The Degredation of the American Dream

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Once upon a time there was a concept called the American Dream. This concept was held to a high standard and was the beacon of all the earth, calling to her inhabitants and inviting them to come relish the experience of the dream. And this dream was truly an experience, for it was the journey and not the destination that mattered. What made this dream so different from any other is the treasure that it offered. It allowed anyone to come unto America, and to BECOME. It invited all to test themselves, to find out who they are, and to utilize their talents to the best of their abilities. Liberty was the cry that would give all the opportunity to see who they could be, to touch the sky through their abilities and talents. Some would find they could achieve more than they ever thought possible. Others would not find that success, but it did not matter, for the journey was the destination.
One day (and no one knows quite when) a veil descended upon the people of America. Slowly they began to forget the American Dream. They forgot its meaning and its purpose and they lost the magic of the dream. So slowly did they lose their memory of the dream that they did not even notice that it had happened. The dream was not lost altogether, but rather it came to have a different meaning. People lost so much of their understanding of the American Dream that they thought it meant nothing more than owning a home. Lost was the desire to test one’s metal and BECOME. Lost was the desire to achieve. The unhappiness of the loss spread throughout the whole land of America and engulfed the people, even those that owned homes. They did not understand their sadness because they did not know what was lost. Though they didn’t know it, they awaited a hero; one who would come and lift the veil to expose the American Dream to their eyes and minds once again…
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This sounds quite a bit like a bedtime story that I would tell my children. However, there is one major difference; in bedtime stories there is always a hero that saves the day. Unfortunately for us, we still await that hero. We have lost the American Dream and have has it replaced with a farce. No longer is this the land of opportunity, it has become the land of “We won’t let you fail,” which translates into “We won’t let you succeed.” Without the ability to do both, we can do neither. I will explain…

First let me tell you a little about my point of view:

I am a husband and father. I work forty hours a week to support my family in an attempt to give them the world. My meager income cannot afford the world, nor any minor portion of it, but we are happy. I attend school at the local university full time in addition to my work load. I am about to graduate with my bachelors degree after four years of hard work and time spent away from my family. You see, I am sacrificing my time with my family now in the hopes that I will be able to have more time (and a better standard of living) later. My favorite part of the day is when I come home and my children race to the door to be the first to hug me. It lets me know that although my time with my family is limited I still make the best of it and my wife and children feel loved by me.

Back to my meager income; I am considered by the government to be the “low income.” I am one of the people who are heralded by the progressives in government to be forgotten by society and left to rot. In my own view things are not that bad. I own some nice things and I pay my bills on time. I don’t have a lot of play money, but I have everything I need and a lot of what I want. If I am to believe the government, I am being screwed by the wealthy elite who are stealing my American Birthright from me. I have friends of all economic statuses, from dirt poor to above median income and housebroke, to so wealthy that I don’t even want to know how many digits there are in their net worth. I want to make it clear that I don’t believe there is a single one of them that has stolen, or has attempted to steal, my birthright as an American. My wealthy friends (whom are supposed to be screwing me) are people I look up to. I see that they have utilized their talents and their ideas to achieve their American Dream; that of making their journey out as they wish it to be. I don’t envy them their status; I applaud their results. I don’t wish that Uncle Sam will come along and give me what they have earned; I work hard to find an idea or a talent within myself that will help me to BECOME. I look towards my successful friends as archetypes of who I want to be, not by judging my success against theirs, but rather by showing me that my own success is possible.

According to the veiled and shallow understanding that currently exists regarding the American Dream (that of home ownership), I am currently dream deficient. My nation has failed in giving me my dream, or so I would be lead to believe. By contrast, my friends who make significantly more than the median income but are housebroke are supposed by the progressives to be alive and well in their American Dream. The backward thinking that has produced this vision for our country is breathtaking.

In truth my wife and I made a conscious decision NOT to purchase a home three years ago. We were in the market to buy and we had decided to have a house built in a developing neighborhood. The housing market was so red hot that we were told it would be 6 months before they could start our house and they would not sign a contract regarding the purchase price until that time. During that six months the price of the house increased by 15%. The mountainous increase caused me to take a look at some data. I looked at the median house price in my neck of the woods and the median income as well. Immediately I noticed some sharp discrepancies. When I discussed this with my mortgage lender (who also happens to be my father) he said that the housing price was justified because “rich California investors” were coming into town to play in the real estate game. This made no sense to me because logic clearly showed that a housing market can only be sustainable at prices that local yokels can afford; rich California investors be damned. Needless to say, my wife and I did not purchase the house, instead we moved into a larger rental to accommodate our growing family. The house that we live in is not nice, in fact it is pretty run down. We can afford to live in a nicer place, but we made the decision to live below our means (Gasp! What horror!). The landlord refuses to fix the dilapidated siding and the windows are 100 years old and drafty, but it doesn’t bother me. We made the decision to forego the McMansion in order to live at a fully justifiable level, with a hope and a prayer that the future will bring better things.

