Re: Lady Liberty

On 3/18/2025 7:05 PM, Rhino wrote:

On 2025-03-18 5:59 PM, BTR1701 wrote:

Well, the French are demanding we give them back the Statue of Liberty because
we have borders and enforce them now, which means we no longer value liberty.
Or something. So the week is starting off great.
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I don’t want to give the Statue of Liberty to France, but I do think we should
remove that dumb poem about the ‘huddled masses’ that leftists love to cite
when arguing that America, alone among nations, should have no borders, and
send that over to the Caliphate of France. They can attach it to the Eiffel
Tower or something. America is not an international homeless shelter.
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Even Emma Lazarus' Wikipedia article describes her as an "activist", a term surely unknown in her own time, but presumably indicating their approval of her politics, even though she was a Jew from a wealthy New York family. This would make the Wikipedia editors enthusiastic about a capitalist and a Jew, which is a bit unusual these days....
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Lazarus
 As for the statue itself, it would be hilarious to send the French a slightly altered Statue of Liberty, one with Liberty holding a hand up instead of a torch, with the middle finger of that hand pointed skyward. Of course the cost of doing that would be very substantial so I propose sending them a photo of the Statue of Liberty, photoshopped in the manner I suggested.

Umm... I think it was the poem itself, rather than the poet's background, that captured our imagination and aspiration, even if on some level we understood that the real world always has a say.  Kind of a shame to see it ridiculed.