Category: Breitbart
The American dream lives where people still choose to build
“For many, the American dream has become a nightmare,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has said, capturing a sentiment that has become common on the political left and across modern culture.
That line now travels far beyond politics. Scroll social media for five minutes, and you’ll see the same message repeated in endless variations: Owning a home is impossible. Raising a family is irresponsible. Work doesn’t pay. The system is rigged. The future is closed.
The American dream was never a promise of ease or comfort by age 25. It was an invitation to build something meaningful over time through responsibility and perseverance.
This message is everywhere, and it is doing real damage.
Harder lives, false conclusions
Life has become harder in tangible ways. Housing costs have surged. College has grown bloated and expensive. Inflation punished families already living close to the margins. Young adults feel delayed, uncertain, and anxious about the future.
Those frustrations are real. The conclusion being pushed alongside them is not.
The lie is not that things are harder. The lie is that effort no longer matters.
That lie spreads quickly online because it feels validating. A 30-second video declaring the system broken beyond repair asks nothing of the viewer except agreement. Building a life requires patience, sacrifice, and time. One goes viral. The other happens quietly.
Much of this shift comes from where young Americans now form their beliefs. For many in Generation Z, ideas about money, marriage, and the future are no longer shaped primarily by parents, churches, employers, or local communities. They are shaped by algorithm-driven platforms like TikTok and X, where extremity is rewarded with attention.
In those spaces, online figures routinely dismiss the American dream as a scam and portray starting a family as a trap rather than a source of meaning or stability. Cynicism is marketed as realism. Detachment is framed as wisdom. A generation looking for guidance is taught to expect failure before it ever tries.
Why despair is profitable
This narrative didn’t arise by accident. It feeds on real pain, but it’s also profitable. Political movements gain leverage by convincing voters that only sweeping control from the top can fix a hopeless system. Media companies thrive on pessimism because fear keeps people watching. Online grievance entrepreneurs build massive followings by telling young people that nothing they do will ever be enough.
If Americans stop believing they can build a future, someone else will gladly build power over them.
History keeps disproving this story.
Tell the generation that survived the Great Depression that the American dream was dead. Tell the men who returned from World War II, many wounded and broke, who used the GI Bill to buy homes and start families, that the climb was too steep. Tell the children of factory workers who grew up without air conditioning, college degrees, or safety nets — but still built middle-class lives through work and sacrifice — that the odds were unfair.
Tell the families of the 1950s and 1960s who lived modestly, saved slowly, and delayed gratification for decades that life was easy. Tell the Americans who endured oil crises, layoffs, and double-digit inflation in the 1970s and early 1980s that the system was designed for their comfort.
The dream was never easy
Life has never been easy. The climb has always been steep. The American dream was never built on convenience. It was built on resilience.
The truth is less dramatic — and far more hopeful. The American dream didn’t disappear. It changed shape.
It was never a promise of ease or comfort by age 25. It was an invitation to build something meaningful over time through responsibility and perseverance. For generations, it rested on a simple foundation: Work hard, form families, contribute locally, and invest in something bigger than yourself.
That path was never easy. What changed is not the dream, but our tolerance for effort and our patience for delayed reward.
The quiet math of real life
Despite the noise, the American dream remains visible in places social media rarely celebrates. It shows up in the quiet math of real life.
Research from the Institute for Family Studies finds that stably married Americans approaching retirement hold, on average, more than $640,000 in household assets, compared with roughly $167,000 for divorced or never-married adults — even after accounting for age, education, and race. That gap reflects decades of shared sacrifice, income pooling, planning, and commitment.
These stories don’t trend online. They play out quietly every day.
Ironically, many of the loudest voices declaring the dream dead are doing quite well selling that message. Entire online brands are built on telling people that life is impossible — while generating substantial revenue and influence in the process. Despair has become an industry.
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Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty Images
What truly threatens the American dream is not capitalism, competition, or even inequality. It’s a culture that encourages permanent adolescence. A culture that treats commitment as a burden, delays adulthood indefinitely, and then wonders why people feel anxious and untethered.
The American dream doesn’t die because life is hard. It dies when people are convinced that hard things aren’t worth doing.
Too many young Americans are told that marriage can wait, children are optional, faith is outdated, and roots are restrictive. They’re promised freedom through detachment and fulfillment through endless choice — then wake up years later with more options than ever and less meaning than expected.
Builders still have the advantage
This isn’t a policy argument. It’s a cultural one. No law can manufacture purpose. No program can force optimism. But a nation that teaches its citizens the dream is dead shouldn’t be surprised when fewer people try to live it.
The American dream has always belonged to builders of families, businesses, and communities. It never belonged to those waiting for perfect conditions or guaranteed outcomes.
The American dream isn’t dead. But telling Americans that it is has become fashionable, profitable, and politically useful.
The question is whether we continue to accept that story — or choose, once again, to build.
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What Christmas says to tyrants
As we come to the end of 2025, peace feels hard to find. We are surrounded by news of barbaric terrorism once again — most recently in Australia — erupting in violent displays of prideful, ethnic hatred. We watch regional wars grind on, prolonged by an implacable tyrant bent on self-glorification and the expansion of his own wealth and power.
At such a time, it is good to remember that 2,000 years ago, a child was born for whom there was no room at the inn — a child laid instead in a stable because there was nowhere else to go. Jesus spent his childhood in the simplest of households and his adulthood accounting for every penny, for the life of a carpenter brought little money.
Let us set aside the calamities of the world, if only for a moment, and celebrate the birth of the most extraordinary child ever born — the one who offers eternal love and shelter from the storm.
When Jesus left his home to serve the world, his life became unlike that of the foxes, who have dens, or the birds, who have nests. The Son of Man had no place to lay his head. He rejected the paths of wealth, power, and pride, choosing instead humility, love, and suffering.
