Guest Opinion/Commentary*

Sunday, July 4, 2010

The Perpetual Snake Oil Salesman
  Social Engineering piece by Guest: Robert Rohlfing

Once again the huddled masses were exposed to the outright narcissism of one who believes that if you tell a lie enough times that eventually it will be perceived as a truth, over the last three years we have been continually bombarded with the twisting of the truth by this most eloquent snake oil pitchman of a president. In his latest attempt to have you believe that with his spoken word that history does not have a factual base we hear him try to pass off that the Statue of Liberty is a symbol of immigration when that statement in of itself cannot be farthest from the true symbolism of the statue.

The Statue of Liberty represents what it’s name implies and that is a beacon of liberty, I understand that this might be a hard concept for some to wrap their minds around but when the French gave Lady Liberty as a present to this nation it was in recognition of how the American Revolution inspired the French to throw off the chains of oppression cast upon them by the ruling class who inherently abhorred the concept of individual liberty and freedom just as today we have this same mindset prevailing in the so called ruling class of this nation. The true danger in allowing the falsification of the true history of the Statue of Liberty being portrayed by this president is not only in the fact that he is following the line that has been misrepresented to so much of the population in the declining school system and by the media for many generations now, but that since he holds a position of respect with the office that he holds that so many of the huddled mass will take his words verbatim and lose any hope of understanding the true symbolism and history of this iconic symbol and what it really represents to those around the world.

Ironically when the concept was hatched in France to present a monument in recognition of independence and liberty to the United States , France was under the rule of a dictator in Napoleon III and Emma Lazarus was an obscure philanthropist championing the cause of Jews trying to escape oppression in Czarist Russia where Anti-Semitism and lack of individual liberty prevailed. In a letter in 1871 Frederick Bartholdi stated “I will try to glorify the Republic and Liberty over there, in the hope that someday I will find it again here.“,  once you examine Emma’s poem you can see that she was speaking about a symbol that those who were escaping from oppression could look toward at the end of their journey. The most famous lines from this poem that we hear repeated over and over has lost it’s true meaning throughout time to be misrepresented as a call for unfettered immigration when in truth it represented the essence of this great land and the fact that it was a gateway of Individual Liberty and Freedom. Two lines from this poem alone expressed the underlying meaning that she was portraying what the symbolism to what the “New Colossus” represented as the gateway to the United States and they were ; “Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free“: too breath free from the bonds of tyranny and oppression, and “I lift my lamp beside the golden door!“: The golden door represented the individual opportunity to succeed or fail, it did not guarantee that you would have a golden parachute to do so and it did not guarantee that the door would be opened to all those that would not respect those who came before to guarantee the liberties and freedoms that could be found on the other side of that golden door.

Just as any good snake oil salesman would have to do to try to sell you a product that you would otherwise turn away from, President Obama once again mentioned just enough truth to entice the masses all the while glossing over the factual history and symbolism of what the Statue of Liberty represents and the meaning of the poem enshrined on a plaque inside of the pedestal of the statue. Not once did he mention when those immigrants that were coming to this country legally looking up to the statue on their way to Ellis Island knew that their chances of being turned away for one reason or another was a very real possibility, not once did he mention that Bedloe’s Island (Liberty Island) where the statue resides was a quarantine station and harbor fortification prior to the erection of the statue and that harbor fortifications and quarantine stations existed to protect this nation from the world rather than promiscuously admit it. It is understandable when you are trying to further an agenda that you will leave out some important facts but it does great shame and harm to the truth in doing so but this is what we have come to expect from the great snake oil salesman that we currently have sitting in the office of the president.

We are a land of immigrants to be sure but we are also a land of legal immigrants, we do welcome those coming to our shores looking for a better life but we also are a sovereign nation and as such it does not give the right of free passage to abuse just what makes this nation exceptional otherwise we will be no better than the nations that the masses are attempting to escape from. Because we have to ask ourselves does unrestricted immigration into a democratic country increase human liberty, or does it decrease it? Suppose the new people don’t like liberty?

Robert Rohlfing
http://thedrumbeatofliberty.com/

Posted by Guest: Robert Rohlfing on 7/4/10

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