Just as there are two kinds of luck, there are two kinds of American Dream; the good kind and the bad kind.
The Democratic American Dream has always been to work hard; get a good education so you can get a good job to afford a decent home and raise a nice family whose members will one day repeat the whole cycle.
America's democratic principles, laws and ideals guide and underwrite the American Dream. But they not only make the dream possible, they are the purpose the American Dream serves; life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
The American Dream is but one example of the necessary prosperity and economic freedoms that serve as the means to achieve our higher principles. Not the other way around.
Together, the American Dream guided by and in the service of our principles and ideals are responsible for bringing the kind of freedoms and prosperity the likes of which the world has never seen.
But if world history is any guide, the only true guarantee connected to any freedom--the principle of our liberty--is the guarantee that eventually people will be separated from it. So it was only a matter of time before a snake oil salesman like Ronald Reagan would come along and talk Americans out of their economic freedoms by separating them from their principles and convictions.
By tapping into every American's tendency to be understandably suspicious of authority, Reagan, like any confidence man, was able to place the concerns of Big Biz between ordinary Americans and the government. By urging people to look inward and go it alone, Reagan cut Americans off from one another, from the country's founding principles and the potential of our better nature.
In a supreme act of legerdemain, Reagan sold us on the American Dream with one hand while taking away our economic freedoms that make it possible with the other.
You could insist we still cherish the American Dream--we still believe in its inherent restorative values. But any dream not founded on principle and truth holds about as much promise as capitalism does without morality. Or snake oil.