Where Is the American Dream Today?

by Joseph Stoutzenberger

A few years ago, I had a class of twenty-five students. Looking over the class list, I discovered that thirteen students had Hispanic surnames. They typically were studying to be nurses or to work in another medical field. School policy was not to inquire about a student’s citizenship status, but it is likely that some of mine were noncitizens and aspired to be American citizens. I also had a student who was “gender fluid,” self-identifying as “they.” Can the American dream be their dream? Is there a foundation for their aspirations?

The Declaration of Independence’s underlying principle is: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” As lived out in history, that principle was more a challenge, an aspiration, a “dream,” in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. It began with a group of American colonists describing how their life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness were being thwarted by the British king who claimed sovereignty over them. A lingering question was unaddressed: What about enslaved people? Don’t they have a right to liberty and pursuit of happiness as well? That question was finally settled on June 19, 1865, when the last group of enslaved people received the news that they were now free, as celebrated in the Juneteenth national holiday.

Since then, other Americans have been inspired to stand up against policies and practices they saw as violating their liberty and pursuit of happiness. Factory workers, many of them immigrants, organized to demand living wages and humane working conditions. After many years seeking the right to vote, in 1920 women achieved that right. In the 1960s, a number of liberation movements formed demanding that the dream of the Declaration of Independence be applied to them. The 1963 march on Washington was a pivotal moment in the civil rights movement. Segregated schools, bathrooms, and lunch counters were a de facto impediment to liberty for African-Americans. The 1969 police raid on a New York gathering place sparked the gay rights movement, culminating in legal recognition of same-sex couples to marry. The first Earth Day in 1970 was a seminal moment in extending the right to life and liberty beyond just human beings. The 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling sparked controversy about when during the course of gestation there is a person who has a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness along with all other Americans. The judges essentially ruled that there is no definitive answer to that question, and therefore, with a few restrictions, women had a constitutional right to an abortion. In 2022 the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling left decisions regarding abortion and protections for the upborn up to individual states. In 1974 the Vatican weighed in and said that if we are not certain, then we should view a person to be present at the earliest stage of development, the moment of conception.

What groups today are clamoring that the dream underlying the Declaration of Independence applies to them? Two groups calling for liberty and pursuit of happiness are immigrants and sexual minorities. One subgroup of immigrants, those who came to this country as children and have only known America as their home, even call themselves “dreamers.” They hope that a path to citizenship can be established for them. Does “all men are created equal and are endowed with unalienable rights” apply to non-citizens as well as citizens? When the nation was founded, white men who owned property possessed rights that others did not. Over time, Americans came to see that equality and equal rights applied to ever-expanding members of society. At the very least, the Declaration implies that all people are to be treated with dignity and respect. It says “all men,” not “all citizens.” There are also Americans who find that the gender “assigned to them at birth” is not an accurate identification of who they are. In their mind, to deny them treatments and surgical procedures that would align them with how they perceive their true self to be is a rejection of their right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness enshrined in the Declaration.

Americans celebrate the Declaration of Independence every July 4. If the celebration would include reading the document along with lively discussion about how it can be applied today, it would reveal that the American dream continues to inspire people on the margins clamoring to be part of that dream. To stop dreaming is to end the American experiment that has given solace and hope to generations of dream seekers.