If you had been on the Rightardia Facebook page on Mother's Day, you would probably have gotten a good idea of the real American dream. Mothers' were showing off their handsome sons and beautiful doughters, There were pictures of grandmothers , both extant and deceased.
These beautiful families are the American dream. This country needs a just society that promotes the needs of families and provides them with a secure future.
One of the first person to talk about an American dream was Martin Luther King, Jr. not Marco Rubio. King said:
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!"
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America likes to think of itself as a melting pot, but sociologists will tell you that the reality is ethnic neighborhoods of Eastern Europeans, Italians, Irish, blacks and Hispanics. Some neighborhoods are integrated based upon the economics of housing. Some cities do a better job of integrating their communities than others.
We have a long way to go to achieve King's dream. King certainly didn't talk about producing children to sacrificed upon the altars of of militarism or corporatism.
He didn't talk about a future in which schools produced corporate drones to work in corporations operated like command and control military operations and owned by oligarchs.
King envisioned a an integrated society, one of which you may have caught a glimpse at in the Rightardia Facebook Page on Mother's Day. . The families are diverse: white, black, Hispanic, mixed race, native American and LGBT. A hodge podge of religions were also represented.
All of the parents want their children to be successful and raise families. They want secured futures for their children with well paying jobs that lead toward a positive retirement one day. The parents want to be able to send their children to college and technical schools. They want the their children to have the same dream and opportunities.
Marco Rubio has never really defined what he means by the American Dream, but he did say this to the Rockingham County Republican Committee about Hillary Clinton.
"They're (Democrats) threatening to nominate someone now who wants to take us to the past — to an era that's never coming back. The road we're on right now is a road that will rob us of the American dream."
Rubio talks about opportunity, but the reality is the American social system has very limited social
mobility.
The Economist noted that "evidence from social scientists suggests that American society is much 'stickier' than most Americans assume. ... would-be Horatio Algers are finding it no easier to climb from rags to riches, while the children of the privileged have a greater chance of staying at the top of the social heap. The United States risks calcifying into a European-style class-based society."
Marco Rubio came form a different generation when his family emigrated form Cuba, There were many Federal and charitable programs that helped Cuban-Americans make the transition. These programs are now gone.
They made it to the middle class, my dad working as a bartender and my mother as a cashier and a maid. I didn't inherit any money from them. But I inherited something far better - the real opportunity to accomplish my dreams.
Rubio is the one who seems to be the one remembering a bygone era. Rubio is 43 and his family benefited from government programs that helped Cubans make the transition to American life that were not available to other Hispanics or even other Americans.
When the Cuban children from Operation Peter Pan--which was as an aftermath to the Castro Revolution--arrived in Miami they were met by Catholic Charities. The children were then sent to live with relatives or to foster homes, orphanages or boarding schools until their parents could leave Cuba.
The United States Congress passed the Cuban Adjustment Act in 1966 to help the immigrants who were classified as political refugees. The Cuban Refugee Program provided more than $1.3 billion of direct financial assistance. Emigrees also were eligible for public assistance, Medicare, free English courses, scholarships, and low-interest college loans.
That is the world Marco Rubio grew up in. Rightrdia thinks he has forgotten his Cuban-American roots and the largesse of the US government.
sources:
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/rubio-visit-hampshire-weighs-2016-run-23651340
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the_United_States
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