Posted on 06/21/2010 7:52:12 AM PDT by pinochet
Calling something “Anti-American” implies a lot in denotation besides the conotation.
I think that from an historical perspective, we were a nation largely peopled by immigrants and these were sometimes poor, starving or un-propertied people of the various european nations. The Staute sybolizes that this is a land of liberty for the bulk of those who come here.
Australia has an entire portion of their history as a penal destination and realizes that new lives can be made by flawed or subjugated people. Georgia had some expelled people even at the founding — does that make the founding participation by Georgia un-american?
We didn’t form our nation to have people from other nations pushed off on us but our history is that such has happened and liberty has prevailed.
Emma Lazarus, who wrote “The New Colossus” (a poem inspired by the Statue of Liberty) was of a Jewish background, though nonreligious herself. When the plight of the Jews is considered, a generally fair dealing and industrious people who find themselves frequently out of favor for no good reason in various places across the globe, then the point of view of “The New Colossus” comes into clearer focus. Emma probably didn’t envision the day when bum-ocracies would encourage their bums to come to America.
Isn’t it ironic how titles of bills created by Democrat congresses generally suggest the opposite of the actual effect of the bills? Instead of reform America got an ossified process; instead of control America lost control.
I miss your point, I’m afraid.
It’s a poem, not a statement of immigration policy. Even back then, there were rules and regulations that had to be followed or they put your butt on the first ship back where you came from.
The hell's the matter with you? Stupid! We're all very different people. We're not Watusi. We're not Spartans. We're Americans, with a capital 'A', huh? You know what that means? Do ya? That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world. We are the wretched refuse. We're the underdog.
The problem isn't the Statue of Liberty, or the poem, or even immigration. America was built by the cast-off immigrants who came here "yearning to be free," wanted to have the opportunity to create a better life for themselves and their children, and believed America was that shining city on the hill. The problem is what government and society has become. We are now governed by those that hate America and everything it stood for, voted in by those who hate America and everything it stood for and now attract immigrants who feel the same. Gone are the days that America was the land of opportunity and self reliance; where America was the beacon of hope for the rest of the world. Here are the days where America is the world's villain who needs to be put in her place; where self-reliance is frowned upon and rugged individualism must be regulated and controlled and drummed out of children before they grow up to be menaces to a progressive society. To blame the Statue of Liberty or the poem or even immigration is to fail to see the true problem. We should be willing to accept immigrants who want to be "American" in the sense that was thought of at the time the Statue was erected. We should be able to reject without being called racist those who want to live off the government largess, who refuse to assimilate, and who spend their time chanting "death to America." Liberalism is the problem. Those that wish to remake this country in their progressive mold are using immigration as a tool to further their cause. Defeat liberalism and the type of immigrants coming here will be those "yearning to be free" that made this country great in the first place.
His point was that people like MY great great grandfather came here and many built economic properity with their own two hands.
http://www.shipbuildinghistory.com/history/shipyards/2large/inactive/craig.htm
“Long Beach Shipbuilding was established as Craig Shipbuilding in 1907, when John F. Craig moved to Long Beach from Toledo OH, where he and his father before him had been building ships for many years, bringing his 26 foremen and their families with him.”
You wrote:
"'...Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me...'
"The statue of liberty advertises America as a garbage dump, where the rest of the world can dump their "wretched refuse". It tells all the world's nations, that they can gather up all their homeless people, their poor, their lepers, their insane, their bums, their welfare moochers, and their criminals, put them on ships, and dump them on America's shores."
The term "wretched refuse,"as used by Lazarus, however, applied to persons who came through the "door" in the legitimate manner prescribed by law, and Lazarus's use of that term seems to have been simply a dramatic way to recognize something we overlook today.
Let's remember that wherever there are oppressive regimes, past or present, all who disagree with the ideology of the political class are deemed to be expendable, therefore, "refuse." If we doubt that, let's read and listen to the rhetoric of the Far Left in America in 2010 concerning the individuals who lead or make up the TEA Party movement.
When the Speaker of the U. S. House of Representatives shudders at the thought of them and calls them "Astro Turf," and unmentionable and vile comments are made about a former governor and outspoken opponent of Administration and Congressional policies, and when Congresswoman Bachman and others are treated with disrectful personal disdain, to say nothing of the Administration's disregard of the opinions of ordinary Americans, then perhaps American citizens who oppose them have become "wretched refuse" by their descriptions of us.
