{"id":7307,"date":"2017-04-13T06:29:09","date_gmt":"2017-04-13T10:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/intramuralist.com\/?p=7307"},"modified":"2017-04-13T06:29:09","modified_gmt":"2017-04-13T10:29:09","slug":"the-american-dream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/?p=7307","title":{"rendered":"the american dream"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As stated here previously, one of my favorite authors is Peggy Noonan. She\u2019s witty and wise, articulate and animated. I\u2019ve watched her on multiple networks, from ABC and NBC to MSNBC and FOX News. While conservative in nature, she is fair-minded. This week she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for commentary.<\/p>\n

In an election season when the individual emotions of many journalists seemed far more vocal than any presentation of news or balanced perspective, Noonan was a consistent, fair, thought-provoking editorialist. The prize judges said\u00a0Noonan rose “to the moment with beautifully rendered columns that connected readers to the shared virtues of Americans during one of the nation’s most divisive political campaigns.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ah, those shared virtues\u2026 so many seem to have forgotten\u2026<\/p>\n

Last week, Noonan had yet another great column, attempting to again connect us. She wrestled with \u201cWhat\u2019s Become of the American Dream?\u201d<\/p>\n

She started by saying that the dream is not dead, but \u201cit needs strengthening.\u201d She defines it as \u201cthe belief, held by generation after generation since our beginning and reanimated over the decades by waves of immigrants, that here you can start from anywhere and become anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

She then gives some tremendous examples\u2026 Abraham Lincoln, the one time \u201cbackwoods nobody\u201d\u2026 Barbara Stanwyck, who lost her parents\u2026 and Jonas Salk, the son of Jewish immigrants from Poland. One became President, another a \u201cmagnetic actress,\u201d and another cured polio. But then Noonan makes an important distinction\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026 The American dream was about aspiration and the possibility that, with dedication and focus, it could be fulfilled. But the American dream was not about material things\u2014houses, cars, a guarantee of future increase. That\u2019s the construction we put on it now. It\u2019s wrong. A big house could be the product of the dream, if that\u2019s what you wanted, but the house itself was not the dream. You could, acting on your vision of the dream, read, learn, hold a modest job and rent a home, but at town council meetings you could stand, lead with wisdom and knowledge, and become a figure of local respect. Maybe the respect was your dream. Stanwyck became rich, Salk revered. Both realized the dream.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Somehow we got the dream mixed up. Part of that, Noonan opines, is that when Grandpa shared that \u201cthis is the American dream,\u201d the kids looked around, saw the houses and car, and assumed the American dream is \u201cthings.\u201d But it is not; \u201cmaterial things could be, and often were, its fruits.\u201d Noonan poignantly continues\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026 The American dream was never fully realized, not by a long shot, and we all know this. The original sin of America, slavery, meant some of the oldest Americans were brutally excluded from it. The dream is best understood as a continuing project requiring constant repair and expansion, with an eye to removing barriers and roadblocks for all.<\/em><\/p>\n

Many reasons are put forward in the argument over whether the American Dream is over (no) or ailing (yes) or was always divisive (no\u2014dreams keep nations together). We see income inequality, as the wealthy prosper while the middle class grinds away and the working class slips away. There is a widening distance, literally, between the rich and the poor. Once the richest man in town lived nearby, on the nicest street on the right side of the tracks. Now he\u2019s decamped to a loft in SoHo. \u2018The big sort\u2019 has become sociocultural apartheid. It\u2019s globalization, it\u2019s the decline in the power of private-sector unions and the brakes they applied.<\/em><\/p>\n

What ails the dream is a worthy debate. I\u2019d include this: The dream requires adults who can launch kids sturdily into Dream-land.<\/em><\/p>\n

When kids have one or two parents who are functioning, reliable, affectionate\u2014who will stand in line for the charter-school lottery, who will fill out the forms, who will see that the football uniform gets washed and is folded on the stairs in the morning\u2014there\u2019s a good chance they\u2019ll be OK. If you come from that now, it\u2019s like being born on third base and being able to hit a triple. You\u2019ll be able to pursue the dream.<\/em><\/p>\n

But I see kids who don\u2019t have that person, who are from families or arrangements that didn\u2019t cohere, who have no one to stand in line for them or get them up in the morning. What I see more and more in America is damaged or absent parents. We all know what\u2019s said in this part\u2014drugs, family breakup. Poor parenting is not a new story in human history, and has never been new in America. But insufficient parents used to be able to tell their kids to go out, go play in America, go play in its culture. And the old aspirational culture, the one of the American dream, could counter a lot. Now we have stressed kids operating within a nihilistic popular culture that can harm them. So these kids have nothing\u2014not the example of a functioning family and not the comfort of a culture into which they can safely escape.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is not a failure of policy but a failure of love. And it\u2019s hard to change national policy on a problem like that.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

[Insightful commentary\u2026 thought-provoking once again\u2026]<\/p>\n

Respectfully\u2026
\nAR<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As stated here previously, one of my favorite authors is Peggy Noonan. She\u2019s witty and wise, articulate and animated. I\u2019ve watched her on multiple networks, from ABC and NBC to MSNBC and FOX News. While conservative in nature, she is fair-minded. This week she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for commentary. In an election season … <\/p>\n

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