If America Was Ever Great: A Series, Chapter 1

The New Colossus

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!"

            These words adorn the base of the Statue of Liberty. They were put there in 1903, after the poem had been written to support the construction effort in 1883. The first stanza has not aged nearly as well as the second, which has been given fame through its inclusion, not only in popular culture, but in the ethos that Americans think of themselves. It has been a sanitized version of the “city on a hill.” The religious reference is removed and we become the great example, the beacon of all mankind. Despite our values, we like to squeeze our nationalism in to the place of religious furvor.

            So was 1903 when we were great? We had just won, sort of, the Spanish American War of 1898. Acquiring colonies and proving that we were a power to be reckoned with. It had led to a bolstering of naval strength, a spurring of the economy, and proving that our newspaper industry was strong enough to push us in to war. We were not yet 50 years removed from removing, in explicit terms, our original sin of slavery. Quite the time to be alive, the automobile was just starting to get steam. Actually it was about to get away from steam and towards internal combustion. But the assembly line was still 10 years away. On that assembly line a worker could buy a Model T with four months’ pay. Now we could finance a college education over 30 years and live as debt servicers until we have grandchildren.

             In 1903 Women still did not have the right to vote. Racial tensions were far from gone and the practices on the post-civil war south were still at full blast. Plessy v. Ferguson, the doctrine of separate but equal, was seven years old. Still maybe this was the time that America was great. We were lifting our lamp and inviting the world to come toil with us. The statue and the poem have long been part of our national identity of welcoming immigrants and being the great melting pot.

            We have learned this week that this is not when America was last great. Because today President Trump will sign an executive order, he will begin building a wall to keep out the Mexicans and he will restrict immigration from Muslim majority nations. Of the five humanitarian crises that Americans are ignoring right now, three are happening in Muslim majority countries. I know the line “The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,” sounds like it’s about the Irish, but really we should be including everyone who is suffering. At some point our President will tell us how he has made America great again, until then I’ll keep trying to figure out when it was.