AMERICAN LIBERALISM AND THE DEMOCRATIC DREAM: TRANSCENDING THE AMERICAN DREAM

John F. Manley

Review of Policy Research, 1990, vol. 10, issue 1, 89-102

Abstract: The “American Dream” is a compromise between an elitist dream and a democratic dream. While citizens enjoy equal political and legal rights, democracy is undermined in the economic sphere by vast inequalities of wealth, status and power. The American Dream can and should be transcended through a rediscovery of the “democratic dream” of Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was a defender of popular government and equality, who viewed vast inequalities of wealth as incompatible with a society of free and independent citizens living together in social harmony. Jefferson favored a variety of policies to expand economic equality. In Jefferson one finds an authentically American set of ideas for challenging the consensus that limits democracy to political and legal rights.

Date: 1990
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