In 1931, historian James Truslow Adams defined the American Dream as “a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position” (Adams, 1931, p. 214-215).  The American Dream has always been a dream about equality. Whether one’s personal interpretation about the Dream is one of consumerism – if you work hard, you can buy all the things you want – or a more democratic and universal sense of brotherhood, the Dream was one where no matter what your origins, you could do better for yourself. Yet, if one were to search the Internet for the American Dream, the top results – for several pages! – would be lamentations about the death of the American Dream. Watch the videos, read the essays or opinion pieces, and the prevailing theme is this: The American Dream has been brutally tortured with repeated shallow cuts and the prognosis is terminal. This is not just a modern view of the Dream, but a repeated pattern first expressed by Adams himself when arguing that the Dream had become one of buying things instead of the grand equality promised by our founding documents. How did we, the self-proclaimed greatest nation on earth, go from the lofty ideals of “all men are created equal” and hold an inalienable right to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” to poking the corpse of Uncle Sam lying in the ditch?