[PBVBROOK]

News falsh for Alchemy.

I don't know where you get Wikipedia. You must be talking about someone else.

As to questioning our government sources. Of course we do. That is what you do in a democracy. You ought to come here and try it.

Here is what you said that I take exception to:

The fact that people see her as a symbol to welcome immigrants is rather sad.

Why is it sad? You misunderstand anyway. In 1903 this plaque was attached to the statue.

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!"

What does that sound like to you. The first thing the 12 million immigrants who came through Ellis Island saw of New York Harbor was the Statue of Liberty. The significance of this is not for you or I to decide. It is for them to decide. And the Statue of Liberty has come for them and for the rest of us to represent the opportunity this country offers. An opportunity that keeps people trying to come here from all over the world to this day.

Symbols are like that. The EIffle tower was priginally built to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution. I suspect few people around the world know it as anything other than the symbol of Paris. The Parthenon is a 5th Century BC temple to Athena but I suspect most people don't think of it that way. Big Ben...

The point is that I believe you should look to your own motives for wanting to right this thing you find wrong. Iconoclasm is not always a good idea, kind or even intellectually honest. I am assuming you do not live in the US. It is time for the rest of the world to stop defining the US by the former institution of slavery. It is over now. Has been for over 130 years. It was an issue in part of this country and we fought a bloody war to fix it. Try going back 130 years in your own country and see where things stood. Lets see. Countries defined by the state of affairs 130 years ago.....Russia with a virtual slave class of serfs. Fair to define them by that today? Not in my book. If you want to get upset about slavery there are plenty of opportunities for you to find slavery in the world today. It is rampant in Africa and in southeast Asia, Human trafficing is a world problem.

The Statue of Liberty is our symbol. We will define it as we like. Every person who views it will have their own thoughts about it. If I had been on a boat fleeing the pograms of Europe knowing that all of that fear and persecution was about to end, the Statue of Liberty would mean a great deal to me. And your opinion on the matter wouldn't matter at all. And frankly neither would the opinions of Bartholdi or some park service hack.

[Looter]

The essential insight is that things are what they are and not what you believe about them. The actual subject of the statue is all about Sun worship and has nothing to do with Freedom. The Statue of Liberty is a Solar Shrine in the same way that Stonehenge or the Sphynx are, no one needs to announce that because it comes from their form. The problem is not only that one does not understand what Freedom is but more so that one does not understand Sun worship. If I made a golden statue of a bull and told you it was God and to worship it, would you be worshipping God, so if I made a statue of a Solar diety and told you it was Freedom and to worship it would you be worshipping Freedom. Anyways the freemasons understand it so to them its just a symbol of how clueless the rest of you are and how they are operating on a level you cant begin to understand. Anyways thats my opinion

[Alchemy]

Why is it sad? You misunderstand anyway. In 1903 this plaque was attached to the statue.

Your answer lies in your explanation. The focus has been taken away from, in my opinion, the more symbolic abolotion of slavery to immigration!

The Statue of Liberty is our symbol. We will define it as we like.

You can do that if you like, it will still not change the historic significance and symbolism however..

[PBVBROOK]

Yet another foreigner who believes the US was defined by the institution of slavery.

Go find another windmill to tilt. You happen to be completely wrong about this one.

You forget that the abolition of slavery didn't happen in 1863. It happened in each of the majority of states that had banned it long before then. This is an easy mistake for someone whose study of US history is superficial.

Don't worry though. You won't find much more depth of knowledge here.

[Alchemy]

You forget that the abolition of slavery didn't happen in 1863. It happened in each of the majority of states that had banned it long before then. This is an easy mistake for someone whose study of US history is superficial.

Hence it serving as a monument to the past DUH! You are trying to establish a huge tent in an attempt to strengthen your argument. Your "ahem" definitions seem more than a trifle forced.

Oh, nearly forgot.

The model for the Statue of Liberty (i.e., the woman who posed for the sculptor, or whose portrait the sculptor used) was a Black woman.

The Statue of Liberty was intended to depict a woman with features representative of the "Black race."

The Statue of Liberty was created as a tribute to Black Civil War soldiers.

The Statue of Liberty was intended to symbolize the end of slavery in the USA.
Of these claims, the first three are demonstrably untrue; the final one may have some small element of truth to it.

http://www.snopes.com/history/american/liberty.htm

It would seem some of us do not interrogate the evidence they attempt to counter their arguments with.

