The willingness to believe, the determination to pursue, the satisfaction of accomplishment!

 

The pursuit of the American dream

We read or hear it from time to time: “the American Dream is dead.” 

Blaine L. Pardoe | August 7, 2026 www.americanthinker.com

We read or hear it from time to time: “the American Dream is dead.” It’s usually stated this way to feed some narrative or agenda. It is a lie told to manipulate the weak-minded in our society.

The concept of the American Dream is often confused. Most of that is because there is no single definition of what constitutes that ideal. For some, it is the opportunity for upward mobility in society. For others, it is raising a family. Others still believe the dream is having a home and being part of a friendly/safe community. Boomers tend to believe they are more successful and prosperous than the previous generation. The dream is personal, something that each one of us holds private and dear. 

Our forefathers came to this country to better themselves. They wanted to be part of something bigger; something incredible: the great American experiment. What sparked them was, and remains, a land of opportunity. They left behind nations where the chance to advance and grow was stifled. They fled countries where freedoms were not permitted. America is a place where a core set of rights exists, and the government cannot take them away.

The Left has tried to corrupt that dream. Leftists have attempted to redefine it as something that is owed by the nation. Their attempts to redefine the dream have made it about material things, like owning a house. The Left embraces the idea that the government is the source of the dream, that it is something to be distributed rather than earned. They claim it’s about equity; equal outcomes regardless of effort. While individuals are free to accept this definition, they are missing the point. It is this kind of thinking that fosters the taint of socialism and communism that is so prevalent. “It’s not fair that he or she is successful. I should have all the success they do.” This kind of thinking is flawed and lazy, the antithesis of what it is to want the dream. 

The dream was never about material goods, though that may come with achieving it. It was about the pursuit of the dream. Even in the Declaration of Independence, our Founders said that we have the right to pursue happiness. We don’t have a guarantee of that joy, simply a level playing field to quest for happiness. 

Achieving the American Dream was never supposed to be easy. Being an American means working, educating yourself, striving to be better. If it were easy, everyone would have it. It shouldn’t be easy. Working for it is a reward in itself. Those who sit by and expect success to be dropped in their laps are the most miserable souls in the nation. Working hard to obtain a goal, achieve an objective (financial or otherwise), gives a person a sense of pride. It establishes a work ethic. The accomplishment feeds the soul and helps us become better people and citizens. Having it handed to you with no effort simply makes you desire more.

Part of the American Dream is embracing your citizenship and being willing to defend it. Citizens have obligations to society, be it voting, jury duty, or simply following the laws. It is why when we hear of fraud, many of us take it personally. Those were our tax dollars, and the thought of someone stealing them is a violation of the contract of citizenship that we as a society embrace.

Achieving whatever definition of the American Dream is not an endgame. Once you achieve it, you set new goals, you work harder and smarter to continue to grow. That’s how we, as a nation, evolve. Most who accomplish their goals give back in some way to others. They help them rise and find their own American Dream. This can be through volunteer work, donations, churches, or any number of ways.

We don’t need a single definition of the dream; we simply need the willingness to believe in it. Each one of us needs to be ready to roll up our sleeves and work hard to embrace it. Those who claim the dream is dead don’t understand that it was never for the government to define or fulfill that dream, but for us individually to.

 

This action by President Trump should take control of one of our Nation's pressing problems.

 

Trump signs executive orders targeting birthright citizenship and birth tourism

The Supreme Court in June struck down Trump's executive order directing federal agencies to interpret the 14th Amendment as not granting citizenship to the children of illegal migrants.

By Misty Severi  August 6, 2026 justthenews.com

President Donald Trump signed two executive orders Thursday that attempt to restrict birthright citizenship and end the practice of “birth tourism," in hopes of circumventing a recent Supreme Court decision.

The Supreme Court in June struck down Trump's executive order directing federal agencies to interpret the 14th Amendment as not granting citizenship to the children of illegal migrants. 

