TEAR DOWN THE STATUE OF LIBERTY

It seems that the Statue of Liberty has lost its meaning and so might as well be razed and the island on which it stands can be put to better use, something like another huge amusement park for the enrichment of Disney or some other large entertainment corporation. If you doubt that this is true, try reading and really thinking about the words from Emma Lazarus' 1883 poem, "The New Colossus," engraved on a bronze plaque and mounted inside 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!"

Does that make sense to you? As if we didn't have enough tired, poor, and wretched refuse of our own! Why should we import more? There just isn't enough money to keep them alive but they would be better off dead, right? Just ignore them and let God handle the problem.

If those who sprung from the Tea Party to win the primary elections really represent the "will of the people," we all have to change our political philosophy. A good start at that can be accomplished by the destruction of the Statue of Liberty. It, like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, has become another tool for the take-over of our government. We all need to "dumb down" even more than during the Bush administration and stop bothering to read those historic documents and the history of the country.

You see, our leaders will be those who wear Statue of Liberty costumes to Tea Parties even though the impressive statue was not even there during the Revolution. It was a gift from France (!) to celebrate the centennial of our beginning and the assistance we gave them in the fight for their own democracy.

The ultra-religious Right has also neglected to familiarize themselves with the contents of the Constitution. They insist that President Obama is not a citizen despite his birth in Hawaii because his father was Nigerian. In one place, the Constitution speaks of "natural-born" and in others the phrase, "within the jurisdiction of the United States." This means that anybody who is born in a facility or location where the laws of the United States apply is, thus, a natural-born American citizen. There was no outcry about John McCain being born in Panama, both because his parents were American and because he was born in a military facility. Further, upon the granting of independence of the Philippines, children of one Philippine citizen and an American could choose their nationality.

Now we find ourselves faced with the problem of the tired, the poor, the tempest-tossed wretched refuse from Mexico and points South. There are too many of them to deport all at once and many are parents of United States citizens who are too young to leave behind. Would it over-crowd the country to let them stay? Surely, this great nation can manage to do all the paperwork that would be necessary to document them. Then, perhaps rather than build walls, we could build ports of entry at the border where they could present themselves for documentation. After a computer check to prove they are not felons or diseased, the proper papers could be furnished to let them walk in openly. Initially, it might be necessary to provide housing while they wait but, if the Golden Door will open for them, they will tolerate it patiently.

That Golden Door has opened for people from every nation in the world and every one of them who came with the yearning for a better life has become a productive part of society. Why not now? Because it would take too much money? Aye, there's the rub! We would have to pay taxes to cover the expenses, and the payment of taxes has become a burden to those with "money to burn." And the more they have, the harder they hang onto it. They don't want to pay an honest wage for an honest day's work and they don't want to pay taxes!

Despite their loud protestations of Christianity, they have chosen to serve Mammon. AND THEY ARE WINNING! We thought our nation had undergone a change for the worse during the Bush administration but, if we allow this union between the religious right and the extremely wealthy to succeed in taking over our country, none of our sacred documents will mean a thing. In that case, we may as well tear down the Statue of Liberty, burn the Constitution, and stack the Declaration with the other books of fairy tales.

"Once upon a time, in a land far, far way, there was a beautiful land where all people were created equal and had the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness..."