American Creed.

The United States of America was once a great country before we lost sight of the American Dream. America got to this point by commonly shared values that led people to push the country to greatness. We always have strived to do better and be the best at everything. Ancestors who united under the Constitution were guaranteed justice, happiness for all, and the blessings of liberty, but now years later we are pushing ourselves apart because power has gone to our heads. We sucked ourselves into a trap where we desire only the best for ourselves. Doing so stripped us of our liberty and happiness.

In the PBS documentary American Creed, Condoleezza Rice, an African-American former national security advisor and Secretary of State under President Bush, describes the American decline, saying, “With so much diversity, we have to bond to a common sense of what we’re trying to achieve. You have to understand what the common aspiration is, and I think we have lost sight of that.” America has changed, we stopped caring for the common good. We are constantly fighting each other and pulling this country down. We are playing a game of king of the mountain without trying to better the country. We are stagnate. This is the very type of society that European immigrants originally fled; one that praises a figure.

So maybe we need to reevaluate our morals and find a path to be creative as a whole nation. In American Creed, Junot Diaz, a Domican-American writer from New Jersey, shares that “The idea of patriotism in the country seems to be turning away. I think there is no greater love of a nation than to look for the places where we’re not doing our best.” One of those places is simply giving the respect to the various types of people within our melting pot. We have stereotypes that are pushing our culture to oppress people. Those who were oppressed came here to seek refuge in a country that brags about its equality. They planned to look forward; they had an American Dream. The Americans who believe in stereotypes crushed those incoming foreigners American Dream.

Joan Blades, an American businesswoman and founder of Moveon.org, believes that, “All progressives want a fair playing field.” The key to allowing the American Dream back into America might be to restrict big business so that they have to allow a fair playing field for those starting their venture. Mark Meckler, a political activist and a co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, also appears in the film, and he says, “Conservatives are rooted in values of history…the root of the American Dream is in individual liberty or self-governance.” Understanding each other's roadblocks in life is essential to know how to help others get to their dream. Self-governance for our own dream can only occur if we are willing to give each other our best at understanding. Only then may we be able to overcome our roadblocks, and we might be able to follow our dreams.

The American people need to be set on track by finding the creedal values we have lost. We need to swallow our pride that says, “I’m more important,” and respect each other's culture and upbringing. We all have different paths to follow. Blocking each other's paths through following your own is never going to allow for a mobile American Dream, which will never repower the America that once was.