AMERICAN DREAM: What is the American Dream?

If we are going to explore a new American Dream, we thought that first we should look into its origins and definition.  Ha!  Easier said than done.  Just a cursory search of the Web and my head was ready to pop off.  Indeed, I think that's part of the point: Everyone seems to have a different perspective on precisely what IS the American Dream, where did it begin, and where is it going.  If we ask 100 people "What is the American Dream?", we'll probably get at least 60 different answers.  Perhaps that itself is part of the American Dream: the freedom to define one's own dream.  Maybe we should indeed ask 100 different people.  But in the meantime. let's have a look at the origins of the "American Dream".  In examining several sources, a general consensus seems to be that historian James Truslow Adams populated the phrase "American Dream" in his 1931 book Epic of America: 

The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, also too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but 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.

He also wrote:

The American Dream, that has lured tens of millions of all nations to our shores in the past century has not been a dream of material plenty, though that has doubtlessly counted heavily. It has been a dream of being able to grow to fullest development as a man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in the older civilizations, unrepressed by social orders which had developed for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human being of any and every class.

That's food-for-thought.  -- Laura

How about you?  What is YOUR notion of the American Dream?