American Values

American Values.

There are many values in the life of an American citizen. In the text “Basic American Values and Beliefs, we hear about some of them. We hear about individual freedom and self-reliance, equality of opportunity and completion and about material wealth and hard work.

Individual freedom might be one of the greatest values in American life and history. The first settlers made colonies which weren’t controlled by other people like a king or noblemen. They settled down in America to escape they’re controlled countries in Europe. The freedom meant that they were free and that they were individual people who could control their own destiny.
The freedom meant that many wanted to immigrate to the new world –The United States of America. However the freedom had a price to be paid. It was called self-reliance. It meant that people had to rely on themselves or they might risk losing their freedom.  Today many Americans think that it’s very important to rely on themselves and learn to solve their own problems and not getting to much help from others like the states and even their own family.

To be equal and have opportunities is also some of the reasons why people wanted to immigrate to America. To get the chance to be equal and not be divided by wealth, status or heritage. The opportunity to start over and don’t let people take over your life and decide what you have to do. The chance to have success.  

Even though there is a competition to succeed for a better life. The competition to win over the people who don’t want to work as hard as others, to get their price - freedom and success and to increase their standard of living.

People had to work hard to get a better life, because the immigrant didn’t get rich over night. Maybe they didn’t get a lot of money but the material success became a value to the American people. Besides that material success became a value to the people is was an insult to say that people were materialistic. The immigrants had to own materialistic things to get a certain status among people, if they didn’t possessed higher wealth or status. The reason to that is that they had to find a substitute.  It became more accepted to have material wealth, if they worked hard to get it.