“We had a very unfortunate decision in the Supreme Court concerning birthright,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “It was close, but a very, very unfortunate decision. So we’re making adjustments because it’s very unfair.”

The order restricting birthright citizenship expands the definition of what children born in the United States would be ineligible for automatic citizenship, including children of “alien enemies of the United States, members of foreign terrorist organizations and large categories of people who lobby and act on behalf of foreign governments." 

The other order directs the State Department to issue rules and guidance to stop birth tourism, according to Axios, even as U.S. law already bans tourists from obtaining visas "for the primary purpose of obtaining U.S. citizenship for a child by giving birth in the United States."

Misty Severi is a news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage. 

 

Spain's illegal immigration invasion is a definite likeness to the Biden southern border fiaco.

 

Spain’s Migrant Invasion Mirrors Biden’s Southern Border

Emmy Griffin patriotpost.us 8-4-26

Tens of thousands of Moroccan migrants flooded into Ceuta in a perfect storm of bad socialist policies and bad international relations.

Late last week, Spain experienced a coordinated border invasion of its territory of Ceuta, one of two parts of the European Union that border an African nation — Morocco. Ceuta is home to 84,000 people.

Around 60,000 Moroccan migrants, most of them military-aged men, entered Ceuta by swimming across the water. Seventy-two people died either by drowning or by being crushed in the surge at the border. This mass migration into Spanish territory was a perfect storm of bad socialist policy and bad diplomatic relations.

Spain has some of the worst immigration policies in the EU. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is a creature of the far Left and takes the worst side of every international issue. In the Israel-Gaza war, for example, he is pro-Hamas. In the Iran war, he is pro-IRGC. And to solve Spain’s fertility issue (the birth rate there is 1.42 children per woman), Sánchez wants to import more people from the third world.

Sound familiar?

Last December, Sánchez was also responsible for issuing Spain’s seventh mass amnesty in 40 years as a counterprotest against “MAGA-style leaders.” His government estimated there would be 500,000 applicants — they were woefully wrong. Spain was buried under more than a million applications.

This amnesty, combined with last month’s Spanish Supreme Court ruling declaring that migrants who cross into Spain by sea will not be immediately deported, was the impetus for Ceuta’s current situation.

According to Spain’s Ministry of the Interior, the “court ruling encouraged the flow of undocumented migrants, mostly young people.” However, last week’s invasion didn’t happen in a vacuum. Migrants from Morocco want to escape economic hardship, yes, but the mass exodus was likely a political setup by Morocco’s government.

In late July, Sánchez visited Algeria and declared that it was a particularly important strategic partner. Well, Morocco and Algeria are rival North African countries that are constantly striving to be top dog. In Morocco’s eyes, Spain’s declaration that Algeria was strategically important meant that Morocco was less important. So, Morocco decided to prove just how important it is to Spain’s sovereignty. According to some of the migrants, they were encouraged to cross the border by social media rumors, and Moroccan authorities had the gates wide open, beckoning people through.

The immigration crisis has reached a breaking point, and Ceuta’s mayor-president, Juan Jesús Vivas, has called on Madrid for aid. Sánchez did send some support but is refusing to call the invasion an emergency. He also visited Ceuta on Saturday. Stores shuttered their doors, and residents huddled in their houses — except for those protesting Sánchez.

To help close the border, Spain put out 1,600 feet of floating border wall. So far, 48,000 of the 60,000 migrants have returned to Morocco, and Sánchez has sent help to round up those who refuse to leave.

Other EU countries are alarmed at what Spain’s lax laws have allowed to happen: an emergency meeting to discuss border security will occur today, and Italy has taken the preemptive measure of closing off its borders to people coming from Spain for the next month — a move that Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni made clear was “an extraordinary measure, adopted to safeguard national security and prevent possible repercussions for our nation.”

Sánchez, of course, blames the EU for overreacting, and his government officials have gone so far as to blame President Donald Trump and Israel. In other words, Spain’s far-left party has no accountability.

