4/7/2025

Last week’s curation at RealClear’s American Civics portal features Jack Miller’s latest piece at RealClearPolitics, “The American Dream Is Far From Over.” Part autobiography, part call for Americans to reinvest in civic education, Miller speaks about the American Dream that he and his family have lived first-hand – and argues that it is still very much alive today.

Miller is grateful to live in a country “where everyone has the freedom to pursue one’s own dreams, a country whose vision is that all should be judged as individuals – judged, as Martin Luther King Jr. said, ‘by the content of their character.’” As evidence of this, he highlights the story of his own family, who came to the United States around the turn of the 20th century. Miller then recalls how he began the Quill Corporation, which he started “with the phone in my dad’s chicken store and $2,000 borrowed from my father-in-law.” In 1998, over 40 years after founding Quill, which swelled to over 800,000 customers nationwide, Miller sold it to Staples.

Miller pushes back against radical ideological claims that the United States is racist to the core and those who are trying to divide us in a myriad of other ways. “Traditional patriotism has declined among younger generations,” he writes, “being replaced with a lot of misinformation about America and about the progress we are making toward realizing our founding vision. Some are even advocating that we change our form of government.”

The antidote to this looming problem is a rebirth of civics. Miller says that this movement is being spearheaded by the eponymous Jack Miller Center, which over the past 20 years has built “a network of over 1,200 professors on more than 300 campuses.” He points out that certain states are passing laws that require all students to take a course in American civics before they graduate, among other policies that are aimed at reinvigorating civics in our country.

“Now, at the age of 96, 123 years after my grandparents came to this country with my one-year-old father in their arms, as I look back on my life, I am even more grateful to them for having the courage to make the trip,” Miller says. “And I want to preserve the gift they gave me for my children, grandchildren, and seven – so far – great-grandchildren.”