We must adopt reforms which will expand the range of opportunities for all Americans. We can fulfill the American dream only when each person has a fair chance to fulfill his own dreams. This means equal voting rights, equal employment opportunity and new opportunities for expanded ownership, because in order to be secure in their human rights, people need access to property rights. [ 1970 State of the Union Message to the Congress , January 22, 1970]
Our dreams are a window into our theology. We are a proud people, the inheritors of the American Dream—the pursuit of happiness is our inalienable right. Like bratty, self-involved little kids, we push past the Giver to grab for the gift. Can you see it? We use God for health, wealth, and emotional well-being, and in the process, we miss out on relationship with our heavenly Father.
This is our time — to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that, out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope. And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can!
That's why they call it the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.
If the American dream is for Americans only, it will remain our dream and never be our destiny. -- Ren'e de Visme Williamson
`Lasu' Releases SAG 0.3 -- Freeware Book Takes Paves For New World Order by staff writers ... The SAG is one of the major products developed via the Information Superhighway, the brain child of Al Gore, US Vice President. The ISHW is being developed with massive govenment funding, since studies show that it already has more than four hundred users, three years before the first prototypes are ready. Asked whether he was worried about the foreign influence in an expensive American Dream, the vice president said, ``Finland? Oh, we've already bought them, but we haven't told anyone yet. They're great at building model airplanes as well. And _I can spell potato.'' House representatives are not mollified, however, wanting to see the terms of the deal first, fearing another Alaska. Rumors about the SAG release have imbalanced the American stock market for weeks. Several major publishing houses reached an all time low in the New York Stock Exchange, while publicly competing for the publishing agreement with Mr. Wirzenius. The negotiations did not work out, tough. ``Not enough dough,'' says the author, although spokesmen at both Prentice-Hall and Playboy, Inc., claim the author was incapable of expressing his wishes in a coherent form during face to face talks, preferring to communicate via e-mail. ``He kept muttering something about jiffies and pegs,'' they say. ... -- Lars Wirzenius <wirzeniu@cs.helsinki.fi> [comp.os.linux.announce]
If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer. It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled. Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states. We are, and always will be, the United States of America. It's the answer that led those who've been told for so long by so many to be cynical and fearful and doubtful about what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day. It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this date in this election at this defining moment change has come to America.
The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were. Kelso, Louis O. [From “Karl Marx: The Almost Capitalist,” American Bar Association Journal , March 1957.]: Error No. 2: Marx’s Failure to Understand the Political Significance of Property. Before examining Marx’s second critical error, it may be helpful to take note of what the concept “property” means in law and economics. It is an aggregate of the rights, powers and privileges, recognized by the laws of the nation, which an individual may possess with respect to various objects. Property is not the object owned, but the sum total of the “rights” which an individual may “own” in such an object. These in general include the rights of (1) possessing, (2) excluding others, (3) disposing or transferring, (4) using, (5) enjoying the fruits, profits, product or increase, and (6) of destroying or injuring, if the owner so desires. In a civilized society, these rights are only as effective as the laws which provide for their enforcement. The English common law, adopted into the fabric of American law, recognizes that the rights of property are subject to the limitations that (1) things owned may not be so used as to injure others or the property of others, and (2) that they may not be used in ways contrary to the general welfare of the people as a whole. From this definition of private property, a purely functional and practical understanding of the nature of property becomes clear. Property in everyday life, is the right of control. Property in Land. With respect to property in land, we need merely note that the acquisition of an original title to land from a sovereign is a political act, and not the result of operations of the economy. If the original distribution of land unduly favors any group or type or persons, it is a political defect and not a defect in the operation of the economy as such. A capitalistic economy assumes and recognizes the private ownership of land. It may, as under the federal and state mining laws and federal homestead acts, encourage private ownership of land by facilitating private purchasing of mining, timber, agricultural, residential or recreational lands. Property in Capital. In a capitalistic economy, private ownership in all other articles of wealth is equal in importance to property in land. From the standpoint of the distributive aspects of a capitalistic economy, property in capital–the tools, machinery, equipment, plants, power systems, railroads, trucks, tractors, factories, financial working capital and the like–is of special significance. This is true because of the growing dependence of production upon capital instruments. Of the three components of production land is the passive1 source of almost all material things except those which come from the air and the sea, while labor and capital are the active factors of production. Labor and capital produce the goods and services of the economy, using raw materials obtained, for the most part, from land. Just as private property in land includes the right to all rents, the proceeds of sale of minerals and other elements or substances contained in land, private property in capital includes the right to the wealth produced by capital. The value added to iron ore by the capital instruments of a steel mill becomes the property of the owners of the steel mill. So in the case of all other capital instruments. Property in Labor. What is the relationship of the worker to the value which he creates through his work? It has been said that no one has ever questioned the right of a worker to the fruits of his labor. Actually, as was long ago recognized by John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau, the right of the worker to the value he creates is nothing more than the particular type of private property applicable to labor. Each worker, they said, has a right of private property in his capacity to produce wealth through his labor and in the value which he creates.
