Inside
NCR Is
Statue of Liberty on too high a pedestal?
What could be more American than
freedom? Most of the huddled masses and others who came to these shores were
fleeing oppression of some kind and aiming to be free. Some of this country's
great fights have been about freedom, as have most wars -- at least that's what
warriors say.
But freedom is elusive as a flashy balloon on a stormy day. Editor
and publisher Tom Fox's column on the back page set stray thoughts flying. In
what were supposedly the bad old days, Fox and his family marched through
Missouri to protest nuclear weapons that lurked in nearby corn fields. The
column is a timely reminder that, although the Cold War is over, the problems
live on, including nukes still primed and ready to destroy whole countries,
continents, the planet.
This in turn stirred up an old quotation from William Faulkner in
Intruder in the Dust: "We are hoping without really any hope that our
atom bomb will be enough to defend an idea as obsolete as Noah's Ark."
The allegedly obsolete idea was freedom. "Apparently no man can
stand freedom," he wrote. Even allowing for his hyperbole, we recognize
Faulkner's gist. It's amazing that we should work so hard and spend so much
money to defend our liberty from the Soviets or Russians or other faraway
threats while we squander it closer to home. The freedom with which we all
landed in the Garden of Eden -- so to speak -- has been kicked about until
decency and then sheer survival forced us to curtail it in a thousand ways,
from driving on the right side of the road to desisting from injudicious
quoting from the pope's new catechism (page 3).
Our abuse of freedom has recently been challenged from an unlikely
quarter: Beverly Hills. Publicist Michael Levine, whose clients have included
Charlton Heston, Michael Jackson and Barbra Streisand, says that in hugging the
daylights out of liberty we have abandoned personal responsibility. "My belief
is that liberty and responsibility are like a seesaw," he told the Los
Angeles Times, and our society is approaching chaos because liberty is
upending responsibility.
Since 1993 Levine has been promoting a Statue of Responsibility,
preferably located in Los Angeles Harbor to balance Lady Liberty in New York
Harbor. If you live in or around La-La Land, this takes courage, but Levine is
undaunted. "Hollywood does not have a monopoly on irresponsibility," he said.
Supporters of his project include author M. Scott Peck, columnist Ann Landers
and Congressman Sonny Bono.
Levine figures the statue would cost $5 million to $10 million --
our money: "It would be ludicrous to build a statue of Responsibility and then
ask the government to pay for it." He has no design yet. "It should be designed
by some kind of open casting call, to coin a Hollywood expression," he
said.
It's easy to see how easily a great idea could be lost in
Hollywood-type hype not of Levine's making. Hell, no one wants to confront
responsibility, least of all build a statue to it. I heard on the radio that
every American is $6,000 in debt, on average, and that's just credit cards. And
responsible politicians -- don't make me laugh.
The history of civilizations is a race between maturity and
corruption, which is usually an abuse of freedom. History says corruption
generally brings the culture down before responsibility has time to save it.
That's because responsibility is boring and freedom is such fun. While it
lasts.
National Catholic Reporter, March 21,
1997
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