[PBVBROOK]

You are welcome to hang your hat on a "small element of truth". If that makes you feel better.


Believe what you want. If believing she is George Washington's mother makes you feel better, go for it.

I guess I should be happy that you find that the US symbolizes freedom for everyone.

[Alchemy]

You are welcome to hang your hat on a "small element of truth". If that makes you feel better.


Believe what you want. If believing she is George Washington's mother makes you feel better, go for it.

Yes PBVBROOK, who are luminaries from the National Park Service when compared to you. I forgot, according to you they are nothing more than "hacks". I mean the fact that your site, snopes, even contradicts you serves as no barrier to you. Instead you seem to hold ad hominem attacks in higher regard than actually contructing an argument to counter my claims.

[The Antiist]

Alchemy,

Wikipedia is indeed not the greatest encyclopedia to consult. However, the information you find there is certainly not unsubstantiated. Just take a peek at the list of references. There are a respectable amount of trustworthy sources which seem to be consistent with the information summed up in the article.

To give an example, the claims which you have quoted in the first post of this thread of which you said "NOTHING could be further from the truth!" are actually consistent as well with the sources of that Wikipedia article. The website of the National Park Service of the U.S. Department of the Interior confirms this.

[PBVBROOK]

Alchemy appears to be upset about something WRT the Statue of Liberty and unwilling to tell us what that is and why is upsets him.

Why somebody overseas is upset by a US statue is beyond me. I think he must be someone looking for something to be upset about.

[sazerac]

According to this report, America's abolition of slavery was one of the reasons for the construction of the statue, and Edouard Rene Lefebvre was an abolitionist. I can't imagine presenting such a statue to a country that tolerated slavery. But the fact that the US was a successful democracy may have been the more important reason.

It would seem to me that the reason the port of New York was chosen and not the capital of the US is because New York is where immigrants entered the country. The statue faces those arriving Europeans. Clearly one of it's intended purposes was to welcome these immigrants.

HISTORY

The Two Sisters

America probably could not have won its freedom from the British during the American Revolution without the help of the French. France provided arms, ships, money and men to the American colonies. Some Frenchmen - most notably the Marquis de Lafayette, a close friend of George Washington - even became high-ranking officers in the American army. It was an alliance of respect and friendship that the French would not forget.

Almost 100 years later, in 1865, after the end of the American Civil War, several French intellectuals, who were opposed to the oppressive regime of Napoleon III, were at a small dinner party. They discussed their admiration for America's success in establishing a democratic government and abolishing slavery at the end of the civil war. The dinner was hosted by Edouard Rene Lefebvre de Laboulaye. Laboulaye was a scholar, jurist, abolitionist and a leader of the "liberals," the political group dedicated to establishing a French republican government.

During the evening, talk turned to the close historic ties and love of liberty the two nations shared. Laboulaye noted that there was "a genuine flow of sympathy" between the two nations and he called France and America "the two sisters."

As he continued speaking, reflecting on the centennial of American independence only 11 years in the future, Laboulaye commented, "Wouldn't it be wonderful if people in France gave the United States a great monument as a lasting memorial to independence and thereby showed that the French government was also dedicated to the idea of human liberty?"

Laboulaye's question struck a responsive chord in one of his guests, Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, a successful, 31-year-old sculptor from Colmar, a town in the eastern province of Alsace, France. Years later, recalling the dinner, Bartholdi wrote that Laboulaye's idea "interested me so deeply that it remained fixed in my memory." So was sown the seed of inspiration that would become the Statue of Liberty.

American Parks Network

[mastermind2007]

It is called the "Statue Of Liberty", not the "Statue of the Abolition of Slavery".

[Looter]

Its called “Liberty Enlightens the World “, like the Sun does in reality. Its a Sun God.
http://www.unmuseum.org/colrhode.htm

[QatzelOk]

The statue of liberty was designed as a monument for the abolition of slavery in America.

Then why is she a white woman instead of a black man?

I realise that women were slaves as well, but the image of a black man would be a lot more powerful a free-slave image than some pasty faced French chick in a metal dress.

Didn't Americans butcher all the Plains Indians within a decade of the Civil War? Good thing Liberty wasn't wearing a papoos or she might have gotten taxed as well.

[PBVBROOK]

Didn't Americans butcher all the Plains Indians within a decade of the Civil War?

Why would you say something like that? Are you rude by nature or just ignorant?

You really one day will need to grow up.