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The American Dream: Can It Survive the 21'` Century? Joseph L. Daleiden
Prometheus Books,-1999,
Amherst, New York 738 pages, Hardcover Can "The American Dream" survive the 21`` Century? Based upon the author's findings, the answer is "no". And if the U.S. government continues current policies, which are economically myopic, socially dysfunctional, and politically centrifugal, not only "The American Dream" but America, itself, will not survive. These destructive policies, as the author explains, are the result of successful lobbying by two "powers" that emerged in the 1950s and 1960s. They are: (a) special interest groups advancing agendas based on race, ethnicity, religion, language, culture, age, sex, sexual orientation, handicap status, and academic and business "needs", and (b) the ideological fixations of liberals and conservatives.
These "powers" were able to exert such influence because "The American Dream" lost its original meaning. The dream expressed by Thomas Jefferson in the American Declaration of Independence to "establish a nation on the principle that all men had the 'right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness' " has been replaced over the years by a multitude of different, at times, conflicting definitions. If "The American Dream" can denote everything, it means nothing. Absent a common bond, the unraveling of society is all but inevitable. This slow unraveling became a rapid deconstruction after radicals from the 1960s assumed leadership roles in the academic, economic, and political fields. Since then, "The American Dream" has been redefined to mean the superiority of the individual over society, of rights over responsibilities, of materialism over morality, of consumption over savings, and of the present over the future. Can this self-destruction be reversed? The author - who has worked as a statistician, demographer, business economist, urban policy analyst, and strategic planner in the public and private sectors - argues it can be provided the public recognizes the solution is complex, multifaceted; and requires immediate implementation. To highlight this importance, Chapter One is entitled "Two Scenarios for the Year 2050". Here, depending on whether or not the necessary reforms have been instituted, two` radically different Americas are presented in the State of the Union address given in 2050 by the President of the United States to Congress. Without necessary reforms, the United States has politically disintegrated,...