Remember it was the French who gave us that wonderful statue celebrating liberté in New York Harbor, of the lady holding a torch, the one they so aptly named Liberty Enlightening the World.

Liberty is what America has been all about over the years. Most American families came from somewhere else. What all looked for in the United States has been freedom and independence. A meritocracy where anything is possible—a country where striving, regardless of race, creed, or color could pay off. A land where dreams come true. Is that so wild a dream? President Obama is living proof it isn’t. But the idea of “yes we can” did not start with him. Over the years, American inventors from Benjamin Franklin, Eli Whitney, and Robert Fulton, to Thomas Edison and the Wright Brothers confronted naysayers who told them it simply couldn’t be done. Of course, they proved otherwise, thanks to a combination of inspiration and perspiration—Edison claimed it was mostly perspiration. Thanks to their tireless efforts and vision, they made life better for themselves and everybody else, too.

And we Americans could not only dream, we could build as well. Not only do we create new machines, we make them run.

Today, we hear sophisticated people say that America can’t make what we create anymore, that we have to outsource manufacturing because Americans don’t want to get our fingers dirty. When I hear that statement, it makes me sad, even angry. And I don’t believe it for a minute. Given half a break and a level playing field, American workers today are still the most productive and efficient in the world. While far from perfect, we are still the nation of dreamers and strivers. And one thing we still dream of and strive for is freedom, not just for a chosen few, but for everyone in America.

Once when the Mormon Tabernacle Choir was singing at Lincoln Center, they asked me to write a patriotic poem. The choir hummed “My Country ’Tis of Thee” in the background. Here’s what I wrote:

America, land of the free,

My home sweet home of liberty, of thee I sing;

Let freedom ring for everyone in America:

Freedom from want, freedom from fear,

Freedom to speak, freedom to hear.

And when we bow our heads to pray,

To worship God in our own way,

I have a dream, may it come true

For everyone in America.

Working for Liberty The Saturday Evening Post

The national monuments of America carry a wealth of meaning. Visitors get a powerful sense of connection when they visit, or just see, the Lincoln Memorial, the Alamo, or the Iwo Jima memorial. But no monument carries more symbolic meaning than the Statue of Liberty. Yet she, too, had to accumulate meaning over many years.

When she was unveiled in 1886, “Liberty Enlightening The World” was a remarkable feat of engineering, and a powerful testament to the historic ties between France and the United States. But her future was uncertain. She survived by working as a tourist attraction and, more importantly, a light house.

She started to seriously represent the spirit of freedom as she became the first thing that the flood of post-1886 immigrants saw in the new world: America’s great, silent sentinel, rising up in the western waters.

For many GIs in the world wars, she was the last, memorable glimpse of the states. She became a powerful, almost haunting image of home and all it stood for. Seeing her again would be their assurance that they’d made it home.

Blake Ehrlich visited Miss Liberty for an article he wrote in 1948. There, he struck up a conversation with another tourist — a young Japanese-American veteran.

'Lighted by a system of incandescent and mercury vapor lamps, the torch is a beacon to approaching ships. Here a workman replaces a wind-smashed bulb.' - from 'The Lady We Can't Afford to Forget,' - January 17, 1948

“First visit to the statue?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “I was here yesterday too. I’ve only got three days. Got to get back tomorrow.”

He was from Milwaukee, a student at Marquette. His outfit had been shipped to the New York zone for overseas embarkation.

“I thought that would be my chance to see the Statue of Liberty. We didn’t get out of camp into New York before we sailed, though, and when we shipped out, it was from down the bay somewhere, or maybe Brooklyn. Anyhow, there was a blackout and it was night, and we were kept below decks. Just didn’t have a chance.

“Well, when we got orders to come home from the ETO (European Theater of Operations), I thought sure this time I’d see the Statue of Liberty. I was really excited; it would have meant more this time. Because, you know, whether you’ve seen the statue or not, overseas you never forget about her. But the Army landed us at Norfolk. Then separation center and home and school. But I finally made it. I’ve had a good long look.”

I told him his story might be good for this article, and I asked his name.

“It’s Joe,” he said, and grinned. “Just put me down as Joe.”

During this visit, Ehrlich was dismayed at the condition of the island and the statue. It had been named a National Monument in 1924, but had been poorly maintained. The island was overgrown and cluttered with refuse from previous military use.

'Anna McManus removing lipsticked initials from the interior of the statue. A cage recently erected around the spiral stairway forestalls many scribbling initials.'- from 'The Lady We Can't Afford to Forget,' January 17, 1948

A visit to the statue may disappoint you today. Of the two acres not forbidden to the public, almost all the area is occupied by the base of the statue. What it doesn’t stand on, you can. The cluttered remainder of the island will continue to spoil the scene until $1,000,000 can be found to finish the plan.

There’s no indication that this particular $1,000,000, or any part of it, will be forthcoming from an economy-pledged Congress, which slashed the National Park budget by three fifths this year. If this were a commercial enterprise, improvement could be financed with profits, for earnings derived from concession licenses and elevator fares generally exceed its $65,000 share of the Park Service fund. But the Government maintains it isn’t in the business of making profits, and all collected moneys go to the Treasury’s General Fund, instead of reverting to the Park Service.

The service has scheduled the improvements in $5000 units, but since the cost of one unit is almost enough to pay unemployment benefits to five veterans for a year, the Government has remained unmoved by the embarrassed pleas of the statue’s superintendent.