Now comes the part where the progressive in government would ask me how I could have the audacity to hope that the future will hold better things for such a forgotten and trampled member of society such as me. Here’s the secret: I am willing to work and sacrifice for what I want. No really, that’s it. After I finish my bachelors I will be heading off to law school to continue my education. Not one of my ancestors has ever graduated from college. To my knowledge there is only one who ever set foot on a college campus, and was kicked out after only one semester. This doesn’t bother me, because I realize one simple rule to life: past experience does not justify future experience. The American Dream is alive and well, if only because I choose that path. This path is not easy for me. I would much rather be at home with my family than in a classroom listening to a professor droll on and on. My family feels the same way. Here is a letter from my 5 year old daughter to me:

Dear Daddy,
Don’t leave ever again. Take me to fly my kite. Don’t go to work. Please teach me to speak Spanish. I love you.

Jordan

In choosing to go to school I am sacrificing some of my todays in order to have better tomorrows for myself and my family. Though it hurts to see the frowns on my childrens’ faces when I leave, I know that I am working on my American Dream in order to give them something more than I had. I wish to BECOME. I may fail in my endeavor. I may live the life of a pauper until the day I die and it would not change a thing. The American Dream was never intended to guarantee of success (nor could it by its very definition of allowing one to BECOME) but it was intended to guarantee a chance. Whoever decided that the American Dream meant home ownership was either very stupid or very crafty. Either they lost the American Dream out of ignorance, or they destroyed it out of spite, thinking they had a better way. I can tell you now that there is no better way than to allow me to sink or swim according to my own merits and allowing you to do the same. If I were to choose to believe the current American cultural phenomena of “entitlement” I would be the recipient of the government taking from others (the rich) in order to give to me (the poor). There is one catch however. If I allowed that, then I would be allowing them in some years time to take from me (when I have achieved) in order to give it to someone else. All of the sacrifices that I have made in order to achieve what I want would be handed wholesale over to those who choose not to make those sacrifices. The merits of success and sacrifice would be stripped away and pawned off to the lowest bidder. Wherein lays the value of my sacrifice in such a case? I would rather not live than to have someone guarantee my success or prevent my failure, for guaranteed success is meaningless and life without failure breeds ignorance. The journey is the destination, and such an empty journey leads nowhere.

When asked by Joe the Plumber why he wanted to take what Joe had achieved, our illustrious president answered that he wanted to take from Joe and give to others in order to ensure that they have the same opportunity as Joe. What this particular elected official fails to realize is that people like Joe have accomplished their achievements without the un-enlisted help of the government and that these opportunities already exist for everyone. What the president really wants is to ensure that the local fast food worker gets equal benefits as the woman who spent untold years of her life in school to become a doctor or the man who toiled for years to bring his invention to market. The beauty of the true American Dream is that there is room for all of these people to get out of it what they put into it. If the fast food worker wishes to have what the doctor does then that road is open to him. All he has to do is make the decision and take the plunge. Taking the toils of someone’s labor and giving them to another is paramount to stripping ones life away, and that is patently un-American. That is not the America that I was taught to believe in, and for good reason. “Come to America, where your life’s labor will be taken from you and given to someone else.” Is this the slogan that we are to live by?

We in the mythical land of America still await our hero to come lift the veil of forgetting. Our current government has the mindset of increasing the veil and teaching us to believe that it is better to be guaranteed some small thing than to be allowed to achieve anything you wish. Where will we find that hero, or will we find him at all? Perhaps we will not find our happy ending as one would in a bedtime story. I pray that is not the case. The only thing standing in the way of my American Dream is a bureaucracy that wishes to limit my achievement in order to buoy someone else’s; regardless of the discrepancy of perspired effort between the two.

As I stated before, without the ability to fail we don’t have the ability to succeed. In learning to ride a bike, a child must have their training wheels removed and they must be allowed to learn. With the training wheels in place no learning takes place and therefore success cannot be achieved. We can only truly achieve if we are allowed to fail. Failure is not a bad thing; it is merely part of the journey. When Thomas Edison was asked why he kept on with his attempts at creating an electric light when he had failed so many times his reply was, “I have not failed, I have found 10,000 ways that do not work.”

Just imagine if he was bailed out and not allowed to fail…