Bury the Statue of Liberty

 In just the past few days, the U.S. government has violated multiple federal court orders to deport people without due process. They have invoked a 1798 law that was passed as part of the notorious "Alien and Sedition Acts" that grossly violate the Bill of Rights. 

They have used this specious legal authority to deport Venezuelan nationals to El Salvador—a completely different country. And they have applauded the Salvadoran government for incarcerating these individuals with no due process in one of the country's most notorious prisons. 

We are back to the world of extraordinary renditions and black sites. It's one of the grossest human rights violations in a generation—and it was all done in violation of a federal court order. So it's a direct assault on the rule of law and the constitutional order too, on top of everything else. 

This is only one of countless ways the Trump administration is proving to be an enemy of freedom around the world. They have silenced U.S. broadcasts that once promoted messages of liberty to people living under authoritarian regimes across the globe. They have eviscerated U.S. foreign assistance and pro-democracy funding. 

And, of course, they have betrayed our Ukrainian allies and shown blatant favoritism toward an anti-American dictator, Vladimir Putin. 

In the face of these crimes against liberty, one French politician suggested this week that perhaps it was time for the U.S. to return the Statue of Liberty to its original home. Since the U.S. seems no longer to care about democracy either at home or abroad, perhaps we no longer have any right to this gift.

The French politician had in mind specifically the U.S. betrayal of Ukraine as the reason we should return the statue. I am therefore reminded of E.E. Cummings's similar suggestion in 1956, after the U.S. betrayed the Hungarians in their struggle for freedom against Soviet aggression. He wrote at the time:

so rah-rah-rah democracy
let's all be as thankful as hell
and bury the statue of liberty
(because it begins to smell)

Bury the Statue of Liberty—or ship it back to France. Either way, we have plainly lost our moral entitlement to it. 

A country that cedes power to a crude would-be despot, deports people to confinement in hideous dungeons in a country that is not even their own—with no legal process to challenge their imprisonment, and betrays a democratic ally fighting for its life, is no friend to liberty any more. 

Return the Statue of Liberty to the people who gave it to us, then. Or bury its putrid corpse, as Cummings advised. Bury it. And let the enemies of liberty in our government never visit its grave. To them I say: "Pass on, it honours none you wish to mourn." (Byron)

Let only the tears of true patriots water its grave—patriots who believe that the United States stands for something other than being a repressively autocratic white nationalist ethno-state. Who believe that our country, at its best, has represented freedom and hope around the world. 

And let a new tree of liberty one day sprout from that grave....