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Thursday, March 28, 2024 - 06:53 AM

INDEPENDENT CONSERVATIVE VOICE OF UPSTATE SOUTH CAROLINA

First Published in 1994

INDEPENDENT CONSERVATIVE VOICE OF
UPSTATE SOUTH CAROLINA

Liberty's Statue has been weeping for a long time. With good cause!
Liberty's Statue has been weeping for a long time. With good cause!

Before I begin this plunge into the heart of liberal dogma, let me state for the record that I am not against a degree of legal, restricted, and needful immigration.  The vast majority of Americans living today had ancestors who emigrated from some other country and into the U.S. in the past.  I am one of them, for both my maternal grandfather and grandmother came, LEGALLY, from the country of Croatia early in the 20th century, and I’m grateful that they did.  America has been peopled by, and generally benefitted from, immigrants who came here from mostly European countries (with some exceptions) over much of the 19th and early 20th centuries.  Except for some of the immigrants from Oriental nations, these European immigrants usually assimilated quickly, or at least their children did, and most became naturalized, proud and useful Americans, the vast majority of whom contributed much more to our nation that they took from it.  Unfortunately, the same cannot honestly be claimed in regards to the disparate dregs of humanity who, legally or mostly otherwise, are entering our nation today.

Americans have recently been “advised” that there are at least 22 million ILLEGAL ALIENS living among us (I contend that the number is much higher, and for years was not the totally bogus number of 11 million ILLEGAL ALIENS that those with sinister agendas <like the disgusting communist devils who control the Sleazy Joe Biden Administration> lied to us about), having either crossed our borders as law breaking, disease carrying, unwelcome and unwanted INVADERS with either “a free lunch”, crime,  or violence on their minds, or having come lawfully on temporary visas and then purposely overstayed those visas, disappearing into our population in hopes that they could remain invisible to Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE), and as the commies in The Klan of New Bolsheviks plan, eventually become FULL U.S. citizens who will vote for Dumbocrats forever, and keep that Marxist party in power until the end of time. 

Many Americans, especially those who call themselves “mainstream” Christians, remind us that God’s Word seems to tell us to welcome immigrants (sojourners), to aid and care for them. But what about those  who seek to deliberately violate U.S. laws and disregard our borders?  I have great trouble accepting them,  because the U.S. has usually welcomed, to one degree or another, immigrants who can PROVE, without doubt, that they are fleeing from persecution in their native lands, or who have requested, through American laws, to come here and become naturalized citizens.  Generally, these immigrants have been beneficial to our culture, particularly if they did their best to learn English, assimilate into American society, were law abiding, had jobs, paid taxes, etc.  It is the OTHER type of aliens,  especially the horde of poorly educated and impoverished immigrants coming ILLEGALLY among us in the past two or three decades (even today), and until the past couple of years usually from poor and dysfunctional Hispanic, African, or Muslim countries (mostly socialist and/or religious dictatorships), that have given pause to the normal “melting pot” attitude that Americans  traditionally held.  (Today we have illegal INVADERS from just about every nation on earth, courtesy of the deliberate destruction of our cultural cohesiveness by those damnable communists in the Comrade Biden administration). 

All Americans are familiar with our beautiful Statue of Liberty that stands on the historic Bedloe Island (now called Liberty Island), in New York City’s harbor.  I walked up (many stairs)  into the crown of “Lady Liberty” back in 1957 when it was freely open to the public (its access is now somewhat restricted).  It was a great view of NYC, and I recommend that if you’ve never visited the Statue of Liberty, you do so.   But please realize that Lady Liberty was originally conceived by the French as a symbol to celebrate Liberty being extended FROM America TO other countries, in the hope that they would emulate what the U.S. did to bring freedom to its people.  What most Americans today do not understand, or know, is that The Statue of Liberty was NOT originally  erected to be a symbol to encourage emigration from all of the rest of the world into the U.S.  That erroneous concept was attached to Lady Liberty by a leftwing social activist years after the statue was conceived.

I assume my readers know that our Statue of Liberty (the statue itself) was a gift from the people of France to America.  (The pedestal on which it stands was not included in France’s gift, and Americans slowly raised the funds for it over several years.)  Back in 1865 a French political philosopher and an expert on America’s constitution, Edouard de Laboulaye, proposed that the people of France build a monument and gift it to the U.S. to recognize the history of constitutional government and the ideal of liberty that Americans had, with some exceptions, enjoyed since 1783.  Laboulaye was an admirer of the late Abraham Lincoln, and wanted the monument to also honor him.   This Frenchman wanted to bring the attention of the world to the recent victory of the Union over the Confederacy and before that, the victory of American revolutionaries, aided by France, over the British crown, thereby hopefully inspiring the French people to create their own free constitutional government, for at this time France was ruled by a fairly repressive monarchy.

