“THE AMERICAN DREAM”

2 PARAGRAPHS 4 LIBERTY: #310

Recently we taped part of our “finale” show for Becoming America – America is a Perfect Idea – the United States of America is a Work in Progress. The theme for this edition was “America at its Best,” and it featured the stories of three Americans who immigrated here from Korea, Mainland China and the former Soviet Union. Simply put, the show was as wonderful as it was inspiring because these three Americans put in their own words how they were able to pursue the American Dream. So what do you see as the American Dream? To me, and to our guests, it means that if you work hard, make sacrifices and play by the rules, you and your family can get ahead and live a good life. And the genuinely good thing about it is that the American Dream is not just a Dream!

So we remain blessed to live in this country! And, along the way, America has been made so much stronger because we have had such good people like our three guests come here to live their American Dream! Think about it this way: most of us could go to live in Korea, China or Russia for the rest of our lives and never be considered to be Korean, Chinese or Russian. But a high percentage of the people who come here from those countries will, with time, be truly and rightfully considered to be Americans. So yes, many things are not going as well now in our country as they might and, yes, many immigrants who have fled from totalitarian governments where Liberty was virtually unknown are now deeply fearful that our government is becoming more like the governments from which they fled. But Americans not only are optimistic by nature, they (eventually) will pay more attention to the problems and work to put us back onto the course charted for us by our Founders! Why? Because as has been said often in these columns, most of us realize that it is our government, and if it isn’t working we have no one to blame but ourselves. And Americans do not accept blame very well, so they will act – as long as people like us take the lead.

Discussion for the week: During a recent password audit by a company it was found that an employee was using the following password: “Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, Huey, Dewey, Louie, Donald, Goofy, Sacramento.” When asked why the employee had such a long password, he replied “Well, Hello! It has to be at least eight characters and include at least one capitol.”