Conflicting Value Systems: The Paradox at the Heart of the American Dream

We in the United States pride ourselves in being a society that is able to assimilate and include people of every ethnic group, cultural or religious background, belief or value system. The reason being that the Founding Fathers of this great nation had a profound, inspired vision—a vision of multi-cultural, multi-ethnic inclusion—a vision of all of mankind working together for a brighter future, free from the bonds of political tyranny or religious persecution or ethnic discrimination.

However, the important thing to keep in mind is that the vision of the Founding Fathers—a vision that gives us the remarkable documents that are the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States—was a vision that was rooted in a specific value sysem that they shared and agreed upon. Namely, a value system that values freedom, inclusion, religious tolerance, multiculturalism—i.e. the "unalienable rights" to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" and, as stated in the Pledge of Allegiance, "with liberty and justice for all."

The assumption here is that other people—the people whom we want to assimilate into the union—share in this vision and this value system.

But what if they don't? What if the people who seek to be assimilated or included believe in some form of authoritarianism or totalitarianism that seeks to deny the rights and freedoms of others while imposing their own value system on them? What if they happen to be, for arguments' sake, religious authoritarians or bigots or anarchists or proponents of totalitarianism or believers in chaos and mob rule? What if they engage in discriminatory practices or political witch-hunts? What if they practice cannibalism, human sacrifice or other criminal activities?

Surely, by including such people into our union, we undermine the vision of the Founding Fathers? By including authoritarians or bigots into our society, we contribute to making our society a little more authoritarian and bigoted. By inviting tyrants or anarchists into our midst, we contribute to making our society a little more tyrannical or chaotic, as the case may be. By giving credence to those who do not share our values, we undermine the value system at the core of the U.S. Constitution—the vision of the Founding Fathers—namely the vision of equality, life, liberty and justice for all.

However, what is the cost of excluding such people from our union? By excluding those whom we deem to be unfit for inclusion—those whom we deem not to share in our vision or our value system—are we, in effect, guilty of undermining our own vision of universal inclusion and liberty from within? Do we become authoritarians and bigots ourselves when we seek to protect our vision of inclusion and liberty from other authoritarians and bigots (or, rather, those we deem to be authoritarians and bigots)? Are we imposing our value system on others when we seek to protect our values of inclusion and acceptance from those who seek to impose their value system on us?

This scenario recurs only too often in U.S. history—all the way from the Salem witch-hunts of the 1690's, in pre-Revolutionary America, when over a hundred innocents were accused and detained, and several of them, executed, on the grounds of suspicion resulting from mass hysteria over witchcraft; to the Red Scare and the McCarthy trials of the 1940's and '50's, when thousands of American citizens were black-listed, detained and executed on the unproven, and often unfounded, suspicion of being Communist-sympathizers; all the way down to the Bush administration's post-9/11 hard-line policies, when the administration felt itself compelled to resort to such policies as preemptive military invasion, preemptive detention and incarceration and even torture and warrantless wiretapping, all on the grounds of national security—the watchword in such cases presumably being, "better safe than sorry."

But before we condemn those whose actions we find disagreeable, we must honestly consider whether, given the same circumstances, any of us would have acted any differently. How many of us are truly that noble and self-sacrificing that we would place national interest and the values and vision of the Founding Fathers above personal interest and expedience or the furthering of our own careers, even at the expense of the lives of others?

I guess that is the basic paradox at the heart of the American Dream—sometimes the cost of defending that dream from those who would seek to undermine or destroy it is so great that we end up undermining and destroying the dream ourselves. But perhaps it is better to have a vision, even if one fails to live up to it, than not to have any vision at all.

Horizon Cybermedia is dedicated to a vision of freedom and artistic self-expression that is rooted in truth and the highest of values and standards. We aspire to live up to and fulfill that vision and we look forward to your support in enabling us to do so. Do check out our website at http://www.explorationtheseries.com and spread the word about us by inviting your friends and neighbors to check out our website as well.

Wishing you the very best,

Uday Gunjikar,
Founder and CEO,
Horizon Cybermedia, Inc.
To learn more about Horizon Cybermedia and Exploration with Uday Gunjikar visit http://www.explorationtheseries.com.