The Statue of Liberty

The other day my colleague came by with his son, his son who makes documentary films and is thinking about doing a film on the U.S. military base here in Iceland.

Probably the hardest thing about living abroad is having to get used to a whole different image of one's homeland than one grew up with. I suppose this happens to Icelanders who go abroad as well, suddenly realizing that hardly anyone has even heard of Iceland, or they have really weird ideas about it.

The image of America abroad is rather negative, even dangerous: imperialistic, power hungry, ruthless. Quite the opposite image is celebrated in the United States, an image of a country of immigrants, an open, expansive land where the destitute reclaim their right to happiness. For example when all the millions of school children, like me, who memorize this poem:

The New Colossus

By Emma Lazarus, 1883

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 to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Or even more foundational, something else we all memorize in school, the Declaration of Independence.*

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creatorwith certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Not that either image is right, but the truth lies closer to the middle.

*The part most kids have to memorize begins with "We hold these truths to be self-evident".