The statue continued to get by with basic maintenance, but she was showing her age. Then, in 1983, a $62 million campaign was launched to give the her a major renovation. Over the next three years, workers cleaned the statue’s copper skin, replaced the torch flame, and removed the original metal ribs, replacing them with Teflon-coated pieces of stainless steel.

What is true for the Statue of Liberty is true for the Principle of Liberty. It is only after years of neglect, and the prospect of disaster, that Americans take action and preserve what they can never replace.

Post Script

Has there ever been a love-hate relationship like that between America and France?

We were blood brothers during the Revolutionary War, when they gave us the arms, money, training, and ships we needed to win our independence. But within 20 years, we were considering declaring war on them. Then, in 1812, they were our ally again. Then they were trying to establish an empire in Mexico, and we were trying to steal their global markets.

The world wars came, along with the American complaint “We liberated France and they’re not grateful enough.” (In fact, we only waged war when we felt Germany threatened us. America might never have raised a single rifle if the goal was simply to liberate France.)

The acrimony continues today. France, it seems, is an easy country for some Americans to dislike. It’s stubbornly foreign. Its people refuse to speak English. Its government won’t join in our wars. They’re arrogant. And they don’t like us, for some reason.

This weekend, if you think about “Liberty Enlightening The World,” remember that its concept, design, and creation all came from France. The statue was the tribute of the people of France, who wanted to proclaim their solidarity with the American republic and their admiration for the bloody cost we paid to end slavery.

France and America will always have differences. The Statue of Liberty, though, will endure.

Read “The Lady We Can’t Afford to Forget” [PDF].

Learning to Appreciate Liberty The Saturday Evening Post

Henry David Thoreau is an unusual hero among the millions of freedom seekers in American history. His sought freedom not from government or capital, but from human nature.

He took his search for personal freedom to the wilderness in 1845, on July 4th — the significance wasn’t lost on him. That day, he moved away from home to live in the woods around Walden Pond, near Concord, Massachusetts. For the next two years, Thoreau tried to liberate himself from a life of distractions, comforts, and routine. As he put it:  ”I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

He declared an independence from society to pursue a life of simplicity and honesty. “Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.” He gardened. He wrote. He visited friends (he was living only 1.5 miles outside Concord). But he continued to reside in the tiny house for over two years. The account he wrote of his time there has changed many an American’s life.

In 1849, the Post reprinted a New York review of Thoreau’s lectures about his experiences.

A Young Philosopher Henry D. Thoreau, of Concord, Mass., has recently been lecturing on “Life in the Woods,” in Portland and elsewhere. There is not a young man in the land — and very few old ones — who would not profit by an attentive hearing of that lecture. Mr. Thoreau is a young student, who has imbibed (or rather refused to stifle) the idea that man’s soul is better worth living for than his body. Accordingly, he had built himself a house ten by fifteen feet in a piece of unfrequented woods by the side of a pleasant little lakelet, where he devotes his days to study and reflection, cultivating a small plot of ground, living frugally on vegetables, and working for the neighboring farmers whenever he is in need of money or additional exercise. It thus costs him some six to eight week’s rugged labor per year to earn his food and clothes, and perhaps an hour or two per day extra to prepare his food and fuel, keep his house in order, &c. He has lived in this way four years, and his total expenses for last year were $41.25, and his surplus earning at the close were $31.21, which he considers a better result than almost any of the farmers of Concord could show, though they have worked all the time. By this course, Mr. Thoreau lives free from pecuniary obligation or dependence on others, except that he borrows some books, which is an equal pleasure to lender and borrower. The man on whose land his is a squater is no wise injured or inconvenienced thereby. If all our young men would but hear this lecture, we think some among them would feel strongly impelled either to come to New York or go to California.

It wasn’t easy being Henry David Thoreau. He was a loner, a lifelong bachelor, an eccentric, and, at times, a contrarian who opposed the Mexican-American war and, with greater fervor, slavery. He who died young (at age 44, from tuberculosis.) His life was rough and irregular, but the rough passage is inevitable when you have to clear your own roads.

Thoreau would been quickly forgotten if he had not been championed by Ralph Waldo Emerson and his students. “Walden” was printed in small editions over the years. Scholars recognized it as a work of great talent, but not for 40 years after Thoreau’s death. Its renown among American letters is only partly due to the endorsement of English professors. His lasting fame rests on his ability to address that American hunger for independence, as in “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”

My Life.*

by H. D. Thoreau

My life is like a stroll upon the beach,

As near the ocean’s edge as I can go;

My tardy steps its waves sometimes o’erreach,

Sometimes I stay to let them overflow.

My sole employment is, and scrupulous care,

To place my gains beyond the reach of tides;

Each smoother pebble, and each shell more rare,

Which Ocean kindly to my hand confides.

I have but few companions on the shore—

They scorn the strand who sail upon the sea;

Yet oft I think the ocean they’ve sailed o’er

Is deeper known upon the strand to me.

The middle sea contains no crimson dulse**,

Its deeper waves cast up no pearls to view;

Along the shore my hand is on its pulse,

And I converse with many a shipwrecked crew.

* This poem, taken from Thoreau’s A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, appears with the title “The Fisher’s Boy” in modern collections.

** “dulse”: a red seaweed that lives attached to rocks in deep water.

An Unlikely Hero in the Fight for Personal Liberty The Saturday Evening Post