Let's not cast out the beautiful symbolism of Lazarus' words, written at a time when people came through a legal process that built this nation into the greatest on earth, simply because we are looking through a glass that has been clouded by illegal immigration and poor government policy.
America remains that "shining city on a hill," for millions, and Bartholdi's statue is constructed to reflect life, liberty and law.
It is time to bring America's reality back into line with "the Lady's" beautiful symbolism--not to throw out the symbol.
The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Emma Lazarus, 1883
I think that when you read the whole poem, it casts a different light on the promise of America. Europe’s cast-offs (a.k.a. “wretched refuse”)were the raw materials of American Exceptionalism. We should continue to welcome those who wast to be assimilated, who want a better life.
"... even throughout the early history of the U.S.," admits Julian Simon, "immigrants did not arrive with less education than natives; "Early English settlers included Royalist gentry who went to Virginia, like George Washington's ancestors, and Puritan gentry who went to New England, as Oliver Cromwell and his family once planned to do. And, whatever Yankees may have thought, the Irish immigrants of the 1850s were not the bottom of the barrel. Three-quarters of them were literate; their fares were commonly paid by established extended families.
Hill (1970, p.31) calculated a measure of the "labor force quality" of immigrants relative to that of natives, roughly equivalent to a percentage. The estimates are: 1870 - .97 (e.g. in that year immigrants had 97% the labor force "value" of natives); 1880 - .99; 1890 - .95; 1900 - .97; 1910 - .95; 1920 - .93. And according to Hill's (1970; 1975) analysis of the wages and occupations in censuses and other data sources, covering the period 1840-1920 but with special emphasis on the decade just before the turn of the century ...almost all the empirical evidence leads one to a conclusion in direct opposition to that reached in most of the historical literature...immigrants, instead of being an underpaid, exploited group, generally held an economic position that compared very favorably to that of the native born members of the society (1975, p48).
Can you say the same today about Mexican or Guatemalans? NO. Not even second or third generation. We are importing poverty.
>>>>we are all the descendants of the majority of those who left the “Old World” to seek liberty and opportunity. Many were poor and indentured themselves to others who already had come to the New World, sometimes for years, just to be able to have freedom
Americans have a culture that glorifies the underdog, and they like to think of their ancestors as the ultimate underdogs who overcame great odds, and built the greatest nation on earth. But the truth is more complicated than that. The average immigrant to America in its earlier years was a hard-working European peasant, who was harder working, more prosperous, more intelligent, and more enterprising, than the average European peasant.
IQ tests that were carried out in the early 1900s, proved that white Americans scored higher on IQ tests than Europeans. Today, white Americans score 103 on the Stanford-Binet IQ scale, compared to 100 for Europeans. While America was not built by European aristocrats, it was built by the cream of the European peasantry. America was built by those ambitious and frustrated European peasants, whose economic opportunities were being limited by oppressive European laws, that favored Europe’s hereditary land-owning aristocrats. When those ambitious, driven, hardworking peasants got to America, they were able to realize their full human potential, and in the process, they made America the world’s greatest nation.
The cost of a ship ticket from Europe to America was greater than the annual salary of an average European peasant. Only the hardest working, most disciplined, and most enterprising European peasants, could afford the cost of the ship ticket. Once those peasants got here, there was a screening process by American immigration officials, where the immigrants were screened for physical and mental ailments, as well as for character defects. Those who came to America as indentured servants faced a similar screening process, and only those who were proven to be the fittest and most hard working, were allowed into America. If every European peasant had the ability to come to America, all Europeans would have come to America.
A homeless man living in Warsaw, Poland, in 1910, could not afford to come to America, however much he desired to come to America. He could not afford a ship ticket for a trans-atlantic crossing. But a homeless man living in Mexico City, who desires to go to America, can come here easily. There is nothing to stop him.
I am not opposed to immigrants. I am only calling for an effective system of filtering legal immigrants, to ensure that we get the best that the world has to offer.
