Dream Small, America

The American dream sounds great, but the relentless pursuit of "whatever glitters beyond the edge of our means" is doing us no favors, Frederic Morton writes in the LA Times. "Our passion for the out-of-reach is the very dynamic that (to use a long- familiar phrase) 'has made this country great,'" he writes. “But has it made us happy? And how much of our happiness is the bright mask of stress?”

Even President Obama comes in for a share of the blame, thanks to his taste in book titles: The Audacity of Hope means "a dweller in the land content with the possible falls short of America's spirit." Now, Morton wonders, “Do we have the courage to free ourselves from the fixation on the exceptional?”
(More American dream stories.)