The American Dream

In the US we talk about “The American Dream” with a hazy shared sense of what we mean but this often hides disagreements. For a long time I described it like this:

Hard work and moral virtue manifest material prosperity; in fact, all three of these are the same thing

To my surprise, it turns out that we can name the person who originally coined the expression, a guy named James Truslow Adams, in his 1931 book Epic Of America.

That dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. 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.

And of course, George Carlin unforgettably said:

The owners of this country know the truth: it’s called “the American Dream” because you have to be asleep to believe it.