In 1865 France was divided between its citizens who still wanted a strong monarchy (which was originally abolished in 1789 and later reinstituted), and those who supported European “enlightenment”—i.e. the beliefs, resurrected decades earlier by America’s Founders, that people had natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The anti-monarchists of France worked hard during this time so that constitutional government would ultimately prevail in France.  What is important to remember is that the Statue of Liberty was originally conceived by its French builders to be a symbol of America’s extending the concepts of freedom and liberty TO THE WORLDIt was never intended to be some sort of perpetual beacon beckoning the rest of the world to come to America and take up residence.

By 1880 the French had raised enough money (about $400,000 in American dollars of that time), and the sculptor, Fredric-Auguste Bartholdi, whose design for the statue had been approved almost ten years previously, struggled to complete work on the huge copper outer sheeting and iron framework in his Paris studio.   Most of us today are

not aware that the proposed gift of this huge statue was NOT entirely welcomed by all Americans.  Many newspapers, especially the New York Times, condemned the proposed French gift as “folly”, and advised against spending any money on a pedestal on which to mount the statue.  Bartholdi made several trips to the U.S. trying to raise support for his masterpiece.  He displayed the completed hand and torch at the Philadelphia Exposition in 1876 and also in New York City.  But donations for the pedestal were slow in coming, and Bartholdi began to make “suggestions” that perhaps his statue should be erected in Philadelphia or Boston.  Not wanting those cities to be selected, newspaper publisher, Joseph Pulitzer, organized a fund raising drive. 

Suddenly, New Yorkers decided that they did want to erect the Statue of Liberty in their harbor, and even the New York Times ceased its opposition.  It was during these fund raising drives to cover the cost of building the statue’s pedestal that one of the fundraisers, a New York art show, commissioned a social activist poet, Emma Lazarus, to write a poem about the statue.  It was her 1883 sonnet, titled The New Colossus, which would do the most to link the Statue of Liberty with the erroneous idea of its being a “beacon of immigration”.  It reads as follows:

“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 (sic) TO ME.  I LIFT MY LAMP BESIDE THE GOLDEN DOOR.”

Nowhere in Lazarus’ sonnet is the thought of sending America’s LIBERTY unto the world, which was the original reason Laboulaye had for building the “new colossus”.  Suddenly, with the words of a leftist social activist, the true purpose of the statue began to be slowly and subtly changed in the minds of the American people from its original role as a symbol of FREEDOM AND LIBERTY sending its message to the oppressed world, to a beacon that told that world to forget about trying to change and improve one’s native land—to purge their repressive governments---to correct injustice and establish free and republican governments therein---just come to America and you can enjoy the freedom and culture that other people paid a high price to achieve.  And come they did.  Eventually, in 1886, the pedestal was finished and our new Statue of Liberty was erected upon it.  Millions of immigrants have since arrived in America, and for many of them their first view of their “promised land” was of the Statue of Liberty in New York’s harbor, welcoming them, to be sure, but NOT fulfilling its original concept.  What a shame!  What a miscarriage of truth!

So now let me be perfectly clear:  I am not now, nor ever have been, for unrestricted—for illegal—for the left wing Democrat agenda-- “immigration” of the type that America and Americans, to their detriment, have been experiencing for the past few decades, as the Klan of New Bolsheviks proceeds almost without interruption its plan to flood our land with new immigrants who will NOT assimilate, who do not understand the concepts of living in a self-governing republic, and who invariably will vote ‘Democrat’ their entire lives and ASSURE ONE PARTY RULE PERPETUALLY.  I am ONLY for immigration that is severely restricted, both from the countries of origin of the immigrants, and of  the number of immigrants.  I am unalterably OPPOSED to unrestricted immigration that the anti-Americans of The Klan of New Bolsheviks (formerly Democrats) have been purposely fostering, and am likewise unalterably opposed to allowing so-called “economically, politically, or religiously persecuted” people to come to America in virtually ANY numbers. 

America legally takes in about a million immigrants each year (many from countries whose people have NO concepts of the western values of constitutional self government, responsibility, religious liberty, and free enterprise).  A million new legal immigrants each year definitely  puts a strain on the lengthy process of cultural and social assimilation, and without the successful completion thereof will result only in uncertainty and fear directed against legal immigrants, thereby encouraging more and more “tribalism” and “balkanized enclaves” within our cities and states, within which “outsiders” are not welcome.  (In some European countries this is ALREADY a fact in Muslim infested areas, where non-Muslims are not welcome, or safe).

