Reviewing My Last Three Posts

Each of my last three posts connect to one big theme: American ideology. Each post presented a specific question, and I believe all three are very difficult to answer; meaning, really understanding and agreeing with one political side is going to be hard if you're going to be honest.

In the first of my posts, I suggested that we assess all of American politics not only based on the numbers but also based on the deeper assumptions and beliefs. For example, some republicans believe that survival motivates hard work. This belief motivates their politics (cutting funding on programs which allow people to survive without hard work).  I also suggested that in their extreme forms, the democrats' worldview will lead to utopianism because they want to rid the country of some kinds of suffering for all, and republicans' worldview leads to social darwinism, because they're willing to let the weak suffer. Realistically, nobody wants either of those.

Question: Where on the spectrum should we stand between the two worldviews and why?

Second, I explored how democrats and republicans view rights, both the positive kind and negative kind. Both like negative rights; only democrats like positive rights. I also mentioned in passing that republicans want rights that benefit all, and negative rights such as life and liberty do. Positive rights usually make no difference to the well off or make their lives worse because, practically, the well off have the money that the democrats want to tax. So, positive rights don't benefit everybody. This connected to the prior post because democrats, with their utopian leaning, try to expand the scope of rights, while republicans want that scope limited.

Question: Are rights only negative? Are there positive rights, things Americans should be given by the government? If so, what?

Last, I delved into the topic of the American Dream. Ultimately, through the post and conversation below, I came to the conclusion that people who believe in the American Dream either admit that it was never made for all Americans (defined as people on American land, which means the Constitution protects their rights since it is "the law of the land"), or admit that it has failed for a significant group of people because there has always been someone hindered by social barriers. It's always been the case that someone on American land has not been given the boundless society within which to create a great future: Native Americans, Africans and African-Americans, and women (who couldn't vote until less than 100 years ago and still are paid 77 cents per dollar earned by a man for the same job) are a few examples. I'm not saying upward mobility is impossible, only that important parts of the American Dream belief system don't seem to be true or right. (I'll sneak this in here: social darwinism and utopianism are front and center on this debate on who should have access).

Question: The American Dream could exist if every person on this land was of a certain profile, but what if the population was diverse?