Peter W. Schramm

Abraham Lincoln and the Invention of
The American Dream.

            Monday, February 10, 2014 at 4:00 pm

Ashley-Wilkes Room at the Savannah Center
in The Villages, Florida

   This event is free and open to the public,
but seating is limited. 

This year we also invite you to attend a private dinner with Professor Schramm immediately following his talk for a follow-up discussion.

Atlanta Room at the Savannah Center
in The Villages, Florida

            Cost: $50.  Free of charge for members of The Villages Patriots Club.

For more information or to make your reservation, please call 419-289-5428 (toll free 877-289-5411) or send an email to
Sally Rhoades at [email protected].  

 

In talking about how inventive Americans are, Mark Twain once pointed out that we are so inventive that we invented the idea of freedom.  Not bad, he said, not bad at all. Benjamin Franklin invented something called the American Dream.

Both of these ideas are connected to our unique republican form of government.  In America, everyone has the equal opportunity to become legitimately unequal.  In today’s sometimes upside down world where wealth redistribution is more often praised than wealth creation, where the 50-year government project called the “war on poverty” is thought to be successful, it may be good to remind ourselves that it was the original Americans who insisted—through hard-work and self-reliance—that poverty can be ended.  They had the radical idea that ordinary human beings, if given the opportunity, could prove that free men could be prosperous.

Both Washington and Lincoln’s lives, and statesmanship, were proof that America is the home of freedom and the American Dream.

We invite you to join Peter Schramm, Professor of Political Science and Senior Fellow at the Ashbrook Center, as he speaks on Abraham Lincoln and the Invention of The American Dream.