By Franco Villalobos / Staff Writer

By Franco Villalobos / Staff Writer

America the land of opportunity has arguably turned, as most citizens can say, into the perfect example of a paradox.

So it’s time for Americans to ask themselves is whether the American dream still alive. More importantly, what is the American dream? Was it ever alive?

 There is no doubt that the American dream like everything else in its nature, has evolved over the years.

Today it seems like the American dream has defined and labeled us as nonchalant capitalists.

In the words of   Michael Moore, in his documentary “Sicko,” “we all want big estates, big cars, and big burgers with a soda on the side. America, where everyone is a celebrity and everyone has a bill of rights in their pocket. Oh, and of course, the benefits of a free market where the possibilities for success are endless.”

We got a big reality check back in the 1920s when the stock market crashed and realized that the idea of limitless financial success may lead to a national state of depression.

Of course we didn’t learn our lesson.

So where do we look to see where we went wrong? We look to our core values.   

When the founding fathers got together for the first time and began to work on the original “American Dream” back in 1787, which they later decided to call the Constitution of the Unites States, it started with the inspiring lines, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Skip a few lines then it reads “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. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”  

Establish Justice? Promote general welfare? All men are created equal? Governments are instituted among men?

With all due respect to our founding fathers they created the perfect dream, but we as Americans have not lived up to it.

Yes, we are blessed to live in this country because we do have a lot more privileges than people in other countries do.

Unfortunately, it may be because of that same reason that America has not reached certain milestones.

We have become dormant in our own system. We are blinded by the freedoms to pursue personal happiness. It seems as if it’s been a constant battle for most Americans considering the fact that all people do not inherit the same opportunity.

We come to find that the good old saying “You have to pull yourself up by the bootstraps” does define the American culture, it’s survival of the fittest.

There may not be enough American dollars to feed the egos of the top one percent, but America still does cry out and continue fighting for the American dream.

The dream lives in America’s leaders not heroes. Leaders represent our constitution, heroes pull themselves up by their boot straps.