25A009 Lady Liberty by Jim Davies, 3/4/2025

That statue is magnificent, no question; and it's unique. It celebrates the best attempt in all history to create a society with a government subject to limits. When erected, it was possible to believe that purpose had been met, for the USA was at the very zenith of its rate of enrichment of those who lived here. It was called "Liberty, Enlightening the World."

Open opportunity to work and earn was the dominant motive for the great majority of those who emigrated to America from 1600 through 2000, and they are the ones who built the most prosperous nation in human history. Most of them - me too - came in search of greater freedom, and found it.

Freedom is, to many, more important than money. Frenchman Édouard de Laboulaye so admired the relative freedom in America that in 1865 he organized the collection of funds to erect the statue to celebrate it. By 1886 the job was done. Sadly, after the Statue went up, the degree of liberty here went down. For example, the FedGov relentlessly imposed ever more restrictions on who could immigrate, and currently the big controversy is about those who bypass them by just walking across the border.

The most positive aspect of the statue is that it looks outward, saying to the rest of the world in effect "Look! We tried liberty, and it works! You try it, too!" That is not the same sentiment as Emma Lazarus' poem suggests - namely, that it's an invitation to immigrate:

"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!"

It's a great peom and a warm invitation and millions acted upon it to the great benefit of America; but it's not what the Statue signifies. On the contrary, it says to stay home where you are and do there as we have done here. It works!

So did de Laboulay remain in France and the hope of the sponsors was that other countries would emulate America, so that the world's "huddled masses" could breathe free without having to cross an ocean. Hence the lamp, to enlighten the world.

The other great misunderstanding about the Statue of Liberty is that it signifies freedom. It doesn't. In Lady Liberty's hand is a book, titled "1776", the year that American colonists declared independence from Britain (incidentally the great rival of France at the time.) Fair enough; and we may presume that the book also signified the US Constitution, created as a result of that secession and which did set limits on the new government the founders set up.

Is all that a valid foundation? I don't think so. Nobody can set a people free by establishing a way for politicians to rule it. There is a contrary argument that holds freedom and liberty are not quite the same thing; that liberty (after which this statue is named, after all) means having as much freedom as is consistent with staying safe; or, with Thomas Paine, that man

finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him out of two evils to choose the least.

This is the "classical liberal" or "minarchist" position, and like many big lies, it has a grain of truth. It's true that in the Zero Government Society each of us will be responsible for self-defense, for while it will have only a small fraction of today's evildoers it's not likely that they will vanish altogether.

But no way does that mean we must entrust our defense to a bunch of political parasites who will break (and have broken!) every limit placed upon their power every time they see an opportunity.