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  • Peak China: Personal Observations as a Western Businessperson in China

    Patrick Ennis, PhD Senior Partner, Madrona Venture Group and Senior Fellow, Potomac Institute for Policy Studies Many facts, figures, and concurring opinions support the impressions conveyed in this article. Deliberately, data has been omitted to emphasize that these anecdotes and thoughts are not always quantifiable. This can lead to conclusions that might differ from common wisdom. Nonetheless, recent literature contains much data and concurring opinions that corroborate the views of this article. Further reading can…

    by Patrick Ennis, PHD
  • Is AI Ready to Help Win Wars?

    Lois Hollan, Senior Fellow, Potomac Institute for Policy Studies Robert Hummel, Chief Scientist, Potomac Institute for Policy Studies Introduction Artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to transform the way wars are fought and revolutionize the enterprise of national security. However, it is still unclear how this technology can be successfully leveraged for national security purposes. The problem stems from the ambiguity of the term “intelligence.” Intelligence is generally taken to mean: “the ability to learn or…

    by Lois Hollan and Robert Hummel
  • Applying Lessons from the Commercial Innovation System to the National Security Innovation Base

    John Wilson   Senior Fellow, Potomac Institute for Policy Studies Introduction Over the past few decades, an ecosystem of companies and structures has emerged that encourages and supports innovations and their transition into viable products. Venture capital (VC) markets and VC firms are prime examples of such support structures. These and other structures first developed in the commercial marketplace, which we might call the “commercial innovation system.” Similar structures are increasingly being adopted, sometimes in…

    by John Wilson
  • Trusted Access to Microelectronics

    Addressing DoD’s Unique Issues of Accessibility, Integrity, and Confidentiality of Microelectronics   Ted Glum, Member of the Board of Directors, Potomac Institute for Policy Studies   With all the current emphasis on the supply chain issues for microelectronics, as well as the CHIPS Act’s attempt to re-shore production, it is worth considering the unique needs of the US Department of Defense (DoD). The DoD needs access to both commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) microelectronics and trustworthy devices for…

    by Ted Glum
  • AI Technology to Increase US Government Transparency

    Rindha Sudhini Student Intern at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies from Sept 2023 to Jan 2024 Introduction Historically, the federal government has been committed to promoting transparency through information access laws. One such law is the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which allows citizens to request access to records from any federal agency. Even though these requests are meant to be a primary means of providing information to the public, the general citizenry is…

    by Rindha Sudhini

 

Image credit:
US Navy photo by Photographer’s Mate 2nd Class Dennis Cantrell [PD].

As this country has evolved, so too this dream. This dream is about finding comfort in the idea that we live in a country where there is opportunity for all and regardless of your race, creed, sex, class or the family you were born into, through hard work and determination you can create the life you want. However, for many, the American Dream is beginning to feel like the American Nightmare, a sick illusion of hope in a world full of fear, hostility and inequality relative to times past. Just as James Truslow Adams inspired a nation coming out of the Great Depression in his book Epic of America by first coining and describing the American Dream, our nation today, one coming out of its own era of financial despair, needs a reimagining of the American Dream.

The generation that emerged following the first references to the American Dream was the generation that helped save the world from the evil that prompted WWII. This generation’s ethos was all about hard work, survival, and creating a better future for their children. Their attitudes are what came to define the American Dream. Over time, this generation’s children evolved the dream to include a greater emphasis on the pursuit of happiness. Happiness was not necessarily hard work, it was also about working the jobs you wanted and having time to enjoy the efforts of your labor with the ones you loved most. As the country continued to mature, the third generation of the post-Great Depression American Dream became the first to truly reap the rewards of the sacrifices of the first generation; the world they lived in was evidence of the success of their grandparents. This generation of people was promised the American Dream, which was now, at last, the American Reality.

Unfortunately, the combination of the devastating effects of 9/11 on the American psyche and the Financial Crisis of 2008 on the American wallet has challenged the ethos of our time and exposed parts of the American Dream, which have turned out to be false. The wealth gap in this country continues to grow, hateful speech is becoming more of the norm, and graduated students are entering the job market with university degrees only to find a genuine lack of opportunity compounded with a mountain of student debt. Hard work no longer seems to be paying off. While this reality is still greater than many other parts of the world, it represents at a minimum the flattening of the trend President Franklin Roosevelt always said should be upwards in his last Inaugural Addresses in 1945:

“Things in life will not always run smoothly. Sometimes we will be rising toward the heights – then all will seem to reverse itself and start downward. The great fact to remember is that the trend of civilization itself is forever upward, that a line drawn through the middle of the peaks and the valleys of the centuries always has an upward trend.”

It is time we reimagine the American Dream. It is time we generate a new idea, a new hope, a new vision for the future that will inspire this nation once again and give new meaning to our purpose. In a world dominated by the advancements of science and technology, the definition of hard work looks much different from the days when it was synonymous with long hours on the farm or at the factory. This new American Dream should anticipate the future that will be arriving, one where we can communicate with our thoughts, have robots do our chores, and free ourselves from the limits of our genes.

This new American Dream should be about making the pursuit of happiness easier. This is a dream where people don’t have to work harder to move up, they have to work smarter, they have to work more creatively; they have to take advantage of the world that has been gifted to them and imagine it to the future. This American Dream should be about providing everyone with the ability to do this, giving everyone access to things like the Internet and creating new jobs that seek out the human imagination. It should be about developing a society where we reward our creativity and an ability to dream up the futures no one else can envision.

The future of the American Dream should be that no matter who you are, you live in a place where your imagination can come true, where opportunity exists to let your bold ideas grow into things that will change the world. This is a world where opportunity still knocks even if you fail. It is a world about the future and it will take all of us to make sure this new American Dream becomes reality.


This article also appears as a blog post on the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies’ CReST Blog. Available at: https://potomacinstituteceo.wordpress.com/2016/04/15/reimagining-the-american-dream/.

Dr. Charles Mueller works on identifying important S&T regulatory issues and developing sound regulatory policy solutions founded in the best available science. Additionally, Dr. Mueller is the lead on a project with the Office of Corrosion Policy and Oversight within the Department of Defense that is attempting to optimize the DoD’s current Corrosion Prevention and Control strategies by applying regulatory science & engineering principles. Prior to joining the Potomac Institute, Dr. Mueller obtained his doctorate in biochemistry from the University of Maryland’s Chemistry and Biochemistry Department in 2014. His dissertation involved the characterization of two putative DNA metabolizing enzymes in the bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans and required a combination of molecular biology, cell biology, microscopy, and biochemical analyses. Before obtaining his doctorate he obtained a BA in Chemistry from Elon University and then worked at the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health studying the effects of selenium on cancer using both live mouse models and tissue cultures. Dr. Mueller is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Dr. Mueller can be reached at: cmueller@ potomacinstitute.org.

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