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Kamala Harris says that “the idea of the American Dream was something that previous generations could count on. Not as much anymore.” She sounds like an astute student of the obvious. When Americans have seen their disposable income go down during her tenure at the Naval Observatory, the obvious question must be, “What makes you think that you know how to do anything about it? But more fundamentally, what is “The American Dream?”

Democrats will come up with enough BS blather that would properly dress one of Kamala’s word salads but really can’t define the phrase. All they see is that grocery carts have become the most expensive vehicles to operate and they propose price controls on the businesses with the smallest operating margins.

Are they really trying to turn the US into Cuba? Wait. I’m sorry. Cuba’s immediate problem isn’t the empty grocery store shelves. It’s an utter failure of the power grid due to…government controls. But that’s a good thing since those coal and oil-fired power plants pollute the air with plant fertilizer—oops—carbon dioxide. But I digress.

Every politician talks about “the American Dream.” But none of them, not even Donald Trump, defines the term. So perhaps we should look to history for answers.

In 1865, Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, famously said, “Go West, young man, and grow up with the country.” There were multiple reasons for the line, but they all revolved around economic opportunity.

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Oklahomans became known as “Sooners” because when the Territory was opened to settlement at noon on April 22, 1889, the people who got to prime land “sooner” than others could claim it for their homesteading opportunity. Pioneers took the dangerous treks along the Oregon and Santa Fe trails for the same reason.

Even the third-class passengers on the Titanic were seeking opportunities. They didn’t get it, but others did. The ledger at Ellis Island lists many thousands who risked their lives so their children would have better lives.

America was known as the “land of opportunity.” Hector St. John de Crèvecœur’s 1782 book Letters from an American Farmer may have been the first influential statement of this idea. Horatio Alger’s post-Civil War novels tapped into the same idea. Even the Statue of Liberty is inscribed with soaring verse for those “yearning to breathe free.”

Free from what? The European monarchies had two primary classes of people: serfs and aristocracy. The aristocracy had great privilege and exploited it with minimal pushback. Just visit Versailles or Peterhof.

Billionaires have nothing on the royalty who built those incredible palaces on the backs of people who had difficulty feeding their families. But that’s what Kamala wants to reinstitute. She’s permanently in the aristocracy, with nothing to ever worry about. In contrast to that, America was Reagan’s shining city on the hill.

Anything, even the risk of death, was better than the abject poverty and virtual slavery of Europe. Even though the Industrial Revolution offered little with its sweatshops, squalor, and disease, while you might not have even a park bench to sleep on when you got to America, you could see the light ahead. “No Irish need apply” just meant you left New York City to find work. America was big.

America is still big. Just take an airline trip almost anywhere away from the coastal cities. America is incomprehensibly big. The potential opportunities are just as big, but the Democrat Party cannot allow you to live in a way that doesn’t need them. If you do, you won’t be feeding their aristocracy.

So, they block your independent prosperity with rules. You can’t be a hair braider without taking all sorts of classes and paying for professional and business licenses. Who does this protect? The people already in the business. Your doctor must be licensed by the state and follow rules created by the state. Who does this protect? The doctors who already have licenses. The number of incompetent doctors with state licenses is legion. We could go on with the litany of these abuses. Just visit the Institute for Justice.

Do you want to build a home? Just ask Michael and Chantell Sackett of Priest Lake, Idaho. The EPA declared that a mud puddle on their lot in a development made it a wetland subject to government regulation. They paid a mortgage on the lot from 2007 to 2023 before the Supreme Court finally shut the EPA down. Litanies of such abuses fill volumes. The power-mad Javerts of the government never suffer for the evil they inflict on the little people, so they just keep doing it.

Democrats know no boundaries. As Valerie Jarret said when Obama was elected in 2008, “We’ll be ready to rule on day one.” They truly believe that they have a divine right to rule over us. They want nothing more than the return of a monarchy, with them in positions of power. This is what they’ve been pushing from the earliest days, as exemplified by Aaron Burr’s attempt to steal the 1800 Presidential election. Evil never changes. And it always destroys.

What was the dream that led (and leads) millions to take dangerous trips to America? They all wanted a better life than what they had under the heel of the aristocracy. And Democrats are perfectly willing to impoverish American citizens to import aliens who will find American poverty more tolerable than their current states of poverty elsewhere. Most of them are willing to put up with almost anything in the hope that their hard work will make things better for their kids. They don’t realize that Democrats have no interest in that happening.

And this brings us full circle. Pilgrims, mountain men, Sooners, and all the rest understood the American Dream. They were willing to risk their lives for it. And it is the singular source of America’s vitality and strength. The American Dream is the idea that you are free to bust your butt to make a better life and not have it stolen from you by the government.

Democrats hate the American Dream. They have the Socialist (or Aristocratic or…) Dream. That’s the idea that the government should steal what you busted your butt to make so they can give it to someone who won’t get off their own butt.

Welcome to Amerika.

Ted Noel is a retired physician who posts on social media as Doctor Ted. His Doctor Ted’s Prescription podcast is available on multiple podcast channels.