What’s Does The American Dream Movement Dream Of As The New American Dream?

Something that occurred to me at Netroots Nation is that frustrated progressives have fallen into a trap of thinking that the answers to policy questions are more obvious than they really are. In a world awash in right-wing nonsense, it becomes easy to think that the obvious wrongness of the right’s policy prescriptions implies that the correct policy ideas are also obvious. But they’re not! Not at all.

One way of getting at this is David Roberts’ critique of Van Jones on the American Dream:

There’s something that’s been bothering me, though. A few times now I’ve heard heard Jones (and others) articulate the America Dream roughly the way Bill Clinton used to: work hard, play by the rules, and you’ll be able to make a decent living and support your family.

Now. I certainly think if you work hard and don’t break the law you should be able to make a living in America! But … really? Is that it? That’s our dream? Be a good worker and you won’t starve? Surely there’s something bigger than that involved.

Exactly so. But I think you find that this relatively narrow vision exists in part because there’s a relatively narrow zone of progressive consensus. If I write that the government should be doing more to fight unemployment and that progressive taxation is preferable to slashing Social Security or cutting programs for the poor, I find myself inside a comfortable zone of agreement. But what if I’m interested in some other issues? Public health? On gchat this morning, Matthew Cameron and I were debating junk food taxes and I know when Igor Volsky and I have written about booze taxes before you don’t get universal asset to any view. Roberts is passionate about the idea of “great places” as am I but, again, points of emphasis really vary dramatically on this subject. In particular, I’d be happy to see certain great places (San Francisco, Westside LA, Brownstone Brooklyn, Arlington County) be made considerably less great if it meant we could pack more people into them. How does the dream of the good life apply to dreamers who happen to have been born in Mexico? Is the ability to become a multi-millionaire by selling songs part of the American dream, or is widely available free downloads of digital media part of the American dream?

Obviously, my preference is for everyone to just admit that I’m correct about all these contested issues and then embrace Stalin-like message discipline in pushing the Yglesias agenda forward. But barring that, I’d like to see more acknowledgment that if you want to transform America, you need a clearer idea of what you’re trying to do.