This is looking up at the crown from inside. It's all I could find for now.
Posted on 07/06/2009 1:18:25 PM PDT by ruination
The Statue of Liberty's crown is open again for the first time since the Sept. 11 attacks. That's symbolic. It was reopened on the Fourth of July, very symbolic. The decision was announced in May on the "Today" show -- hugely symbolic -- by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. "The economic times we're going through really call for hope and optimism," he said, and "nothing symbolizes" those things like the Statue of Liberty.
Icons are handy that way. They're instantly recognizable. But the meaning of this one has gotten muddled over the years. So, to mark this occasion, I'd like to suggest a little surgery that will make the symbol more appropriate today: Let's get rid of The Poem.
I'm talking about "Give me your tired, your poor . . . " -- that poem, "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus, which sometimes seems to define us as a nation even more than Lady Liberty herself.
Inscribed on a small brass plaque mounted inside the statue's stone base, the poem is an appendix, added belatedly, and it can safely be removed, shrouded or at least marked with a big asterisk. We live in a different era of immigration, and the schmaltzy sonnet offers a dangerously distorted picture of the relationship between newcomers and their new land.
The most enduring meaning conveyed by Lady Liberty has nothing do with immigration, and I say let's go back to that. The statue's original name is "Liberty Enlightening the World," and the tablet the lady holds in her left hand reads "July IV, MDCCLXXVI" to commemorate the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Lady Liberty celebrates U.S. political values as a force for the betterment of humanity, as well as the bond of friendship among freedom-loving nations. That's a powerful and worthy message.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
This is looking up at the crown from inside. It's all I could find for now.
Our braindead politicians and the equally mentally challenged electorate that enable them think the inscription on a statue which holds no legal weight constitutes immigration policy.
Another leftist professor makes no bones about his contempt for the United States. And naturally, he gets it completely wrong, separating politics from freedom and immigration. Immigrants come here because it’s a good place to make a buck, he says. But the US is a good place to make that buck because the rights and liberty of the individual have always been of the greatest importance. It isn’t a government handout that made this country the greatest, pal. But they don’t teach that at Southern Cal.
His piece is a bit incoherent.
He implies that we are somewhat anti-immigrant, despite the poem, but of course we admit a million legal immigrants a year. So thats not anti-immigrant.
Or does he mean to say that we ought to be anti-immigrant? He doesn’t quite say it, he doesn’t have the nerve quite.
He says that immigrants aren’t the “huddled masses”, they are in general the more energetic people, which of course is true, but while they are energetically looking for prosperity they are also in general looking to breathe free. He should not separate the two, prosperity and breathing free, because they are a package.
And it is precisely the more energetic people who can’t abide living in bondage, who want to do something with their lives and want to find a place where they can get on with it.
But he thinks we don’t do enough to help immigrants once they are here. So does he want to attract more immigrants who aren’t energetic and don’t want to breathe free? What is it exactly?
Freedom indeed includes the ability to "make a buck" without the government confiscating it. Political freedom has also always been a big draw from the Irish to the Vietnamese and even the leftists dare not discount it even as they are striving to kill it. It is a very dangerous time in America whether you have ancestors who arrived with the Pilgrims or who came from Guadalajara.
It’s the Statue of *Liberty*, not the statue of immigration.
I disagree. The author is right that the poem has corrupted the meaning of the Statue of Liberty and thereby warped popular conception of the country as a “nation of immigrants.” His point wasn’t about domestic policy.
Good point.
“the economic times we are going through call for hope and optimism”
WTF!!! the economic times we are in call for drastic budget cuts, tax cuts, spending cuts, and a halt to all new big dollar programs that will result in lost jobs, higher taxes, and more welfare. someone needs to tell this idiot to STFU and STFD.
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