Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness

There’s a rant from the first episode of the HBO drama series The Newsroom that went viral some years ago. During the episode, a college student asks a panel to describe how America is the greatest country in the world. Will McAvoy, a fictitious news anchor on the panel portrayed by Jeff Daniels, eventually goes off on how the United States, despite its former glory, has declined in almost every measurable way in comparison to the rest of the world. Admitting that it “sure used to be” great, he concludes that “The first step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one—America is not the greatest country in the world anymore.”

Americans were treated to a similar tirade a few weeks ago when Vivek Ramaswamy, originally one of President Trump’s appointees to help lead his newly proposed Department of Governmental Efficiency, took to X to air some of his grievances. His frustrations had to do with what he perceives as the decline of our national performance on the global stage. Ramaswamy asserted that America needs “more movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of Friends. More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less ‘chillin.’ More extracurriculars, less ‘hanging out at the mall’ if we want the next generation to have any chance of matching the industrial and scientific standards of rivals such as China.”

Some of the negative responses to such a provocative string of statements from Ramaswamy were to be expected. Yet it also reveals a fundamental divide over the nature of the “American Dream” and how the next generation fits into it. A recent profile on Amy Chua, the “Tiger Mother” who has mentored Ramaswamy as well as Vice President J. D. Vance, further highlights how her debatable vision for raising high-performing children is actually over what it means to succeed in America. But as New York Times columnist Ross Douthat suggests in response to Ramaswamy, “Upward mobility is part of the American dream, but it isn’t the whole of it.”

Nevertheless, with the rapid economic rise of the United States over the last century, it’s not hard to misidentify the American Dream as purely about individual wealth-building and commercial progress with no substantial concern for the larger American experiment in democracy. We would be wise then to consider first and foremost what the Founding Fathers themselves thought they were offering the world in the crafting of a new nation.

In his acclaimed book The Radicalism of the American Revolution, historian Gordon S. Wood emphasizes that “Equality was in fact the most radical and most powerful ideological force let loose in the Revolution.” While many will be quick to say that not all persons were treated as genuinely equal at the founding of the United States, nowhere else on earth at that time could one be in a society that was no longer strictly governed by class. This capacity for social mobility is precisely what led Alexis de Tocqueville to declare in the early 19th century that the “equality of condition” in America, its capacity for allowing men to pursue the good life as they saw fit with an unprecedented degree of individual potential, was its most distinctive feature as a country.

Ramaswamy’s vision risks making the American people into cogs in a machine out of those who should instead see themselves as self-governing citizens. Personal goals and career aspirations can’t be viewed through the lens of achievement at the expense of virtue. Within a superficially merit-based worldview, people can become judged more on the basis of the capacity of their economic output rather than the content of their character. The Silicon Valley mindset might work for satisfying shareholders, but it flies in the face of the true blessings of freedom the Founding Fathers fought for.

Of course we shouldn’t be expecting less of ourselves or our kids. However, our energies need to be adequately directed toward ensuring our expectations are keeping in step with what made the United States historically great. For some Americans, doing the right thing looks like getting a Rhodes Scholarship and running a Fortune 500 company; for others, it’s inheriting the family business and staying rooted in their local community. America is special because it is a place where no particular professional path towards enjoying “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” is inherently better than the other.

In his Farewell Address, George Washington reminded the countrymen of his fledgling nation that “It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule indeed extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who that is a sincere friend to it can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?” As long as one remains committed to that same principle in their endeavors, they’re living out the American Dream just as the Founders intended. The meritocrats should step aside and let them do the talking.