Understanding American Dream

[This was published in Burma Times on 03 November, in Dhaka Courier and ST Syndication on 06 November 2014 in Daily Observer on 16 January and in BOGOTA FREE PLANET on 18 April 2015]

Dream is a kind of visions and missions and a nation sans of it can hardly determine and fix its course of actions, present and/or future. Even an individual at the most microscopic level cannot be with a dream. Same is true in case of any organization, association and body such as BOGOTA FREE PLANET and Washington Post. As a nation-state America, like other nations in the world, has a dream called ‘American Dream’. Say, for China it is China Dream (Tianxia), for India it is India Dream (India Doctrine) for Japan it is Japan Dream (Revival as global power in the 21^st century) and for Bangladesh it is Bangladesh Dream (Golden Bangladesh). Historically the Dream originated in the mystique regarding frontier life. It was the Royal Governor of Virginia Lord Dunmore who noted in a letter to Lord Dartmouth, December 24, 1774, the Americans "for ever imagine the Lands further off are still better than those upon which they are already settled". He added that, "if they attained Paradise, they would move on if they heard of a better place farther west." The idea of the American Dream is rooted in the United States Declaration of Independence which proclaims that "all men are created equal" and that they are "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights" including "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Definition of 'American Dream' implies: The belief that anyone, regardless of where they were born or what class they were born into, can attain their own version of success in a society where upward mobility is possible for everyone. The American dream is achieved through sacrifice, risk-taking and hard work, not by chance. Both native-born Americans and American immigrants pursue and can achieve the American dream. In contrast to other political and economic systems, such as communist dictatorships, America’s free-enterprise system makes possible the circumstances that allow individuals to go beyond meeting their basic needs to achieve self-actualization and personal fulfillment.

The meaning of the "American Dream" has rolled and changed over the passageway of history, and entails both personal gears (such as home ownership and upward mobility) and a universal vision. The ethos today implies an opportunity for Americans to achieve prosperity through hard work. According to The Dream, this includes the opportunity for one's children to grow up and receive a good education and career without artificial barriers. It is the opportunity to make individual choices without the prior restrictions that limited people according to their class, caste, religion, race, or ethnicity. Immigrants to the United States sponsored ethnic newspapers in their own language; the editors typically promoted the American Dream.

It is historian James Truslow Adams who galvanized and popularized the expression "American Dream" in his book ‘Epic of America’ in 1931. Martin Luther King, Jr. in his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" (1963) discovered the civil rights movement in the black search for the American Dream: Scholars have explored the American Dream theme in the careers of numerous political leaders, including Henry Kissinger, Hillary Clinton, Benjamin Franklin, and Abraham Lincoln. The theme has been used, momentarily or not, for many local leaders as well, such as José Antonio Navarro, the Tejano leader (1795–1871), who served in the legislatures of Coahuilay Texas, the Republic of Texas, and the State of Texas.

U.S. Senator Barack Obama wrote in 2006 a memoir, ‘The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream’. It was this interpretation of the American Dream for a young man that helped establish his statewide and national reputations. The exact meaning of the Dream became a partisan political issue in the 2008 and 2012 elections.

The authors of the United States’ Declaration of Independence held certain truths to be self-evident: that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness." Might this sentiment be considered the foundation of the American Dream?

Were homesteaders who left the big cities of the east to find happiness and their piece of land in the unknown wilderness pursuing these inalienable Rights? Were the immigrants who came to the United States looking for their bit of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, their Dream? And what did the desire of the veteran of World War II - to settle down, to have a home, a car and a family - tell us about this evolving Dream? Is the American Dream attainable by all Americans?

Some say, that the American Dream has become the pursuit of material prosperity - that people work more hours to get bigger cars, fancier homes, the fruits of prosperity for their families - but have less time to enjoy their prosperity. Others say that the American Dream is beyond the grasp of the working poor who must work two jobs to insure their family’s survival. Yet others look toward a new American Dream with less focus on financial gain and more emphasis on living a simple, fulfilling life.

Thomas Wolfe said, "…to every man, regardless of his birth, his shining, golden opportunity ….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 ‘American Dream’ is concealed largely in the Manifest Doctrine, which was based on the idea that America had a divine providence. It had a future that was destined by God to expand its borders, with no limit to area or country. All the traveling and expansion were part of the spirit of Manifest Destiny, a belief that it was God's will that Americans spread over the entire continent, and to control and populate the country as they see fit. Many expansionists conceived God as having the power to sustain and guide human destiny. "It was white man's burden to conquer and Christianize the land". For example, the idea that the Puritan notion of establishing a "city on a hill" was eventually secularized into Manifest Destiny--a sort of materialistic, religious, utopian destiny.

It is the far and wide held belief or doctrine, held primarily in the middle and latter part of the 19th century that it was the destiny of the U.S. to expand its territory over the whole of North America and to broaden and bump up its political, social, and economic influences. The phrase is colored with scores of denotations and connotations in both negative and positive perspectives. This variety of possible meanings was summed up in 1980 in the book ‘Redeemer Nation: The Idea of America’s Millennial Role’ by Ernest Lee Tuveson, who notes: ‘A vast complex of ideas, policies, and actions is comprehended under the phrase "Manifest Destiny". Historians by and large are of the opinion that there are three basic themes to Manifest Destiny:

a. The special virtues of the American people and their institutions;

b. America's mission to redeem and remake the west in the image of agrarian America; and

