We know it today as the American Dream. Upward mobility is indispensable to the American Dream, the notion that people can rise from working to middle class, and middle to upper and even higher on the model of a (fictional) Horatio Alger or an (actual) Andrew Carnegie. “It’s called the American dream,” George Carlin cracked, “because you have to be asleep to believe it.”“Necessitous men are not free men,” said FDR in that 1944 State of the Union speech. The American Dream has to be the lived reality of the country, not just a pretty story we tell ourselves. The American Dream will no doubt be invoked from both podiums, for what true-blue patriot was ever against the American Dream?

Source: The Guardian September 17, 2016 10:52 UTC