As I See It / July 2006
Lady of the Land
Everyone calls her by her nick name. In any crowd, she is the tallest and, at 225 tons, the heaviest. She has a 35 foot waist and her sandals are huge but she’s never had a bad hair day. She’s a woman with a past and a woman on a pedestal. Her home is New York Harbor but she lives all over the USA.
Her real name is Liberty, Enlightening the World.
Aged but never tired, she has held the torch of freedom for over a hundred years. On her pedestal, more than 300 feet high, she towers over the meanness, the foolishness and the hope of an endlessly changing nation.
When the statue of Liberty arrived in 1886, her lighted torch was considered a navigational aid. On September 11, 2001, it become one again.
The lady Liberty is so American. She came here from a foreign land to make her home. Assembled from many pieces, hammered into shape and then assembled over a framework of tempered steel, her history is this nation’s history. The United States of America was assembled and reassembled from many people and many places. Through 230 years, we have hammered out what we stand for and who we are. This country is built on the structural framework of the Bill of Rights, covered by resolve as one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Liberty holds a tablet bearing the date July 4, 1776, a reminder that freedom requires risk and has a cost. Americans have accepted the risk and paid the price, many times. From Lexington to Gettysburg, from Flanders to Battaan, from Normandy to Kuwait City, the dearly held truths remain righteous, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Governments aren’t always smart or always kind. They make wrong decisions and don’t learn from their mistakes, much like the people who form them.
And, this government was created by the people and for the people and it remains a government of the people. US members of Congress aren’t elected because they are so much better than the rest of us.
They are elected because they are so much like us-fairly average, sometimes foolish, occasionally smart-just with better hair. Like the leaders and politicians of every country, they rightfully put their own people first, though they bear the contempt of the international community for the natural self interest that other nations practices as a divine right.
Americans don’t expect princes and presidents of foreign lands to worry about the education of American children or shelter for homeless Americans. Americans don’t expect European prime ministers or Asian monarchs to budget their money for the health care of elderly US citizens. Americans aren’t waiting for strangers from another continent to donate millions of dollars to feed or house Americans. Yet Americans are despised in many, many parts of the world because they willlingly assume, as national policy, responsibility for the health and well being of men, women and children thousands of miles away.
Liberty has never been a guard, she has always been a light. She cannot illuminate the darkness of hatred. She has no power over insanity. She is nothing to zealots or those who don’t value living. But, she still offers the best navigational course for those who love life, who cherish freedom and who don’t hate anyone who is different. She lifts her lamp beside America’s battered but still golden door. In her keeping, there is the warm glow of freedom. It’s a light that should never fade.
Have a great Fourth of July-and light a sparkler for Liberty. PL
Copyright © 2005-2006 A Woman's View. All rights reserved.
Femme Fair 2006
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