C. An irresistible destiny to accomplish this essential duty by the Americans.

Credit in public goes to journalist O'Sullivan who wrote an essay in 1845 entitled ‘Annexation in the Democratic Review’, wherein he first used the phrase manifest destiny and then On December 27, 1845, in his newspaper the ‘New York Morning News’, O'Sullivan asserted that ‘the United States had the right to claim "the whole of Oregon and that claim is by the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us’. O'Sullivan believed that manifest destiny was a moral ideal (a "higher law") that superseded other considerations. Initially Manifest Destiny could not draw the attention at large. Drolly enough, the term became popular only after it was criticized by Whig opponents of the Polk administration (1845-1849. Despite all these criticisms, expansionists embraced the phrase, which caught on so quickly that its origin was soon forgotten. Democratic Polk attached Manifest Destiny to the Monroe Doctrine and used it to support expansion westward

The settlements that extended across the Western territories promised the American dream: the freedom and independence of a seemingly limitless land. This, coupled with the Agrarian spirit produced an attitude that nothing was gong to stand in the way of progress, the progress of Manifest Destiny. In the name of this doctrine, Americans took whatever land they wanted. With a belief that Manifest Destiny gave them a right and power to do so, many simply settled, planted and farmed Indian land.

The large-scale annihilation and movement of Native American onto Indian reservations reached its peak in the late 19th century. The U.S. government intended to destroy tribal governments and break up Indian reservations under, what was then considered, the progressive Manifest Destiny Doctrine. The arrogance that flowed from the Manifest Destiny philosophy was exemplified when Albert T. Beveridge rose before the U.S. Senate and announced:

"God has not been preparing the English-speaking and Tectonic peoples for a thousand years for nothing but vain and idle self-admiration. No! He has made us the master organizers of the world to establish system where chaos reigns... He has made us adepts in government that we may administer government among savages and senile peoples. Theodore Roosevelt, John Cabot Lodge, and John Hay, each in turn, endorsed with a strong sense of certainty the view that the Anglo-Saxon [Americans] was destined to rule the world. Such views expressed in the 19th century and in the early 20th century continue to ring true in the minds of many non-Indian property owners. The superiority of the "white race" is the foundation on which the Anti-Indian Movement organizers and right-wing helpers rest their efforts to dismember Indian tribes".

The notion of Manifest Destiny had many components, each serving people in different ways. Manifest Destiny reflected both the prides that characterized American Nationalism in the mid 19th century, and the idealistic vision of social perfection through God and the church. Both fueled much of the reform energy of the time. Individually, the components created separate reasons to conquer new land. Together they exemplified America’s ideological need to dominate from pole to pole.

The greatest promotion for Manifest Destiny came from a passing reference made by President Monroe in 1822. This passing reference became known as the Monroe Doctrine. During one of his political speeches he warned Europe to "Stay out of the Western Hemisphere". This simple statement established the US as the protector of all the lands in the Western hemisphere. With the Monroe Doctrine blazed on its chest, America could expand its involvement and control in foreign affairs throughout the Western Hemisphere. Manifest Destiny received an additional promotion when President Theodore Roosevelt added to the Roosevelt Corollary. In addition to being the military protector of the Western Hemisphere, Roosevelt wanted the US to be the Business protector as well. The Roosevelt Corollary stated that even if a country had a legal contract agreement with a smaller, uncivilized country of the Western Hemisphere, the US could step in and interrupt that contract if the US thought the deal was not in the best interest of the smaller countries. This "Iron Fisted Neighbor" mentality was yet another example of manifest destiny. By the US controlling its neighboring countries it controlled its own destiny.

To inspire Americans in diverse moods and modes for moving forward without a break, Martin Luther King Junior voiced with a high volume:

‘’If you can’t fly, them run

 If you can’t run, then walk,

 If you can’t walk, then crawl,

 but whatever you do,

 You have to keep moving forward’’.

Speaking in the superlative, from the standpoint of digit, there has been 44 Presidents of USA while from the viewpoint of personality, the number is thirty two. It happened so because some of them were elected for two terms while Franklin D. Roosevelt was voted to the office for three terms, although provision for third term exists no more. Under such calculations, the number of President from the Republican Party stands at eighteen since Abraham Lincoln became the first in 1861 and the number of President from the Democratic Party comes to thirteen since Andrew Jackson became the first in 1829. There are marked differences between Republican and Democratic parties on matters of strategies, program, manifesto and so forth, although similarities on visions and missions to make USA the topmost developed country anointed with science and technology having the highest degree of excellence and application with the leadership of the world are very much spotted and recognized. Republicans are usually viewed as conservative, too much nationalistic and doctrinaire whilst Democrats feel free to fashion themselves as champion of human rights and democracy.

This is interesting to note that when a person, whether he is Republican or Democrat, is voted to the office of the President of USA, he starts behaving as President of USA even going above the line of his party. It does so happen since the very presidency is faced with problems and issues of multifarious natures, scales and dimensions in action in the context of national, bi-lateral, regional and international landscapes as a whole and thus, focuses on realities, possibilities and challenges to put the vision and mission of his party into practice as contained in the party documents get thrust for limitations and less actualities. Willingly or unwillingly or inadvertently, all the Presidents from Gorge Washington to Barack Obama, whether Nobel Laureate or not, are more or less fall into it or revolve around it since the presidency under the circumstances in question has no choice but to remain committed to carry, enhance and implement American Dream. Let us see to what extent President Barack Obama with ‘Obama doctrine’ in hand may carry the vision and mission of America Dream while dealing with the issues and problems before him ensuring the supremacy of America over the world wherein China Dream, India Dream and Japan Dream have meanwhile made their dominant presence from their respective standpoints since it is a well understood on records that the leaderships of the planet are being shifted from the west to the east making China in particular the center of focus.