02/21/2010
Glenn Beck’s CPAC speech is partly about the Statue Of Liberty (video at the link, no transcript) which stresses America’s example to the world, more than it does the immigration aspect. (My favorite line: "What are we, a hospital?") That being the case, it’s time to relink to my piece on the Statue, which is about how it’s Liberty Enlightening The World, not Liberty Inviting The World. See Immigration Myths (contd.): The Statue of Immigration, or Liberty Inviting the World.
He has some good points, (i. E. the French had their own reasons for this gift) but I don’t like to hear him reciting the Emma Lazarus poem, who
wrote "The New Colossus" for the Bartholdi Pedestal Fund in 1883, before the statue was erected ("Here at our sea-washed sunset gates shall stand, etc"), but it was not inscribed on a plaque inside the statue’s pedestal until 1903.By who, you ask? The statue, not, as I've pointed out a government project, had been administered by first the Lighthouse Bureau, and then it was transferred to the War Department. Could it be the local authorities who asked the War Department to put this plaque there? And do either the War Department or the Lighthouse Bureau set immigration policy?
This whole thing is very strange. Imagine a hypothetical foreign country with immigration problems explaining its policy this way: "We used to have sensible immigration laws, but someone built this damn statue." You'd think they were mad.
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