I watched the Ken Burn’s piece on Lady Liberty on public TV today. It brought tears to my eyes. The Twin Towers were standing when the piece was filmed and Mario Cuomo was Governor of New York. It first aired on PBS in 1985.
Interesting the New York Times apposed the construction of this amazing monument. They still are on the wrong side of most arguments. Also interestingly an immigrant from Hungary who was named Pulitzer and was the Editor for the New York World cemented public support from over a hundred of thousand average Americans to pay for the completion of the base of the monument. The copper monument was a gift from the people of France.
At that time the French were enduring bad government in the form of Napoleon the Third and they wanted Liberty to endure.
Given our bad leadership today in the form of my Assemblyman, Congressman, and President it may well be a good idea for us Americans to take up a collection for a monument to Liberty to be erected in Europe.
In the 28 year old Burn’s piece many thinkers were asked to define liberty. Had I been asked what Liberty is, I would have answered that collective liberty can only occur when government is of, for and by the people. Individual liberty can only occur when the person seeks and pursues truth. Liberty is not about fun or being simply free. Liberty is hard work and comes when you apply what you know to be true and speak out about that truth when greedy people manipulate the opportunists in charge of government institutions.
Steven Chu could have had liberty had he used his knowledge of thermodynamic truth to tell his boss to go packing when the boss wanted to strike out the laws of thermodynamics with a presidential decree written on recycled paper and signed with a pen filled with biodegradable soy based ink.
Jared Huffman could have had liberty if he had told AT&T to get lost when they offered him a few bucks to support gangrene green legislation that AT&T profited handsomely from (About $40 million) and now adds massive quantities of greenhouse gas to the air I breathe in Northern California.
Huffman and Chu are two examples that come to mind when I am asked for my definition of thralldom to their boss or their party. They would sell their souls for a bit of fame, a job, a title, or simply a visit to White House. Their hero is looking more like Napoleon the Third each time we peel back the onion a little further. The monument to commemorate the reign of the 44th president should be the Statue of Thralldom. The pole with the birds will be used as the working model of the statue.
The statue will be made from the body parts of left over and unassembled Fisker automobiles. On the base of the statue of Thralldom the following words will be inscribed “you gave me your money, I made you poor, and now you are a huddled mass breathing the carbon dioxide and VOCs from the Bloom Boxes my friend Mr. Huffman gave a quarter billion dollars to Al Gore, Colin Powell and their partner John Doerr, who all pretended to be green but supported me for president.”
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