unalienable rights, as enshrined in the Constitution of the United States, were secured by the blood of patriots who understood that it is better to die for these ideals than to live under the boot of tyranny.