[caption id="attachment_40" align="alignright" width="110" caption="Say it ain&#39;t so."]<img class="size-full wp-image-40" title="dream" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/dream.jpg" alt="Say it ain't so." width="110" height="80" />[/caption]

There are times I find myself wondering if the sentiment in the sign in the picture might just be true.

I hope it isn't. The American Dream is another one of those wonderful things that come to us courtesy of American exceptionalism. After all, have you ever heard of the "Greek Dream?" Or the "Chinese Dream?"

Nope, even though I would imagine folks in those countries and most others want the same things for themselves and their children that we do here in the USA. A nice home in a safe neighborhood, good food and warm clothes, a good education and a future better than the present.

I don't know what's happening in many of these other countries, but I worry that it's starting to slip away here. We're living in a country now where the top 1 percent of wage earners have as much wealth as the bottom 50 percent, and that's pretty dangerous territory for a democracy, a republic or whatever you want to call what we've got.

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But the problem is about a lot more than money. We aren't doing a very good job of educating our children anymore. Census Bureau statistics say 20 percent of American adults are functionally illiterate and another 20 percent don't have the literacy skills to do a job as simple as shift leader at a fast-food restaurant. Roughly half of all adults can't balance a checkbook or understand the instructions on a prescription bottle.

And when they do learn?

What are we teaching them then? That making money is the height of achievement? That might makes right, and it's all right for us to throw our power around on the international scene?

That isn't what my parents taught me. It isn't what I have taught my children, and I don't believe it will be what they teach theirs.

In the end, all that really matters is the way we treat other people. Every major religion and most of the minor ones are based on the law of reciprocity. We also know it as the Golden Rule.

If we would all practice that, I do believe our dreams will live forever.