Thanks for your post. You made the same point that I made in my previous comment. America was built by Europe’s best people, and not by Europe’s trash. Emma Lazarus’ poem defames America.
You are welcome.
This part of the poem is from where your argument, and the arguments of the open borders, amnesty folks collide with the sentiments of the poem - "YEARNING TO BREATHE FREE".
Those who came from Cuba WERE "yearning to breathe free".
The vast majority of those who illegally walk across our southern border, or intentionally over-stay a once-legal visa, MOST OFTEN come from countries that have as much political freedom as do we in the U.S.
The fact that their nation's political class and business culture do not provide the opportunities they are looking for IS NOT due to a lack of liberty, a lack of the ability to "breathe free"; but simple internal failure of their nation to foster the conditions that will provide the opportunities they seek. The sentiments behind the statue and the poem did not have such persons in mind. THEY ARE "FREE" already.
The sentiments of the statue of liberty poem are, in this age, most often taken out of the context of their time, and used in a way that fails to emphasize LIBERTY, and those who do not have it and are seeking it - LIBERTY - as the light of liberty, to which the statue would stand as an emblem of, to the "huddled masses", YEARNING TO BE FREE, from the shackles of non-democratic systems; not simply escaping adverse economic conditions of their own peoples democratic failures.
At the web site of PRONI, The Public Records of Northern Ireland - - can be found inspiring words about Irish emigrants to the U. S.
Of special note are the words of John Dunlap, an emigrant, who was responsible for the printing of the new nation's Declaraiton of Independence.
On 12 May 1785, he wrote from Philadelphia to his brother-in-law, Robert Rutherford, Strabane, Co. Tyrone, extolling the advantages of the New World and referred to his brother, James Dunlap, who was likewise in America:
"... my brother James left this for Kentucky a few weeks ago; I expect him back in the summer; then perhaps he may take a trip to Ireland. The account he gives of the soil is pleasing but the difficulty of going to it from this is great; indeed the distance is not less than a thousand miles. I was there last year and must confess that although the journey is a difficult one I did not begrudge the time and labour it cost me. We are told the parliament of Ireland means to lay restrictions on those who want to come from that country to this; time will tell whether or no this will answer the purpose they intend. People with a family advanced in life find great difficulties in emigration but the young men of Ireland who wish to be free and happy should leave it and come here as quick as possible; there is no place in the world where a man meets so rich a reward for good conduct and industry as in America ... "
Also excerpted from the PRONI site is the following observation from the DUNLAP/DELAP PAPERS at: http://www.proni.gov.uk/introduction__dunlap_delap_t1336.pdf
"John Dunlap's is not an untypical life story of many who 'went west' from Co. Tyrone in the 18th century to make a new life and create a new country to which they then encouraged and assisted others to migrate. One went and succeeded and therefore others followed. By the time he died, on 27 November 1812, aged 66, John Dunlap had amassed a large fortune and had subscribed £4,000 in 1780 to the National Bank formed to supply the American Army, and he held 98,000 acres in Virginia and the adjoining counties of Kentucky. He also owned the land on which Utica, Ohio, stands.
"He had played his part in military affairs during the War of Independence, as a founder in 1774 of the 1st Troop of Philadelphia City Cavalry; as a cornet he accompanied this command in the campaign of 1776-1777, taking part in actions at Princeton and Trenton. After the war, from 1789 to 1792, he was a member of the Common Council of Philadelphia. In 1812 he was buried at Christ Church, Philadelphia.
"The site of his birth at Meetinghouse Street, Strabane, is marked by a plaque erected by Strabane Urban District Council in 1965."
Immigrants in the United States, 2007: A profile of America's Foreign-Born Population
We don't need to import poor, uneducated, and unskilled workers into the US. We already have plenty of them.
Immigrants in the United States, 2007: A profile of America's Foreign-Born Population
We don't need to import poor, uneducated, and unskilled workers into the US. We already have plenty of them.
Yes, at the time of John Dunlap, the Irish were even LESS “free” than the American colonists, in the social and political sense; and to them and their conditions - to their context - the message of the statue and it’s poem has relevance and shares in their context.
But, the vast majority of illegal immigrants today have no such shared political and social conditions or context with Mr. Dunlap or his Irish contemporaries.
Bump for later
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