Jack Wakeland in TIA Daily on The American Dream:
[Americans] enjoy their luxuries and aren’t shy about having them. They’re mobile, changing jobs and cities as circumstances suit them. They move to warm sunny places. Some are adaptable in their goals and some are not, but the vast majority are sure that they control the course of their own lives. In America, every man can be his own king, a successful, independent, happy king. That’s the American Dream. Because it’s all around, we often don’t stop to notice. Outside America, however, it is noticed.
…There is no where else on earth that quite has the ‘feel’ of America. The idea that it is okay to make money and to go out and get what you want — the acceptance of egoism — runs deeper here than anywhere on earth. The consequence — a feeling shared by a majority of people that life is open to them, that anything is possible, and that they’re in the middle of getting where they want to go — is unique to America.
This feeling — an emotion some people call ‘freedom,’ but is actually happiness — has captured the imagination of the rest of the world. Because they can see that there is a way to reach it, people throughout the world want to have it, too. [“The Empire of the Pursuit of Happiness”, TIA Daily, Oct 11, 2004]