Quote:
Originally Posted by Joe
How do you feel about the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of teeming shores, the homeless and the tempest-tossed?
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If you're tired, get more sleep or take vitamins. If you're poor and able, get a better job or create your own. If you yearn to breathe free, blow your nose and learn to be independent--dependency is a sure road to loss of freedom. If you are a wretched refuse, you require quite a bit, how much you can do for yourself in that condition (what is a wretched refuse?) may be minimal--you may need some help, then, if you can ever recover from such a state, and if that state was caused by some power that reduced you to it, you will probably desire to be free of any power that can do it again, and you will probably cherish the freedom to resist it. Same for the homeless and tempest-tossed. The Statue of Liberty was given to us as gesture of our unique contribution to freedom and the individual's yearning to breathe that air. (That's just my twisted take on the gift--their was probably some yearning for Socialism in the giver--if so, send it back.)
My take on the overused phrase "the American Dream" is that the original American Dream was freedom. Somehow, that dream got debased to something like a house, a car, a chicken in every pot, and health care. Perhaps, freedom has become so taken for granted that we find it too burdensome to exercise the "eternal vigilance" required to keep it. The comforts that have ensued through freedom and hard work have become more valued than what has been required to gain those comforts.
I know, I know. . .the Statue of Liberty was a gift recognizing friendship between France and The U.S. But it has become a symbol of much more than that, the above is my personal symbolism, especially since that supposed friendship has so deteriorated.