"So you, too, want to own a little home of your own? You, too, have dreamed of a vine covered cottage . . . roses, green shutters . . . a fireplace . . . a well kept dog on a well kept lawn. A home of your own. That, probably more than anything else, is the American dream."

-Associated Press, 1947 POLITICIANS really seem to enjoy dropping the phrase "the American Dream" on us during election time.

Guess what? They support it. So do I. And why shouldn't I-I've lived it, or at least my definition of it.

I'm a baker's son from a small town in western Washington State. I never graduated from college. I was a Top 40 morning deejay for years. Yet, here I am, doing what I love, making a good living-and living a good life. If that's not "the American Dream," I don't know what is.

Do you?

There is no shortage of people trying to tell us what they think the Dream should be, or trying to claim the phrase as their own. To the Occupy Wall Street crowd, for instance, "the American Dream" usually means a free college education, free birth control, a guaranteed job, and free housing. To the Tea Party, it usually means the opposite-nothing free and no guarantees, but equality of opportunity for everyone.

Some seem to think that we've lost the American Dream somewhere along the way. President Obama's book The Audacity of Hope, for example, sports the subtitle "Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream." But if we're reclaiming something, wouldn't it be helpful to know what it is and who's taken it?

Of course-but those questions are much easier to ask than they are to answer. And that's the whole point-the "American Dream" itself is a big lie; a marketing slogan to sell a vision for America that is solely based on the political rhetoric of whichever party or politician or activist group wants to harness it.

But that wasn't always the case. In fact, decades ago, when the term was first coined, it wasn't about ideology or material things at all-it was about the embodiment of an idea.

American Dream 2.0

Occupy supporters will often make the claim that they are simply trying to get back the equality of opportunity that has allegedly gone missing in America. But, if you dig deeper, you find out quickly that they really don't just want opportunity, they want guarantees. Take, for example, this post from Occupy supporter Madonna Gauding: [T]he Occupy Wall Street movement is gaining momentum because most Americans now understand that the American Dream is only for the wealthy and well connected. But, the Occupy movement is demanding more than equal opportunity. We are questioning the American religion of free market capitalism, and the extreme individualism that fueled the corporate takeover of America. We are exploring a new morality, one that acknowledges our interdependence with each other, and insists, no matter how much the right screams "socialism" that the least among us deserve to have their basic needs met.

Make no mistake, it's the free market and capitalism that are on trial here; the very things that have powered the American Dream since the beginning.

DREAMING UP THE DREAM.

It's 1930-the stock market has crashed, and Americans are beginning to realize that the Roaring Twenties might be gone forever. Author James Truslow Adams, who'd won the Pulitzer Prize ten years earlier for his book The Founding of New England, was in the midst of writing a one-volume history of the country and was obsessed with this concept of "the American Dream." He was so obsessed, in fact, that he actually wanted to use it as the title of his new book. But his publisher had other ideas. They figured that nobody wanted to spend three bucks on a book about a dream, so a new title won out: The Epic of America.

But just because he was forced to change the title didn't mean he'd lost his obsession. So here's what Adams, in the midst of a major economic crisis, had to say about the Dream: 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.

It has been a dream of being able to grow to fullest development as man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in older civilizations, unrepressed by social orders which had been developed for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human being of any and every class. And that dream has been realized more fully in actual life here than anywhere else, though very imperfectly even among ourselves.

Two things are immediately clear. First, to Adams, the "Dream" was about equality of opportunity ("each according to ability or achievement"); and second, that it had nothing to do with material things ("not a dream of motor cars and high wages").

Defining the Dream: 1937

"President Roosevelt asked Congress today to save the 'American dream' of individual farm ownership."

-ASSOCIATED PRESS **

Defining the Dream: 1939

"The American dream is to come over here in steerage with 10 fingers as baggage and work and become great."

-THE MILWAUKEE JOURNAL *

But here's the most shocking part: Adams himself was not exactly viewed as a libertarian. In other sections of The Epic of America he wrote about income inequality and saving the Dream by cracking down on business interests. It's a fairly progressive message, with a lot of carping about the wealthy running the country and whining about the "intellectual worker or artist" falling behind "the "rising wage scale" of average workers. As one historian put it, Adams was "a typical liberal intellectual: a debunker of patriotic myths, a denouncer of Puritanism and Babbitry, a somewhat supercilious observer of the political scene."

Defining the Dream: 1944

"[A]merica is not finished. It need never be finished. America is at the morning of her destiny. If you believe with me, let us now resolve that we will never rest until we make the American dream a living and moving reality."

