"Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses..."

Once in a while, I rant about rants. Tell me... have you seen this one? Have you shared it?

Besides the obvious fact that the natives of this land welcomed freely the Europeans who barged in here and crowded them onto little pieces of their own land while setting up laws which kept them from getting it back,  people seem to forget that, at the Statue of Liberty, there is a plaque. The last bit of that plaque reads,

"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!"

I have provided a link to the full inscription at the end of this blog post.

Shouldn't we offer freedom with the open arms of hope and charity? Wasn't that how we began the American Dream? Weren't we saying, "Gee... we're sorry that you had to flee, but since you had to then, by all means, flee here." 

Of course, if you really believe everything in this little rant that you shared, you must fully agree with how the governments of North Korea, Afghanistan, and Iran are running the show. Are you really endorsing their policies when you share this? Are you saying that, as a country, we should be more like them?

Y'know it's funny, really. I run with a crowd that has a tradition of not turning anyone away. I have often thought that our principles and traditions would be a nice thing for all people to embrace, and not just us. But then, it is not up to me to tell everyone else how to live.

I mean, I can only tell people that my method of economic recovery is not shopping at dollar stores and Wal-Mart, so that fewer dollars go to China and more back into my own community... and that my method of staying positive is not sharing angry rants via my social networking media... I can't tell anyone else what to do, so I just tell them what I do.

However, when I am angry I ask myself... what am I scared of?

Here's the link to the poem by Emma Lazarus which is inscribed on a tablet within the pedestal upon which the Statue of Liberty stands: http://www.libertystatepark.com/emma.htm