zerohedge.com / by Danielle DiMartino Booth via MoneyStrong.com / Mar 23, 2017 2:30 PM
Few words are slipperier than ‘ethos’ to grasp.
Even the best translation of the word – essence – is hard to get your arms around. Perhaps that is why so many of us were blissfully unaware until recently that the very essence of the American Dream was slipping through our fingers. Though the phrase, which captures the very, yes essence, of the American thirst for adventure, dates back to the hopes and spirit that emboldened prospectors to ‘Go West,’ those who first engaged in California Dreaming, it was James Truslow Adams’ popularization of the term that cemented the ideal into our collective psyche.
“But there has been also the American Dream, that dream of a land in which life should be richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order and in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”
It is sweeter still, in the annals of our proud U.S. history that these words were written in 1931, during the thick of the most ravaging economic devastation this country has ever known. And still hope defeated despair, reigning supreme, inviting the lowliest of street urchins to achieve greatness in this country of endless possibilities. Were that only still the case today.
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