Post-Independence-Day thoughts, 2014 (inspired by thousands of Central American children crossing our southern border into Texas and Arizona)

Many years ago, when speaking to a gathering of the Daughters of the American Revolution, President Franklin D. Roosevelt shocked his audience by beginning his address with the greeting, “Fellow immigrants.”

Daughters of the American Revolution aside, we used to be proud that we were a nation of immigrants, but some Americans today would rather not be reminded. Some Americans would rather lock the doors and never allow another person to enter.

I ask them a question: Who tried to keep your ancestors out?

Nobody, that’s who.

Some people, if they had their way, would rewrite the poem on the base of the Statue of Liberty to read as follows:


The New New Colossus
(with apologies to Emma Lazarus)

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
Stopper of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide rejection; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. “Spare me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Do not send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I douse my lamp beside the golden door!”

Emma Lazarus, and my ancestors, and theirs, must be weeping in their graves.

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
An 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

[Notes.
1. The post’s title, which is also the title of the poem, refers to the Statue of Liberty.
2. The first two lines of the poem refer to the ancient Colossus of Rhodes.
3. No matter what you may have learned in school, the twin cities mentioned in the poem are not Minneapolis and St. Paul. They are New York and Brooklyn. Brooklyn became a part of New York City in 1898. Emma Lazarus is buried in Brooklyn.
4. New York Harbor has not been “air-bridged” since the Verrazano- Narrows Bridge was completed in 1964. --RWP]