When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. [“I Have A Dream” Speech, 1963.]
Or what is there apart from the traditions of dungeoned warriors and kings (which will not wholly account for it) that makes the White Tower of London tell so much more strongly on the imagination of an untravelled American, than those other storied structures, its neighbors--the Byward Tower, or even the Bloody? And those sublimer towers, the White Mountains of New Hampshire, whence, in peculiar moods, comes that gigantic ghostliness over the soul at the bare mention of that name, while the thought of Virginia's Blue Ridge is full of a soft, dewy, distant dreaminess? Or why, irrespective of all latitudes and longitudes, does the name of the White Sea exert such a spectralness over the fancy, while that of the Yellow Sea lulls us with mortal thoughts of long lacquered mild afternoons on the waves, followed by the gaudiest and yet sleepiest of sunsets? Or, to choose a wholly unsubstantial instance, purely addressed to the fancy, why, in reading the old fairy tales of Central Europe, does "the tall pale man" of the Hartz forests, whose changeless pallor unrustlingly glides through the green of the groves--why is this phantom more terrible than all the whooping imps of the Blocksburg?
With many of the North American aborigines the giving of the name, its transference from one individual to another, its change by the individual in recognition of great events, achievements, &c., and other aspects of nominology are of significance in connexion with social life and religious ceremonies, rites and superstitions. The high level attained by some tribes in these matters can be seen from Miss Fletcher's description of "A Pawnee Ritual used when changing a Man's Name" (_Amer. Anthrop._, 1899). Names marked epochs in life and changed with new achievements, and they had often "so personal and sacred a meaning," that they were naturally enough rendered "unfit for the familiar purposes of ordinary address, to a people so reverently inclined as the Indians seem to have been." The period of puberty in boys and girls was often the occasion of elaborate "initiation" ceremonies and rites of various kinds, some of which were of a very trying and even cruel character. Ceremonial or symbolic "killings," "new-births," &c., were also in vogue; likewise ordeals of whipping, isolation and solitary confinement, "medicine"-taking, physical torture, ritual bathings, painting of face or body, scarification and the like. The initiations, ordeals, &c., gone through by the youth as a prelude to manhood and womanhood resembled in many respects those imposed upon individuals aspiring to be chiefs, shamans and "medicine-men." Many facts concerning these rites and ceremonies will be found in G. Stanley Hall's _Adolescence_ (1904) and in the articles on "Ordeals" and "Puberty Customs" in the _Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico_ (1907-1910). In the method of approach to the supernatural and the superhuman among the North American aborigines there is great diversity, and the powers and capacities of the individual have often received greater recognition than is commonly believed. Thus, as Kroeber (_Amer. Anthrop._, 1902, p. 285) has pointed out, the Mohave Indians of the Yuman stock have as a distinctive feature of their culture "the high degree to which they have developed their system of dreaming and of individual instead of traditional connexion with the supernatural." For the Omaha of the Siouan stock Miss A. C. Fletcher (_Proc. Amer. Assoc. Adv. Sci._, 1895, 1896; _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 1898) has shown the appreciation of the individual in the lonely "totem" vigil and the acquisition of the personal _genius_. Entry: 1
RICHARD HENRY DANA (1815-1882), son of the last-mentioned, was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the 1st of August 1815. He entered Harvard in the class of 1835, but at the beginning of his junior year an illness affecting his sight necessitated a suspension of his college work, and in August 1834 he shipped before the mast for California, returning in September 1836. The rough experience of this voyage did more than endow him with renewed health; it changed him from a dreamy, sensitive boy, hereditarily disinclined to any sort of active career, into a self-reliant, energetic man, with broad interests and keen sympathies. He re-entered Harvard in December 1836 and graduated in June 1837. He was a student at the Harvard law school from 1837 to 1840, and from January 1839 to February 1840 he was also an instructor in elocution in the college. In 1840 the notes of his sea-trip were published under the title _Two Years Before the Mast_. The book attained an almost unprecedented popularity both in America and in Europe, where it was translated into several languages; and it came to be considered a classic. Immediately after the appearance of this book Dana began the practice of law, which brought him a large number of maritime cases. In 1841 he published _The Seaman's Friend_, republished in England as _The Seaman's Manual_, which was long the highest authority on the legal rights and duties