WHO IS LADY LIBERTY
Howdy Friends! As most things, reasons, definitions, and history seem to morph over time. Especially when the true meaning is unkind to those who have their own agenda. Today, thanks to the rudeness of yet another self righteous, self important media tick, our great gift, The Statue Of Liberty, whose actual name is Lady Liberty, is being weaponized.
Let’s look at a bit of truth:
The sculptor who created Lady Liberty, Fredric-Auguste Bartholdi, never intended the statue to evoke the idea of immigration. He viewed his creation as something nearly opposite. As a symbol of liberty spreading OUTWARD FROM America.
So moved by America, her ideals, and awesome focus on the individual’s rights to self Liberty, he created Lady Liberty standing boldly. And holding high her lantern for all to see how Liberty shines the light of freedom. As a side note, Bartholdi also believed with Liberty came the responsibility to defend and uphold it. Lest it vanish like dew on a sunny morn.
“The New Colossus,” by Emma Lazarus in truth has nothing to do with the meaning of Lady Liberty.
Lazarus wrote the poem at the urging of a dear friend to be entered into an auction to help raise money for the pedestal. It is true at the time, Lazarus was greatly influenced by the upheavals in Russia. And the exodus and great hardships going on there at the time. Her poem bore no kindred spirit to Lady Liberty. Save that Lazarus saw her as a towering Colossus, much like the original Greek statue destroyed in an earthquake in 226 BC.
In the mind of Lazarus the statue was not symbolic of liberty flowing outward from America. As Bartholdi envisioned, but rather a symbol of America being a refuge where those oppressed could come. Thus shifting the very meaning of spreading Liberty to all the world, to confining it in “huddled masses” on only one shore.
Lady Liberty arrived in New York Harbor on June 17, 1885.
At the dedication ceremony over a year later, “The New Colossus” was not recited. In fact, the immigration issue was barely mentioned in any of the addresses given that day. The Poem “The New Colossus” was forgotten.
In May 1903, a friend of Lazarus, Georgina Schuyler, succeeded in having a bronze plaque containing the text of “The New Colossus” installed on an interior wall of the pedestal of Lady Liberty.
Where does Lady Liberty stand today?
For whom does her power, message and original promise shine? All of the world who seek and deserve Liberty? Or only those huddled behind her flowing cloak? Which to you seems more Colossal? ~ Gitty up, Dutch.
