Editor:

The Republican governors want to stop Syrian refugees from coming to America.   

What would Emma Lazarus say about that? She called the Statue of Liberty “the Mother of Exiles.”

Her immortal poem “The New Colossus” goes: “A mighty woman with a torch. Her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand glows world-wide welcome, ‘Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!’ cries she. ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore … I lift my lamp beside the golden door!’” 

I left out the second-to-last line, “Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.” 

For that omission symbolizes what the GOP is doing: defiling and dismantling Emma Lazarus’ poem.

They are extinguishing the flame of the torch held aloft by Mother America. 

Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in the 1400s. Now it’s the turn of another saintly heroine to be slain.

The Statue of Liberty will no longer live up to the name “the Mother of Exiles,” if the GOP has its way.

Yes, the same kind that executed Joan are out to do in another French lady.

For Lady Liberty came from France in 1886.

Joe Grace

Farmville