The American Dream ( eng. American Dream ) is an expression often used to designate the life ideals of US residents , both materially and spiritually. In the "Political Dictionary" by William Sefire (Safire's New Political Dictionary. Random House, New York, 1993) it is said [1] :
The American Dream is an ideal of freedom or opportunity, which was formulated by the " founding fathers "; spiritual power of the nation. If the American system is the backbone of American politics, then the American dream is its soul.
The source of the phrase "American Dream" is written in the period of the Great Depression of the historical treatise of , entitled "The Epic of America" ( eng. The Epic of America , 1931) [1] :
... the American dream of a country where every person's life will be better, richer and fuller, where everyone will have the opportunity to get what he deserves.
James Adams wanted to encourage his compatriots to remind them of the purpose of America and its achievements. This phrase stuck and then became the title of the play by Edward Alby (1961) and the novel by Norman Mailer (1965), but in these works it was reinterpreted ironically.
The meaning of the concept of "American dream" is very vague. So, historian F. Carpenter wrote: “The American dream has never been precisely defined and, obviously, never will be defined. It is both too diverse and too vague: different people put different meanings in this concept. ” However, almost all US presidents when they take office and when making responsible decisions have to promise their voters that their policies will bring the realization of this dream closer.
The national ethos of the United States, in which freedom includes the promise of prosperity and success for everyone, is based on the ideas of the United States Declaration of Independence that people are created equal and endowed with their Creator [2] :
“Certain inalienable rights”, including “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.
The concept of the “American Dream” is often associated with immigrants who have arrived in the United States in search of a better life. The fact that they left the countries where, unlike the United States, there was a fairly rigid class system that limited social mobility , determined their commitment to the philosophy of individual freedom and free enterprise . The concept of the American dream is closely related to the concept of " self-made person ", that is, a person who has independently achieved hard success in life.
Components of the “American dream” are also the ideal of equality of all before the law, regardless of ethnic origin and social status, as well as the veneration of symbols, models and heroes that are common to all Americans.
Often the physical evidence of the realization of the "American dream" is considered to be the ownership of a private house [3] .
Hunter Thompson touched upon the topic of the search for the “American dream” in his works.
Content
Criticism
What happened to the American dream? No more sounds are heard of a single powerful voice expressing our common hope and will. What we hear now is a cacophony of horror, reconciliation and compromise, idle chatter, loud words “ freedom , democracy , patriotism ”, from which we have emasculated any content .
American writer, Nobel Prize winner in literature, William Faulkner [4] .
See also
- American lifestyle
- American exclusivity
- Apartment, cottage, car
- Consumer society
Links
- Mark Lapitsky (Doctor of Historical Sciences, Senior Researcher, Institute of Comparative Political Science, Russian Academy of Sciences) From the "melting pot" to the "salad bowl"
Notes
- ↑ 1 2 Library of Congress. American Memory. "What is the American Dream?", Lesson plan .
- ↑ Rethinking the American Dream | Culture | Vanity fair
- ↑ The American Dream of Home After the Housing Collapse - BBC Russian
- ↑ L. Mitrokhin American Mirages