The New Colossus

Emma Lazarus wrote the words on the Statue of Liberty. She wrote them as a poem first, and an excerpt from the poem was used on those two great plates the Statue holds:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame 

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. 

From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "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!"

- The New Colossus

If you’re not familiar with the Colossus, that’s a giant statue of a warrior that straddled the entrance to Greek kingdom over the Mandrákion harbor, according to mythology. It greeted travelers and impressed upon them an ominous warning: that they now entered into a kingdom that so worshiped military might that they paid homage to it at the expense of the numbers of slaves that it would have taken to produce such a wonder. The poem that Ezra wrote was part of a funding campaign for creation of the statue that would carry with it the promise of freedom from so many outcasts from their foreign lands.

Instead of a mighty warrior, warning travelers with pre-emptive intimidation, the Mother of Exiles welcomed them. And further than that, it decried those with money and wealth, those with “storied pomp”, in deference to the poverty-stricken. The only requirement that the Mother of Exiles asks of those seeking her protection are those “yearning to breathe free”. The poem and the statue both were invitations into the promise of freedom. Indeed, freedom had always been a focus of America past, in that the contrary concept to freedom was slavery. Many of our virtues as a nation came from the idea that we didn’t want to be slaves, because we knew, first hand, what it meant to be slaves.

Lately in American history, we have finally started to wonder at the different kinds of freedoms that may exist — to include the freedom from as well as the freedom to certain things. What sort of freedom is it to exist in a land with no prospect for furthering one’s own station? And what sort of freedom is it in a society when the true functioning of society is to further one’s dependency on the state? What sort of freedom is it when someone starves to death outside of a five-star restaurant? This nebulous idea of freedom is something that all American’s want, but many differ in what the concept actually means. Should I be able to punch whomever I like? Is that freedom? Or is the actual freedom existing in a community where I don’t have to concern myself with being punched?