During the last few decades of the 18th century on the eastern seaboard of the North American continent 56 men had changed their thinking. While the world had embraced the divine right of kings they were thinking "we the people". When the world had accepted the "reality" of two races, two classes of people, royalty and commoner, they were thinking "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"… all the way to "liberty and justice for all."
This change of thinking was so deep in them that these 56 individuals pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honors to each other under the protection of Providence. This Dream informed, inspired, directed their lives and the actions they would take. The result of this Dream was what most people at the time considered to be impossible; the beginning of the American Experiment.
The American Dream is not owning your own home, establishing your own company, choosing your career path, religious beliefs or your mate for life. These are all the results of the Dream. It is the Dream which inspired and conceived the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. It led to the three branches of government America is known for; these institutions did not and cannot produce the Dream.
The Dream is to dictate the actions and functions of its proponents not the other way around. Once anyone starts qualifying the dream by refusing or manipulating its universal application to all -- the Dream dies in that person or institution. To embrace and keep the Dream alive requires a life continuously inspired and directed by liberty and justice for all. The Dream requires an ongoing change of thinking and living for all who would inherit, enjoy and preserve its beauty, freedoms, power and light.
In these currently not so United States, there is no group, party, occupation, ethnicity or person exempt from the need to change their thinking and living according to this Dream. Injustice, greed, bigotry, lust for power, intoxication of rights and refusal of responsibilities to the Dream have polarized our nation from one end to the other. The remedy is not in a political process or ideology but in a personal, individual, revitalization and transformation of thinking and living. While those on each side of an issue are waiting for and demanding that the other side shift their position the Dream calls us all to a change of thinking and living: we the people … created equal … endowed by their Creator … liberty and justice for all.
