American Lazarus

#IBelieveInAnAspirationalAmerica
This is our moment, I think, to either pack it in and give up on really living our better values, or to grow up and do the hard work of admitting past mistakes and setting a course for greater integrity.

I propose Emma Lazarus’s great poem, The New Colossus, as the right lamp to light our way forward. Everyone knows the “Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses” section. But we should, in this moment, pay close attention to the prescient opening words.

She begins with a negative, a warning: NOT. Reminiscent of the Thou Shalt Nots of the 10 Commandments, the one rule in the Garden of Eden (“Eat from any tree – but not THAT one”), or the “Not this, Not that” of the Taoists, she seemed to anticipate, only 20 years after the end of the Civil War, America’s later rise to power.

 

“Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land.”

Do not seek empire, she was cautioning. Our strength could be a matter of power and intimidation, as the Greek Colossus of Rhodes proclaimed Greece’s military might. Ironically, the Colossus fell in an earthquake less than 60 years after construction – you can defeat an army, but Mother Nature will eat your lunch, no matter if you’re victor or vanquished. The ruins became a tourist attraction. Power never lasts. Empires always fall. And people love a wreck. 

We, unfortunately, did not heed her advice. We love our power, whether military or economic, and think it is our crowning glory. Lazarus suggested that our strength lay elsewhere. Paradoxically, not with power, but with what might be called “the poor in spirit.” Those looking for old-fashioned Judeo Christian values will find them here. Not the compulsion of power, but the attraction of virtues and values. Represented by

“A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles.” 

Not Sun King, Caesar, Pharaoh, Divine Ruler, or Emperor. “Mother.” Of exiles, no less.

And

“From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.”

And then Lazarus makes the contrast explicit. 

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!”

State dinners, Air Force One, all the glamour and glitter aren’t – or, she insists, ought not to be – the point. Lincoln had a nice hat, but who cares? So if the “mighty woman with a torch” refuses pomp, what *does* she want? 

“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!”

To paraphrase, the stones other builders rejected are our cornerstones.

 

The difference, simply put, is between the power a Colossus represents, and the light the Statue of Liberty, the Mother of Exiles, treading on broken chains, represents.

Power passes. You have it for a while, and then someone else takes it. But light is something you offer to those who need it.

I hope that, in this time of upheaval and uncertainty, we will rediscover the most important thing about America: not its power, but the universal appeal of our aspirational values. Even the founders who wrote and defined them did not live up to them. But they made room in our constitution for growth. And Emma Lazarus – another mighty woman with a torch – has lit forever the fork in our road, the choice we will always face, that maybe every nation faces at one time or another. We’ve been so focused on power, that we’ve let the lamp that lights our way grow dim.

People gravitate naturally to the warmth of light. Light is eternal, its appeal universal. Let’s set aside the adolescent fascination with our muscles, and instead set about the humble work of providing shelter for the homeless, food for the hungry, and offering a welcome to the cast aside. #LetAmericaBeAmericaAgain