Lady Liberty Under Attack

Lady Liberty is under attack. She is being abused by the Decider and his enablers. Sadistic, power drunk criminals determined to strip the wealth and influence from America’s middle class, at the expense of Liberty and Democracy. Evil, they are willing to use whatever means possible including violent abuse to Lady Liberty or the American people. They are even willing to start unnecessary wars of aggression to further their power grab.

Liberty fears for her survival, and she should. She appears to be slowly waking up and facing the fact that she needs to end this sick relationship and stop it’s draining of her spirit. She has work to do, illuminating and inspiring equality, morality, and integrity. She knows she needs to dry her tears and be strong. America and the world are counting on her to light the way.

The abuse has weakened her. Her despondence makes rebounding so difficult. She battles the fear, knowing she has a job to do, a job needed as much now as ever. She tries but can not seem to break free from the control the Decider has over her.


The Decider is not the first. Lady Liberty has many years experience carrying the torch and Enlightening the world’s way. There have been others like the Decider. She doesn’t understand why this one seems to have so much control over her, why she has been unable to end the abuse and be free.

The abuse was kept hidden by the Decider’s enablers for a long time. However something this damaging can not be kept secret forever and the truth is becoming all too clear.

Liberty witnessed the brutal attack on her companions the Twin Towers. This left her traumatized and stunned senseless, and more vulnerable to the escalating abuse. She suffers nightmares, flashbacks, and fears that she may meet the same evil end. Horror haunts her, she has been robbed of her former calm demeanor.
The Decider has systematically attacked her reputation, telling lies about her to denigrate her, in a vicious psychological war whose purpose is to wear down her confidence and will. He even tried to alienate Liberty’s connection to her beginning, her source, France. This effort calculated to isolate, shame, and control her further. He has succeeded in damaging her image as the shining example of freedom that she represents, in the eyes of the world.

Following the loss of the Towers she valiantly tried to hold her torch even higher to help guide the many Americans, suffering painfully from the brutal attack caused by the Decider’s failure to keep America safe and protected on 9-11-2001.

And yet, she still refuses to clearly accept the truth, she will not allow herself to call it what it is…
Arrogant, hostile neglect and abuse bare minimum or something far more sinister, something she can not even allow herself to entertain, something far too painful to contemplate: the possibility the destruction of the Towers was maliciously anticipated and allowed to unfold unchallenged. She will be forever unable to allow those seeds to take root in her consciousness.

Life’s just not the same without the Towers, she misses them so and feels empty by their loss.

Foolishly she wonders: Has she done something wrong, something to deserve the abuse and neglect she is getting from the Decider and his gang of cronies, has she not shown her torch bright enough, could she do more?

It is slowly becoming obvious to her that the Decider does not really love her, even though he says he does. He sweet talks her while his actions create such brutal pain. That is not love.

She witnessed the way he treated little Nola, with complete and utter neglect and disregard. Looking the other way as sweet Nola nearly died for lack of food, water or proper care. The Decider professed to care about and love Nola, and yet Nola has become critically ill, damaged, and possibly near death, all while under the care of the Decider.

Seeing the Decider's treatment of Nola shattered what was left of Liberty’s faith in him. Being loved and cared for the way the Decider loved and cared for Nola is a chilling thought… just chilling.

The Decider has increased his attacks on Liberty lately, once furtive aggression has become more frequent and bold.

It’s likely the Decider has decided things would be easier if he were the Dictator, so unfortunately that’s why our precious Lady Liberty must go…


A Little History

In 1865, a group of French authors, artists and politicians met at the home of Edouard-Rene de Laboulaye near Versailles, France. The concept of Lady Liberty as a gift from the people of France to America was born of Laboulaye.

Laboulaye recognized the bond of a common love for liberty that existed between the people of France and the United States.

Laboulaye invited Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, a young sculptor, into the group that wanted to give a gift to the US in honor of their struggles and success at liberty and freedom.

From Harper's Weekly, December 15th 1866:

"As proof of the friendship and the community of emotions of the people of the two countries, Laboulaye pointed out that the people of the United States honored the remembrances of common glories, and loved Lafayette and his volunteers as revered American heroes."
 
Edouard Laboulaye (1811-1883)Frederic Bartholdi (1834-1904)

The French greatly admired the US for its successful struggle for freedom, including the nation’s turmoil and wrangling over the slavery issue. Laboulaye and his supporters, channeled their admiration for America through their efforts at creating the Statue to honor both France and the US for their revolutions seeking freedom.

Both Laboulaye and Bartholdi were fascinated by the Black struggle for freedom from slavery and the statue symbolically notes the courage the US showed in overcoming it. The statue has a broken shackle on its foot and the chains she stands on represent the breaking away from slavery.

The completed statue, was unveiled in 1886, and is actually called "Liberty Enlightening the World". Sadly Edouard Laboulaye did not live to see the Statue standing tall on her pedestal, having passed away in 1883.