-GOV. THOMAS E. DEWEY *

Imagine that-a "typical liberal" in the 1930s had a more conservative vision of the Dream than many actual conservatives do today. Of course, being a "liberal" back then didn't mean what it does now-both parties, while having different ideas for the country, were still soundly rooted in traditional American principles. Adams was no exception. One source said this about his earlier book: "[Adams] put forth his idea of the cardinal American values: work, morality, individualism, fiscal responsibility, and dedication to duty. These were the values he saw present in the character of the early New Englanders. 'Americans love property but hate privilege' was his supporting theory."

Work. Morality. Individualism. Fiscal responsibility. Duty. Property.

Defining the Dream: 1949

"Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower warned last night that the American dream will turn into 'the American nightmare' if the people of this country become slaves of the Government. . . . [He said], 'We believe in human dignity, in human rights not subject to arbitrary curtailment. We believe that these rights can be fully possessed and effectively exercised only so long as man asserts and maintains himself the master not the serf of the institutions he creates.'"

-UNITED PRESS *

Those ideals are okay with me-and maybe that's why the idea of an "American Dream" caught on like wildfire. It was, at least at the beginning, uniquely mainstream American. The Dream may not have had a dictionary definition, but each person could insert their own hopes and aspirations onto its blank canvas and strive for a better life.

But that's not where the story ends.

When you get right down to it, the popularity of the phrase "the American Dream" really doesn't have a darn thing to do with James Truslow Adams. He was just the messenger. He doesn't deserve any more credit for people believing in "the American Dream" than Warren Harding does for Americans long revering their "Founding Fathers" (did you know that Harding actually invented that phrase in 1916?). Adams and Harding merely named something that tens of millions of people, generation after generation, already passionately believed in.

Defining the Dream: 1956

"And I say that the only hope for continued progress toward the realization of the American dream, the dream that we always think of on Lincoln's Birthday particularly, the dream of equal opportunity in every respect for every American, is through the election not only of a Republican President but a Republican House and Senate. . . ."

-VICE PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON **

Defining the Dream: 1963

"I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed-we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

-MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

Defining the Dream: 1964

"The American dream was not conceived in the conscience of conservatives but in the hope of enthusiasts. Yet in place of the American dream, we are now being offered an American nightmare by the peddlers of despair."

-SENATOR HUBERT HUMPHREY, SPEAKING ABOUT BARRY GOLDWATER *

IN PURSUIT OF THE DREAM.

Putting aside the specific term "the American Dream," just how far back does this idea really go? Nobody knows for sure, but some scholars think it all started with the French political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville, when he visited America in the 1830s. In Democracy in America, Tocqueville wrote, "There is no man who cannot reasonably expect to attain the amenities of life, for each knows that, given love of work, his future is certain. . . . No one is fully contented with his present fortune, all are perpetually striving, in a thousand ways, to improve it. Consider one of them at any period of his life and he will be found engaged with some new project for the purpose of increasing what he has."

If you go back even further, to Thomas Jefferson in 1776, you'll find these words written into the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

There it is, perhaps the earliest definition of The American Dream: the unalienable right to the pursuit of happiness. It was exactly the same message that James Truslow Adams would encapsulate (and name) more than 150 years later.

The Pursuit of Happyness

In 2006 Will Smith starred in a movie called The Pursuit of Happyness, a great film that I think was really about not being guaranteed anything by "the American Dream." It's about a man who loses just about everything-his job, his savings, his wife, his home-and ends up in homeless shelters and sleeping with his five-year-old on a restroom floor. Despite it all he retains his self-respect. He doesn't give up. He keeps working. He keeps trying. And it all pays off. He's now the CEO of a brokerage firm that bears his name.

I know Chris Gardner, the real-life man featured in the film, and have spoken with him many times over the years. I can tell you, without a doubt, that this is one story Hollywood did not have to embellish much.

POLLING THE DREAM.

Today, the American Dream is seemingly whatever a politician or activist wants it to be. It's no longer rooted in the Declaration or in our founding principle of equality of opportunity; it's an amoeba that shape-shifts to fit whatever agenda is attempting to harness it.

When unions and far-left activists decided they wanted to form a countermovement to the Tea Party, they got together at the 2011 "Take Back the American Dream" conference. The agenda included sessions with titles like "The American Dream Movement," "Starving the Dream," "Stop Outsourcing the Dream," "Jobs, Justice and the American Dream," "Paying for the Dream: Progressive Tax Reform and Social Justice" (naturally the dream is expensive), and, my personal favorite, "How Hip Hop, Superheroes and Digital Shorts Can Hyper-Charge the American Dream Movement."