On the picture is the deed of gift from the people of France – The Statue of Liberty. The famous sonnet, composed by Emma Lazarus is inscribed on the pedestal. Posted on 08/07/2010 1:29:13 PM PDT by Big Bureaucracy
On the picture is the deed of gift from the people of France – The Statue of Liberty. The famous sonnet, composed by Emma Lazarus is inscribed on the pedestal.
Recently Glenn Beck put it in the front and center of the political debate. How are we supposed to read the Lazarus verse?
Well if you read it like that and you really think it through, what are we? A hospital?... is the Statue of Liberty saying to Europe, guys, Europe, you’re never going to make it with all that refuse. Send it over to me, we’ll take care of it over here….That’s not what it means. It was never intended to read that way… That – that is the message. Even the people that you reject can make it here. They will give it all to be successful – here. You can make it – here. - Glenn Beck
President Obama took the Beck challenge couple of months later and recited the Lazarus sonnet himself at the end of his speech on immigration:
It was at this time that a young woman named Emma Lazarus, whose own family fled persecution from Europe generations earlier, took up the cause of these new immigrants. Although she was a poet, she spent much of her time advocating for better health care and housing for the newcomers. She imagined the sight of a giant statue at the entry point of a great nation -– but unlike the great monuments of the past, this would not signal an empire. Instead, it would signal one’s arrival to a place of opportunity and refuge and freedom.
- Barack Obama
Really? Lazarus was against imperialism and for health care and affordable housing?
(Excerpt) Read more at bigbureaucracy.com ...
I get so d@mned tired of having this poem thrown in my face, every time someone decides half of Botswana or Mexico needs to come to America.
It has no more relavance to American policy than a high school essay on the meaning of America. It isn’t part of the constitution.
It is true - it has turned into a cliche. However Beck and Obama got kind of a artistic challenge going on - whose performance was closer to the idea?
I’m with Beck, at least he knew that the poem is inside the base and was put there 17years after the Statue was opened.
Obama made the poet a fighter for health care. Seriously?
When did the Statue of Liberty become equal to the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence? Frankly, I do not want the refuse of the world coming to America. We have enough home grown criminals and welfare addicts without inviting more.
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