Sound familiar?

As other have noted, this invasion mirrors the U.S. southern border under President Joe Biden, and it will again if a likeminded Democrat takes office in 2028. Like the increasingly communist Democrat Party, Sánchez cares more about importing future voters to keep him in power than he cares about the people who elected him to serve them.

Mass illegal immigration and refusing to enforce immigration law are recipes for misery and disaster. For those desperate souls trying to cross the border illegally, the price is hardship, exploitation, abuse, and even death. And for those on the receiving end, the price is chaos in the streets, crime, and volatile living situations. It’s a zero-sum game for the people whom politicians use as pawns in their power plays.

 

Thank Heaven, ICE continues to do its job, despite Democrat outrage!

 

Leftist Rags Decry ICE Arresting Illegals at Airports

Emmy Griffin patriotpost.us 8-4-26

While The Gray Lady and WaPo are upset about it, the uptick in arrests of illegal aliens boarding domestic flights is a coup for the Trump administration.

Both The New York Times and The Washington Post are hyperventilating because Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are arresting illegal aliens at airports, which they claim is a newfangled alliance between the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and ICE.

ICE agents arresting illegal aliens at airports is not a new phenomenon, but the current level of arrests is.

According to the Times and WaPo, the individuals who are being arrested as they attempt to board domestic flights have either overstayed their visas, are in the process of renewing their visas, or recently married an American citizen and have not yet established permanent residency. Of course, the left-leaning agitprops neglected to mention that a significant number of these arrestees have criminal records and/or are a threat to national security.

Criminals and potential terrorists don’t garner Leftmedia sympathy; it’s the au pair or the honeymooning newlyweds who get attention. This helps spread the long-running leftist narrative: Visa enforcement should be handled not with the heavy hand of ICE but with kid gloves.

For leftists, “people with expired visas” are not lawbreakers. Cesar Vargas, New York’s first illegal immigrant attorney, said in 2018 that arresting someone who has overstayed their visa is like arresting someone for a parking ticket: It’s a civil offense, not a criminal one, so it shouldn’t be treated as a crime worthy of police intervention. Interestingly, Vargas married an American citizen and is no longer “undocumented.”

Had visa enforcement been strictly policed, several of the 9/11 hijackers would never have boarded those planes. Evoking the 9/11 Islamist attack is inconsequential to leftists, however, because they want to harp on today’s narrative of oppressors vs. oppressed. Therefore, they sniff out immigration lawyers who can attest that the shift by ICE and TSA under the Trump administration is much more intense than they have experienced.

The New York Times elaborated:

Shannon Shepherd, an immigration lawyer who is vice chair for the Chicago chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said she and other lawyers were revising longstanding advice about domestic air travel.

“Before, I was saying, ‘As long as you have an ID, you can travel domestically,’” Ms. Shepherd said. “Now I am turning around and saying, ‘If you are in the process of changing status, avoid any travel.’”

This likely means that the Biden administration was not arresting people for traveling with an expired visa, not that the immigration laws are new. “This administration is working diligently to ensure that aliens in our country illegally can no longer fly unless it is out of our country to self-deport,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.

Reading between the lines, this shift marks something much more interesting.

First, it means that Border Patrol has staunched the flow of illegal aliens crossing the border. President Donald Trump did this without Congress having to enact any more laws. Remember when Joe Biden’s administration claimed that it couldn’t close the border because it didn’t have the authority and because the U.S. didn’t have the right laws in place?

Second, it means that ICE’s boots-on-the-ground measures have been successful — notwithstanding the violent and angry protests by leftists in blue states like Minnesota.

Third, it means that ICE is fine-tuning its efforts. There have been an immense number of self-deportations, and those being detained now are likely the holdouts.

Despite pushback from anti-ICE protesters across the country, the Trump administration’s deportation efforts have been a roaring success, even if that narrative won’t get splashed across the front pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post. Their griping is a victory flag for the American people.