The Statue of Liberty looks meaningfully to the East toward Europe. "This is because Bartholdi and Laboulaye, felt America, with its democratic ideals, was already enlightened," said Barry Moreno, a librarian at the Statue of Liberty National Monument. "Europe, still full of czars and emperors, was not." Liberty therefore looks east, across the Atlantic, to the Old World.
Paris Exposition of 1878
The colossal head of Liberty was exhibited before being sent to America,
and was found to be spacious enough to accommodate forty visitors at a time.
THE TORCH OF THE STATUE OF LIBERTY
Liberty's torch on display at the 1876 Centennial exhibition
in Philadelphia. A fee was charged to walk up the 32 foot
installation in order to raise funds for the base of the Monument.
"WELCOME TO THE LAND OF FREEDOM"
ocean steamer passing the Statue of Liberty
seen from the steerage deck

Dedication of the Statue

On October 28, 1886, the Statue of Liberty was dedicated. New York City
declared a general holiday and the City of Brooklyn closed its schools for the day.


President Grover Cleveland accepted the statue with this speech:

"The people of the United States accept with gratitude from their brethren of
the French Republic the grand and complete work of art we here inaugurate. This
token of the affection and consideration of the people of France demonstrates
the kinship of republics, and conveys to us the assurance that in our efforts
to commend to mankind the excellence of a government resting upon popular will,
we still have beyond the American continent a stead- fast ally. We are not here
today to bow before the representation of a fierce warlike god, filled with wrath
and vengeance, but we joyously contemplate instead our own deity keeping watch
and ward before the open gates of America and greater than all that have been
celebrated in ancient song. Instead of grasping in her hand thunderbolts of
terror and of death, she holds aloft the light which illumines the way to man's
enfranchisement. We will not forget that Liberty has here made her home, nor shall
her chosen altar be neglected. Willing votaries will constantly keep alive its
fires and these shall gleam upon the shores of our sister Republic thence, and
joined with answering rays a stream of light shall pierce the darkness of
ignorance and man's oppression, until Liberty enlightens the world."
Speech given by President Woodrow Wilson the evening of
the statue’s first flood-lighting system dedication in 1916:

"There is a great responsibility in having adopted Liberty as an ideal
because we must illustrate it in what we do ... Throughout the last two
years there has come more and more into my heart the conviction that
peace is going to come to the world only with Liberty."
October 28, 1936, exactly fifty years after the unveiling of the statue,
President Franklin D. Roosevelt broadcast an address:

"Citizens of all democracies unite in their desire for peace. Grover Cleveland fifty years ago recognized that unity of purpose on this very spot ... Liberty and peace are living things. In each generation -- if they are to be maintained -- they must be guarded and vitalized anew."
Other Thoughts

French Ambassador, Jules J. Jusserand Also at the Dedication in 1916:

"Not to a man, not to a nation the statue was raised, not to a man,
famous and useful as he may have been, not to a nation great as she may be.
It was raised to an idea -- an idea greater than any man or any nation,
greater than France or the United States -- the idea of Liberty!"
Julian Hawthorne's tribute in prose:

"Though the bronze goddess stands motionless and firm, she seems but a
moment ago to have assumed the attitude which she will retain through
centuries to come. She has stepped forward, and halted, and raised her
torch into the sky. There is energy without effort and movement combined
with repose. Her aspect is grave almost to sternness; yet her faultless
features wear the serenity of power and confidence. Her message is the
sublimest ever brought to man, but she is adequate to its delivery. In
her left hand she holds a tablet inscribed with the most glorious of our
memories, the birthday of the Republic. No words are needed to interpret
her meaning, for her gesture and her countenance speak the universal
language, and their utterance reaches to the purest depth of the human soul."
Emma Lazarus wrote "The New Colossus"
to help fundraising efforts for the statue's pedestal.
EMMA LAZARUS
(1849-1887)

The New Colossus
1883

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."
Famous Liberty Quotes:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable rights; that among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ...
- Declaration of Independence as originally written by Thomas Jefferson, 1776.
*

"Those who won our Independence believed Liberty to be the secret of Happiness and Courage to be the secret of Liberty."
- Louis Brandeis, Supreme Court Justice 1856-1941
*

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."
- George Orwell, 1945
*

"Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have."
- Harry Emerson Fosdick
*

"It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself survives."
- Dorothy Thompson (1894-1961)
*

"Our defense is in the spirit which prized liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism at your own doors."
- Abraham Lincoln
*

"Liberty is the air America breathes . . . In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential freedoms . . . freedom of speech and expression . . . freedom of worship . . . freedom from want . . . freedom from fear."
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
*

"I would rather belong to a poor nation that was free than to a rich nation that had ceased to be in love with liberty."
- Woodrow Wilson
*

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
- Benjamin Franklin
*

"Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof."
- Leviticus, XXV, 10. Inscribed on the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, Philadelphia, Pa. The original source of the quotation is Leviticus, third book of the Old Testament.
*

Edouard-Rene de Laboulaye:

"a symbol that braves the storms of time.
It will stand unshaken in the midst of the winds that roar about its head
and the waves that shatter at its feet."
*
"liberty is the "daughter of the Gospel -- sister of justice and pity -- mother of equality, abundance, and peace."