of seamen. After gaining recognition as one of the most prominent members of the Suffolk bar, he became associated in 1848 with the Free Soil movement, and took a prominent part in the Buffalo convention of that year. This step, which caused him to be ostracized for a time from the Boston circles in which he had been reared, brought him the cases of the fugitive slaves, Shadrach, Sims and Burns, and of the rescuers of Shadrach. On the night following the surrender of Burns (May 1854) Dana was brutally assaulted on the Boston streets. In 1853 he took a prominent part in the state constitutional convention. He allied himself with the Republican party on its organization, but his inborn dislike for political manoeuvring prevented his ever becoming prominent in its councils. In 1857 he became a regular attendant at the meetings of the famous Boston Saturday Club, to the members of which he dedicated his account of a vacation trip, _To Cuba and Back_ (1857). He returned to America from a trip round the world in time to participate in the presidential campaign of 1860, and after Lincoln's inauguration he was appointed United States district attorney for Massachusetts. In this office in 1863 he won before the Supreme Court of the United States the famous prize case of the "Amy Warwick," on the decision in which depended the right of the government to blockade the Confederate ports, without giving the Confederate States an international status as belligerents. He brought out in 1865 an edition of _Wheaton's International Law_, his notes constituting a most learned and valuable authority on international law and its bearings on American history and diplomacy; but immediately after its publication Dana was charged by the editor of two earlier editions, William Beach Lawrence, with infringing his copyright, and was involved in litigation which was continued for thirteen years. In such minor matters as arrangement of notes and verification of citations the court found against Dana, but in the main Dana's notes were vastly different from Lawrence's. In 1865 Dana declined an appointment as a United States district judge. During the Reconstruction period he favoured the congressional plan rather than that of President Johnson, and on this account resigned the district-attorneyship. In 1867-1868 he was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, and in 1867 was retained with William M. Evarts to prosecute Jefferson Davis, whose admission to bail he counselled. In 1877 he was one of the counsel for the United States before the commission which in accordance with the treaty of Washington met at Halifax, N.S., to arbitrate the fisheries question between the United States and Great Britain. In 1878 he gave up his law practice and devoted the rest of his life to study and travel. He died in Rome, Italy, on the 9th of January 1882. Entry: RICHARD
The best authority on the Family developed in different shapes in North-West America is Charles Hill-Tout (cf. "Origin of the Totemism of the Aborigines of British Columbia," _Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada_, vol. vii. sect. 11, 1901). He, like many American and some English and continental students, applies the term "totem" not only to the hereditary totem of the exogamous kin, but to the animal familiars of individual men or women, called _manitus_, _naguals_, _nyarongs_ and _yunbeai_, among North American Indians, in South America, in Borneo and in the Euahlayi tribe of New South Wales. These animal familiars are chosen by individuals, obeying the monition of dreams, or are assigned to them at birth, or at puberty, by the tribal magicians. It has often been suggested that totemism arose when the familiar of an individual became hereditary among his descendants. This could not occur under a system of reckoning descent and inheriting the kin name through women, but as a Tsimshian myth says that a man's sister adopted his animal familiar, the bear, and transmitted it to _her_ offspring, Hill-Tout supposes that this may have been the origin of totemism in tribes with reckoning of descent in the female line. Instances, however, are not known to exist in practice, and myths are mere baseless savage hypotheses. Entry: 10
FOSTER, STEPHEN COLLINS (1826-1864), American song and ballad writer, was born near Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, on the 4th of July 1826. He was the youngest child of a merchant of Irish descent who became a member of the state legislature and was related by marriage to President Buchanan. Stephen early showed talent for music, and played upon the flageolet, the guitar and the banjo; he also acquired a fair knowledge of French and German. He was sent to school in Towanda, Pennsylvania, and later to Athens, Pennsylvania, and when thirteen years old he wrote the song "Sadly to Mine Heart Appealing." At sixteen he wrote "Open thy Lattice, Love"; at seventeen he entered his brother's business house, Cincinnati, Ohio, where he remained about three years, composing meanwhile such popular pieces as "Old Uncle Ned," "O Susannah!" and others. He then adopted song-writing as a profession. His chief successes were songs written for the negro