It's the American dream. An impoverished family-- immigrants or natives-- sacrifices everything to provide a better life for the their children. They live in squalor, wear worn clothes, live off the cheapest foodstuffs available, forgo healthcare, sell assets, deplete savings, anything, just to provide for the their children.

And always, always, that provision places education foremost.

Often, our leaders and thinkers will claim that America is her courts, her legislatures, her legal documents. They misspeak.

These are not America, only the defenders of America. Our country, above all else, are these parents who sacrifice everything to build their families, and improve their lot-- because in so doing, they build America, and improve our world. So the Latina mother living in a slum, working three jobs at minimum wages, is as American as any of the heroes of our history books. She isn't pursuing the American Dream; she is the Dream

So what happened? This is what we, as individuals, point to and admire in the American Dream... but when government-- our government-- assembles, where did the Dream go? How is it that we will sacrifice everything for this shared individual goal, but when we send our taxes and our votes off to government, that individual passion is gone? How is it that our government does not embrace the American Dream?

We sacrifice for our children, we sacrifice for their education; and yet, somehow, education and our children are always the last thing considered, and the first thing cut?

Simple. We haven't put our foot down. We haven't insisted on better.

We have watched the campaign donors, the big multinationals, the Pentagon, the bureaucrats, and the lobbyists get the lion's share. We haven't said that education comes first. We haven't demanded that children, ALL children, are to come first.

We have to insist that our government begin living up to the American Dream.