We very likely have from 30 to 50 MILLION ILLEGAL ALIENS inhabiting the U.S. presently, the majority of whom are demanding to be given “a path to citizenship” (a Democrat sacred goal), and most of whom will vote (legally or not) for Democrats if and when they get the chance. Many (probably most) of them consume far more in subsidies—in welfare and medical care costs—in the cost of educating their children---in criminal control and incarceration costs—in driving hit & run insurance costs—and in the DELIBERATELY INDUCED DEGRADATION of American culture (the greatest cost of all), than they can ever contribute or pay back, with the result that the U.S. is surely, and not so slowly any longer, being disintegrated into a balkanized mass of tribes and regions, totally foreign to our traditionally open American culture.  I, and millions of other politically astute Americans, contend that this is being done purposely by the sinister forces that set the agendas for the communized Democrat Party and its slavish and brain damaged supporters!

Add to this dilemma the “huddled terrorists” who have already come, and still are coming, among us via numerous illegal “caravans” of migrant “refugees”—or as I call them—INVADING ARMIES OF FREE LOADERS who want all the “good stuff” that America offers with no thought of how the rest of us will pay for their PLUNDERING of our nation.  We know that hundreds of potential Muslim terrorists—Allah’s 7th Century Primitives--have already been apprehended by our brave but almost overwhelmed Border Patrol and ICE patriots, and we can be assured that more of them are attempting to

invade the U.S. and even now are plotting and preparing new insane Islamic violence—more of the death and destruction promulgated by their Satanically controlled minds.

The U.S.A. is being INVADED by hordes of primitives—armies of ignorant and demanding “refuse” (Emma Lazarus’ word), by far the majority of whom are young military age males who seek to take all they can from America (rather than sacrifice and reform or change their own countries), and the rest of us be damned if we don’t like it.  That is an undisputable fact!  Unfortunately, many of our state and federal politicians sympathize with these illegals and thumb their noses at traditional Americans who are opposed to the increasingly rapid destruction of our country, because these sorry politicians are beholden to big money interests who desire to flood our land with desperate people who will work for very low, un-American wages---politicians who dance to the tune of powerful multi-national corporations and  low-wage-encouraging Chambers of Commerce and to corporate oligarchs that are controlling our country.  Sadly, we Americans keep electing these anti-American, pro-illegal alien, sold out to big money politicians, thereby assuring the time when native-born, European heritage, patriotic Americans will be an unwelcome minority in our own country.  If we allow that to happen, we’ll have only ourselves to blame, and we’ll deserve the chaos and loss of our liberties that will follow!  And we’ll surely deserve the scorn of our patriot ancestors as their posterity—US—degenerates into a mob of spineless and unappreciative grifters who look to their all-powerful, all-knowing socialist Big Brother government to provide for them, tell them what to do, what to think, and who to hate.  The thought of that disgusts me!

 

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WHLambBioMug2

A native of Cleveland, Ohio, W. H. (Bill) Lamb is a graduate of Cleveland State University (Ohio); being graduated in 1960, he moved to South Carolina in 1964.  For many years he was an Industrial engineer, Chief Industrial engineer, and plant manager in the steel, electronics, and apparel industries in Ohio, South Carolina, and Alabama.  In his younger days, he was an avid hiker in the Southern mountains, a target shooter, and is still an avid student of both American history and ancient Egyptian history.

He is an avid and long-time writer, concentrating on political and cultural issues of concern to America's Christian Patriot community.  He was published in the Lancaster, S.C. "News" during the mid-to-late 1960's, and has been a Local Columnist published in the Greenville, SC The Times Examiner since 1999.  The late and great Christian Patriot, Col. Bobby Dill, was his first Editor. During those years he has had several hundred articles published in The Times Examiner, which he always refers to as "a great journal of truth"!  

He has had one book published, a 120-page novel set in our future, titled "The History of Our Future", and two unpublished  750-page sequels "Waiting in the Wings" to be published "someday".  Bill has been married to Barbara for 65 years, has two adult  (and aging) kids,  five grandkids, six great-grandkids, and a "feisty and opinionated" 80 lb. Pit Lab named Hayley, who admittedly runs the entire house.

A very long-time member, with Barbara, of The patriotic John Birch Society, he believes that it is the duty of ALL Christians to also be dedicated patriots and do everything possible to both resist the evil of collectivism that is smothering Western Civilization and to do his best to educate and motivate his fellow Americans in the preservation of our unique Constitutional Republic, and most importantly, to share the love of his Savior with others.