Observances

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” crafted in the Declaration of Independence. Some say it is the greatest sentence ever crafted by human hand but I consider “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door” on the Statue of Liberty to be a close second. America, since its founding, is an idea not a place on a map and that idea is bordered by the two phrases above. As a young Jewish girl observed her father break down crying as the family’s ship passed the Statue of Liberty coming into New York in 1942. They had run from country after country in Europe to escape the Nazis. He looked at the Statue and said “but they can never come here.” He was wrong because those types of people are here in the present in the United States. They have a belief that all men are not created equal and this country is no longer a beacon to the world but reserved for only certain types of people.