[TheRealThing]

From the Emma Lazarus poem, "The New Colossus," which is quoted on the Statue of Liberty:

"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,/I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

This poem was written in 1883, three years before the Statue of Liberty was completed in New York harbor. "The New Colossus" is about Lady Liberty. Twenty years later, the poem was inscribed on a bronze plaque and mounted inside the pedestal of the statue, where it continues to be displayed today. At one point, speaking of the torch, we read, "From her beacon-hand/Glows world-wide welcome..."

When, and if, this nation, from fear and suspicion and scapegoating, changes that "welcome" to "get out and stay out," we should at least have the self-awareness to take the Statue down, lest we fool ourselves with the idea that a principle honored in the past merits present commendation. The Mexicans and Hondurans and Guatamalans who pick our fruits and vegetables, lay our concrete block, work in our slaughterhouses, are, almost without exception, poor and tired. I am not here advocating for a mindless, foolish immigration policy, given the state of the world. However, I am stating that Lady Liberty is a symbol of something in the American spirit, something valuable, something egalitarian, and we ought to give great pause before trading that spirit in for xenophobia and a fool's nationalism.

Coulda fooled me.