A bizarre petition calling for the removal of the Statue of Liberty has appeared on the White House’s petitioning site, “We The People.”
While President Trump was delivering his inaugural address the WhiteHouse.gov site was revamped, replacing President Obama’s policy pages with the current Presidents own material. Thankfully, one thing the POTUS’ team decided to leave intact was the We the People online petitioning system.
A strange petition was posted to remove the statue of liberty because “It sends the wrong message.”
The petition reads:
It’s a cool looking statue and all…BUT IT SENDS THE WRONG MESSAGE.
The Statue of Liberty is a symbol of a time in the past when our country was accepting of immigrants. Today we are not. Plain and simple.
There’s a poem – written by Emma Lazarus in 1883, to raise money for the statue – is inscribed on a plaque at the base of the statue. A passage from the poem reads:
“…Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breath free / …Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me…”
Maybe that’s how this country felt 150 years ago but not anymore. So what if that’s how this country was founded. So what if we’re all decedents of immigrants. It’s going to take more than just a wall to keep everyone else out. Let’s start by getting our message straight. Consistency is key.
If you were to ask our humble opinion, the petition seems to be a sending a subversive, and deeply meta, message. No right-minded American could see us lose the Statue of Liberty, a symbol of our great country and all we hold dear.
If that’s the case, there is a real dissonance between what the statue actually represents and our current political trajectory. “…Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breath free / …Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me…” hardly jives with the current political rhetoric from this President Trump’s White House.
The survey has only one signature as of writing this post, which speaks volumes about the above cognitive dissonance we are currently experiencing. Food for thought.