melodists or Christy minstrels. Besides those mentioned the following attained great popularity: "Nelly was a Lady," "Old Kentucky Home," "Old Folks at Home," "Massa's in de Cold, Cold Ground," &c. For these and other songs the composer received considerable sums, "Old Folks at Home" bringing him, it is said, 15,000 dollars. For most of his songs Foster wrote both songs and music. In 1850 he married and moved to New York, but soon returned to Pittsburg. His reputation rests chiefly on his negro melodies, many of which have been popular on both sides of the Atlantic and sung in many tongues. "Old Black Joe," the last of these negro melodies, appeared in 1861. His later songs were sentimental ballads. Among these are "Old Dog Tray," "Gentle Annie," "Willie, we have missed you," &c. His "Come where my Love lies Dreaming" is a well known vocal quartet. Although as a musician and composer Foster has little claim to high rank, his song-writing gives him a prominent place in the modern developments of popular music. He died at New York on the 13th of January 1864. Entry: FOSTER
BULLY (of uncertain origin, but possibly connected with a Teutonic word seen in many compounds, as the Low Ger. _bullerjaan_, meaning "noisy"; the word has also, with less probability, been derived from the Dutch _boel_, and Ger. _Buhle_, a lover), originally a fine, swaggering fellow, as in "Bully Bottom" in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, later an overbearing ruffian, especially a coward who abuses his strength by ill-treating the weak; more technically a _souteneur_, a man who lives on the earnings of a prostitute. The term in its early use of "fine" or "splendid" survives in American slang. Entry: BULLY
MARSTON, PHILIP BOURKE (1850-1887), English poet, was born in London on the 13th of August 1850. His father, JOHN WESTLAND MARSTON (1819-1890), of Lincolnshire origin, the friend of Dickens, Macready and Charles Kean, was the author of a series of metrical dramas which held the stage in succession to the ambitious efforts of John Tobin, Talfourd, Bulwer and Sheridan Knowles. His chief plays were _The Patrician's Daughter_ (1841), _Strathmore_ (1849), _A Hard Struggle_ (1858) and _Donna Diana_ (1863). He was looked up to as the upholder of the outworn tradition of the acted poetic drama, but his plays showed little vitality, and Marston's reviews for the _Athenaeum_, including one of Swinburne's _Atalanta in Calydon_, and his dramatic criticisms embodied in _Our Recent Actors_ (1888) will probably claim a more enduring reputation. His _Dramatic and Poetical Works_ were collected in 1876. The son, Philip Bourke, was born in a literary atmosphere. His sponsors were Philip James Bailey and Dinah Mulock (Mrs Craik). At his father's house near Chalk Farm he met authors and actors of his father's generation, and subsequently the Rossettis, Swinburne, Arthur O'Shaughnessy and Irving. From his earliest years his literary precocity was overshadowed by misfortunes. In his fourth year, in part owing to an accident, his sight began to decay, and he gradually became almost totally blind. His mother died in 1870. His _fiancée_, Mary Nesbit, died in 1871; his closest friend, Oliver Madox Brown, in 1874; his sister Cicely, his amanuensis, in 1878; in 1879 his remaining sister, Eleanor, who was followed to the grave after a brief interval by her husband, the poet O'Shaughnessy, and her two children. In 1882 the death of his chief poetic ally and inspirer, Rossetti, was followed closely by the tragedy of another kindred spirit, the sympathetic pessimist, James Thomson ("B. V."), who was carried dying from his blind friend's rooms, where he had sought refuge from his latest miseries early in June of the same year. It is said that Marston came to dread making new friendships, for fear of evil coming to the recipients of his affection. In the face of such calamities it is not surprising that Marston's verse became more and more sorrowful and melancholy. The idylls of flower-life, such as the early and very beautiful "The Rose and the Wind" were succeeded by dreams of sleep and the repose of death. These qualities and gradations of feeling, reflecting the poet's successive ideals of action and quiescence, are traceable through his three published collections, _Songtide_ (1871), _All in All_ (1875) and _Wind Voices_ (1883). The first and third, containing his best work, went out of print, but Marston's verse was collected in 1892 by Mrs Louise Chandler Moulton, a loyal and devoted friend, and herself a poet. Marston read little else but poetry; and of poetic values, especially of the intenser order, his judgment could not be surpassed in sensitiveness. He was saturated with Rossetti and Swinburne, and his imitative power was remarkable. In his later years he endeavoured to make money by writing short stories in _Home Chimes_ and other American magazines, through the agency of Mrs Chandler Moulton. His popularity in America far exceeded that in his own country. His health showed signs of collapse from 1883; in January 1887 he lost his voice, and suffered intensely from the failure to make himself understood. He died on the 13th of February 1887. Entry: MARSTON