His ministry began when he read from the prophet Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.” That good news was revolutionary. God was not, as the Greeks imagined, a distant and uncaring master of abstractions. Nor was he, as many expected, a cold and exacting judge.
The good news was that God is filled with love for humanity — and that was cause for celebration.
So Jesus’ first miracle was not an act of conquest or condemnation, but joy: the transformation of water into wine at a wedding in Cana.
When Jesus chose his companions, he chose people like himself — humble, ordinary, and yet extraordinary. He welcomed women into his ministry, from his mother Mary to Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna, and many others, treating their womanhood as sacred. As F.R. Maltby observed, Jesus promised his followers three things: that they would be completely fearless, absurdly happy, and in constant trouble. Wherever they went, they brought hope, kindness, and cheer, and when Jesus spoke, his words carried the breath of heaven.
Jesus welcomed everyone he encountered — Jews and Romans, Greeks and Samaritans. He spoke with rabbis, tax collectors, and sinners alike. But he devoted his deepest attention to those who suffered: the blind, the deaf, the lame, the lepers. He touched those no one else would touch and loved those no one else would love.
When disciples of John the Baptist asked who he was, Jesus answered simply: “Tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them” (Luke 7:22).
Even more radical was his teaching. “Love your enemies,” he said. “Bless those who curse you. Do good to those who hate you. Pray for those who mistreat you. As you would have others treat you, so must you treat them.”
And above all: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27).
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Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images
Jesus taught through parables, stories anyone could understand. Perhaps the most famous is that of the prodigal son — a young man who squandered his inheritance on gambling, drink, and excess, only to be welcomed home with celebration rather than condemnation. Jesus explained it this way: “If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray?” (Matthew 18:12).
God, in his love, was searching for a lost humanity, and Jesus was the shepherd sent to bring it home.
When the Pharisees asked when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus answered, “The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). It is entered freely — not by force, not by empire, not by the power of Caesar. There exists a realm where Caesar’s writ does not run, a domain belonging wholly to God.
To bring us into that kingdom of peace, Christ endured the cross — the only place on earth that finally made room for one so profoundly good.
Before he departed, he instructed his apostles to greet every home with a prayer for peace — a peace available only in the kingdom he builds within each of us.
So let us set aside the calamities of the world, if only for a moment, and celebrate the birth of the most extraordinary child ever born — the one who offers eternal love and shelter from the storm.
Merry Christmas.
What are freedom cities, and when will you live in one?
Everywhere you look, it seems like there is an embarrassment of riches when it comes to plans for futuristic, dystopian systems of government. However, one such plan has already materialized and has caught the attention of some very powerful people: freedom cities.
While it’s too early to tell if freedom cities will be a dystopian nightmare or, in the more likely scenario, a merely fascinating innovation, what is clear is that many powerful people have been interested in the idea for years.
‘Our objective will be a quantum leap in the American standard of living.’
First, what are freedom cities?
Freedom cities are essentially deregulated economic zones designed to encourage innovation and technological development without (or with much less) cumbersome bureaucracy, rules, and taxes.
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Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images
According to an article by Newsweek, the creation of a freedom city in the United States would require at least two states to demarcate land along their borders and to agree on taxation and policy.
But why should we care about what is probably just a billionaire pipe dream to ease the billionaire tax burden?
Well, one of the powerful people who is very interested in these cities is President Donald Trump.
Freedom cities have been on President Trump’s mind for nearly three years at least.
In March 2023, then-former President Trump issued a video statement detailing several plans to revitalize American innovation.
Past generations of Americans pursued big dreams and daring projects that once seemed absolutely impossible. They pushed across an unsettled continent and built new cities in the wild frontier. They transformed American life with the interstate highway system — magnificent, it was. And they launched a vast network of satellites into orbit all around the earth.
But today our country has lost its boldness. Under my leadership, we will get it back in a very big way. If you look at just three years ago, what we were doing was unthinkable — how good it was, how great it was for our country.
Our objective will be a quantum leap in the American standard of living. … Here are just a few of the ways we can do it.
Almost one-third of the land mass of the United States is owned by the federal government. With just a very, very small portion of that land, just a fraction, one-half of one percent — would you believe that? — we should hold a contest to charter up to 10 new cities and award them to the best proposals for development.
In other words, we’ll actually build new cities in our country again. These freedom cities will reopen the frontier, reignite American imagination, and give hundreds of thousands of young people and other people — all hardworking families — a new shot at home ownership and in fact the American dream.
While President Trump’s plans have not yet been put into practice in the United States, the idea of a freedom city has already been put into practice in Honduras, for example.
According to Newsweek, Pronomos Capital, a venture capital firm backed by tech billionaires Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen, has helped push for the creation and development of Prospera ZEDE, a privately run economic zone on parts of Roatan, an island off the coast of Honduras, and on the coast of La Ceiba, Honduras.
According to the company’s website, Próspera ZEDE (Zone of Economic Development and Employment) is “a startup zone with a regulatory system designed for entrepreneurs to build better, cheaper, and faster than anywhere else in the world.”
However, this economic zone in Honduras has seen its fair share of criticism from locals, pushback from the Honduran government, and legal challenges since its establishment.
Think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute have also taken an interest in the creation of freedom cities in the United States. According to a March 2025 report produced by the AEI Housing Center, freedom cities “offer a dynamic framework for re-shoring critical industries, expanding housing affordability, and facilitating rapid progress in emerging fields such as biotechnology, aeronautics, and energy.”
The AEI even drafted a “homesteading map” showing the pockets of federal land in Western states that could potentially be used for freedom cities, forecasting that the development of freedom cities would take anywhere between 40 and 50 years.
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