The MYTH and the DREAM

“The United States must show by example the sufficiency of human reason for the care of human affairs and that the will of the majority, the Natural Law of every society, is the only safe guardian of the rights of man.” --Thomas Jefferson

Immigrants came to America, in many instances to escape the excesses of the Old World, running from the oppression of serfdom in Russia, or the pestilence and famine in Ireland, or the instability and revolution in France, Italy and Germany.  Running from an Old World that was more often than not intolerant, arrogant, and corrupt.  The New World however, was the experiment, often cited as the haven and refuge amid the chaos of the known world.

The longing for America was not for land and riches as much as it was for freedom, liberty, fraternity, and equality.  The spirit of these three words were to form the gist for a new nation and for a revolution in Europe which would demolish the foundations of the concept of rule by aristocracy—of a ruling class “chosen by God” and church to rule at its whim.  In this vein, Philadelphia was founded by William Penn as a haven of religious freedom, offering settlers tolerance.  It was the same religious freedom sought by the earlier settlers of Massachusetts, the Puritans, during their influx to America.  Indeed the foundation of America was built on a dream, which came to be seen as a beacon to the world, that this was a society being built on the principles of Justice, Freedom, and Reason, the Rights of Man.  As Baruch Spinoza, the philosopher, stated in his theological-political treatise:  “…reason is the light of the mind, and without her all things are dreams and phantoms…”

America was to be a pillar of the power of reason, in fact the antithesis of the power of the Inquisition, which had forced Spinoza’s family out of Portugal, and seeking refuge instead in the Netherlands.  Indeed even before the Bill of Rights, or the Constitution had been penned, its basic tenets were forming the very fabric of the country to be, and formed the origin of the American Dream.

The dream though would come in time to be altered, largely due to the greed, the avarice of a few.  In fact, it was to be altered as a result of another dream as old as man himself—the drive for power and self-aggrandizement.  Ask any immigrant today why he came to America, and with little variation you will hear a recitation of the great myth that was promulgated during the 19^th century when cheap labor was needed by an emerging industrial giant; America; “Streets are paved in gold, employment guaranteed, and steamship passage paid for those willing to work…” read one such leaflet that was distributed in Ireland.  The message was the same in Germany, England, and the rest of northern Europe: land, riches, and prosperity, all available to those willing to come to America to work.

The great ‘Iron Horse’, the railroad, was just beginning to extend its tentacles and the mad rush west, for gold in California, was on.  Immigrants came in droves to find opportunity and riches but the reality was more often laden with hard labor, desolation, and to many, death in a wilderness yet to be tamed.  The Dream, the American Dream was being sold as an opportunity to advance in life, to surpass class barriers, to be able to receive the fruits of one’s own labor, to own land, and be treated neither as slave, nor serf, nor inferior but rather as an equal with the same rights as any other human being.  The attraction was so convincingly powerful that by 1907, at its apex, Ellis Island was admitting 5000 immigrants per day, seven days a week.  The American Dream was now a half truth, being brandished in the struggle for power as a weapon by those brazen enough to lie and cheat, if need be.

The American Dream was becoming a tall tale sold to the ignorant and the desperate in order to enrich the greedy and powerful; the Vanderbilts and Carnegies of America who needed brute strength and unadulterated resolve for Western expansion and domination.  The railroads had obtained land grants from the federal government, in order to lay down rail, but had to do so in a timely basis or lose the grants. Those companies who were successful would make their owners, fortunes and so would the steel companies fabricating the rails and locomotives, or the mining companies which needed more labor to be able to harvest newly discovered reserves of coal.

Today, as we witness the shredding of the Bill of Rights, at the behest of the architects of the Patriot Act, as we witness the checks and balances implemented by this nation’s Forefathers dissolved by Congress, we can also discern—if are careful to observe—that the remnants of the American Dream are becoming vestigial ideas surpassed by the times.  The American Dream today exists not as it did during the dawn of this country’s birth, but rather as a continuation of a fabrication used by the powerful:  the desire for your own home, and the best that money can buy, no matter what that may be.  All and everyone, it seems are for sale.  The more the better at any price !  The working rule today appears to be a materialism which although imperceptible on the surface, we nonetheless are exposed to by the corrupting power of money.

In our luxury, we forget the origin, veracity and basis of the American Dream, not the adulterated form of the 19^th and 20^th centuries, but rather the one so clearly and eloquently espoused in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these 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…”

May America once again find its way out of the darkness, and into the light, and embrace its dream again.

V. S.

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