What Really is the American Dream? Author: Alexander Bruno Abstract
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It could be strongly argued that the Constitution of the United States of America, the declaration of independence, and the US creed share the same core tenets. From the first three words, We the People, the Constitution promises the dream and identifies citizens as the purveyors of success within the American system. The complete preamble of the U.S. Constitution reads: We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, 1 . American Exceptionalism, Lipset. 1996. A Double-Edged Sword. 2 . American Exceptionalism, Lipset. 1996. A Double-Edged Sword. 3 . US History.org, The Declaration of Independence: The Want, Will and Hope of the People. 4 . US History.org, Historic Documents: The American Creed. Bruno, 2019. What Really is the American Dream? 3 promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. 5 The connecting ideas contained in the preamble to the US Constitution and the other founding documents speak to principles of freedom, fortunes, equality, rights, life, justice, liberty, welfare, and posterity. These are elements of the American Dream which can only be defined by the individual citizen, based on their ambition and the enabling environment which drive such ambition. In that case, the American Dream is not necessarily or solely a standard ideal, but it varies from one person to another. Enabling environment here means the right opportunities and a set of foundational qualities, over time, which lend to human flourishing. This is so because, freedom, fortune, equality, rights, life, justice, liberty, welfare, and posterity can be defined by time and place or context in history, those qualities may take on different representation(s) to people overtime. African-Americans who were not even regarded as being citizens, years following the time following the Declaration of Independence and the drafting of the Constitution, could not have been said to be part of this all-conquering spirit defined as the US Constitution. Remember, we argue that the Constitution helped to drive the narrative of the American dream – and I believe it still does, although that dream did not exist for all in the same way, all the time. The aspiration which the Constitution carries makes it possible for those who were not necessarily and immediately covered by the promise called America would be bounded by the elasticity of the articles contained in that Constituting document. The critics of the Constitution are justified, but so too are those who understand the flexibility, ambiguity, contradictions and 5 . National Achieves, America’s Founding Documents: The Constitution of the United States. Bruno, 2019. What Really is the American Dream? 4 adaptive nature of this founding document (and the American experiment for that matter), and how open it remains to vast and contrasting interpretations. These prospects assist with the placement of the American Dream in a document that probably did not enunciate any direct promise for a large subset of the American society – such is the nature of an American society which at time is referred to as a major contradiction. Many, including women, lacked the basic prerequisites necessary for success in early American society. This is important to note, as ideas evolve over time and with the advancement of knowledge, but aspirations such as the American Dream represent the basic structure upon which the foundation of a nation resides. Ideas are mental categories with idealist aims; a theory in contrast, is a system of ideas which seek to explain a separate and independent entity, especially one based on general principles. The American Dream is therefore ruled out as a theory, and we have already observed that it is not always an ideal. So, the question still remains: what really is tải về 333.38 Kb. Chia sẻ với bạn bè của bạn:
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