The American Dream?

I listened to a stirring speech from a Democratic Candidate who told the audience about how the American Dream was to have a good paying job and have a home and that we need a large intrusive government to assure us this dream of a job and home.

A half witted Republican then bumbled an inane string of words about government v. private enterprise, but clearly had no pro-active way to help achieve this dream of a job and a home.

I wanted to jump into the TV screen and bang the Democrat's head against the podium and scream: "What type of half-assed crazy dream is that?"

This elitist notion that the little people will be content with a job and a secure place to live is the feudal dream. Feudalism is the ideology that ruled the West during the dark ages. It is a stagnant society where the elite rule while the masses are trapped toiling away in stagnant hole with vain hopes that the ruling elite will provide security.

The dreams of our Founders were better than that. Their dreams started with a free people who would spend their time pursuing the ends of their choice.

The key to this classical liberal vision, of course, is property rights. The classical liberal vision has people owning and improving things.

The vision is not simply the notion of people working jobs, but of people having a substantial stake in their creations.

Of course this idea of letting the little people have substantial participation in their lives irked the ruling class and the elite immediately began the process of finding ways to undermine the vision of liberty with a "modern liberalism" that masks feudal ideas in modern liberal rhetoric.

Modern liberalism uses simple paradoxes and fallacies to argue: "freedom is slavery and slavery freedom."

It produces a large number of completely senseless arguments such as the Democratic candidate's assertion that the highest aspiration of a free people is to have a job working for others and to have a mortgaged house secured by the government.

I wanted to bang the Democrat Candidate's head against the podium for making such a brain dead assertion. However, my real anger lays with Republicans who systematically fail to think issues through in the fundamental way that would catch these errors and put our nation back on the track to freedom and prosperity.

The American dream is one of freedom. It is a dream where people (even the little people that worldly professors disdain) have a property right to their labor and are actively engaged in the pursuit of dreams that they define.

Yes, in this dream, people often find satisfaction in their careers and in building their homes, but the American dream is one of freedom not simply one of a few materials goods associated with freedom.