The+Great+American+Dream

//"America means opportunity, freedom, power."// -Ralph Waldo Emerson

//"The strength of our Nation must continue to be used in the interest of all our people rather than a privileged few. It must continue to be used unselfishly in the struggle for world peace and the betterment of mankind."// -Harry S. Truman

 

"A vast, vulgar and meretricious beauty...and to this conception he was faithful till the end" (p. 98).                He stretched out his arms in a curious way. Involuntarily I glanced seaward-and distinguished nothing except a single green light," (p. 20-21).

[|Learn more about Gatsby's American Dream]

= The Changing American Dream = media type="youtube" key="VCxJRrHyGdg&hl=en" height="355" width="425"



"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses  yearning to breath free, The wretched refuse  of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless,  the tempest-tost, to me, I lift my lamp beside  the golden door!"  -inscribed on the Statue of Liberty

= God Bless the USA =  ** media type="youtube" key="Q65KZIqay4E&hl=en" height="355" width="425"

Let America Be America Again ** **By Langston Hughes** Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed-- Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above.

//(It never was America to me.)//

O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe.

//(There's never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")//

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream In the Old World while still a serf of kings, Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true, That even yet its mighty daring sings In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned That's made America the land it has become. O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas In search of what I meant to be my home-- For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore, And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea, And torn from Black Africa's strand I came To build a "homeland of the free."

//The free?//

Who said the free? Not me? Surely not me? The millions on relief today? The millions shot down when we strike? The millions who have nothing for our pay? For all the dreams we've dreamed And all the songs we've sung And all the hopes we've held And all the flags we've hung, The millions who have nothing for our pay-- Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again-- The land that never has been yet-- And yet must be--the land where //every// man is free. The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME-- Who made America, Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain, Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain, Must bring back our mighty dream again. Reflection Entertainment in America Back to American Idea of Beauty