Dear Lady Liberty,

3 years ago, I left you for a short while to live among the people of Europe. As you would
hope of me, I developed a profound love for the people of Spain, and many others whom I
encountered. Yet it was what I was constantly bombarded with that brought a newfound love for
my sweet land of liberty that you symbolize.

Thanks to my fair complexion and light hair, I was always asked if I was a Ruski, a
Swede, or an American. When I would respond and claim the latter, what without fail would
ensue was fascinating. They would begin to heap praise on America, speaking of their love for it,
and their desire to visit and live there.

Lady liberty, I must confess, I suppose I have always taken you for granted, because I
knew what I had, but I was never truly grateful. Amidst the heaps of praise for you, I never
touted that you had raised me, I never rubbed it in, but I silently listened and contemplated as to
why? Why would people tell me how lucky I was? Why did the lady on the metro tell my friend
wearing a tie that said God bless America, Dont worry, he already has? Why did everyone tell
us how great you are? Why did they long to live in my country? What did America offer? Is it
simply another place that is nice, or is there more to it? I took it upon myself to come to
understand what makes you so special.

When I arrived back home early last November, I was grateful to be back in the land of
the free as the TSA officer in Atlanta said Welcome home. This was a surreal moment for me. I
was back! And I burst with love for my home, a love I had seldom recognized growing up. But

what I encountered next was both frightening and unexpected. Two months after arriving home I
began college, and the difference was stark. Had I not lived away from you, and experienced
firsthand the limited freedoms of a foreign land and heard the praise of others, I would have
thought America was the vilest place in the history of mankind.

My peers would argue and tell me that you, America, are an evil land, built solely upon
blood, greed, violence, and that you are home to the most nefarious system. And sadly, I say this
with only the smallest hint of hyperbole. Ive met people who are born within your borders who
despise who you are and would fundamentally change you and your system if they could.

But I dont see that in you. I see the imperfections of all of us who live within your
borders. But what I see now is what those ordinary citizens of Europe who idolized you saw. I
see something entirely different than your critics. And in these moments where your own would
see you toppled, I wish to raise my lone voice in hopes that we remember who you truly are.

What I see is the idea that you embody. You America, are an idea. You are not simply a
nation, a system, or a group of people. You are what the heart yearns for. For centuries, the age
old chime that the powers that be doth decree, ruled the halls of history. Yet the idea of you was
the foreign song, unfamiliar to the hearts of man. And though they knew not the words, that song
was mans intuitive aspiration.

You are what my ancestors crossed the waters yearning to find. You were everything the
men and women of the world had long hoped for when my 12th great grandfather Peter Brown

left England on the Mayflower and landed on Plymouth seeking religious freedom, when my
other grandfather John Lathrop fled the tyranny of the crown also seeking to worship as he
pleased, and when my other grandparents James Taggart and Philemon Baldwin fought in the
revolutionary war, declaring themselves free from the crown. They were driven by the yearning
they felt deep inside and fought for an idea that millions of those without it for centuries, pled to
attain.

It wasnt your spacious skies, or your amber waves of grain. It wasnt your purple
mountain majesties, or your fruited plain. It was the idea that found refuge between your shining
seas. The idea that they were not beholden to the crown, or to the dictates of a king, or of a
powerful government. They fought for you, the strongest, most powerful idea ever to be
conceived and spoken by human tongue: Freedom.

That fight was won when in 1492 the shores that would shelter you were discovered, and
word was brought back to Europe of a new world. That fight was won on the shores of Plymouth
when a government of the people was first established in that new world. It was written, signed
and won within the walls of a hall called Independence in Philadelphia. The fight was won with
the surrender in Yorktown. The fight for that idea was later embodied and won by the millions
who enlisted for the union, and the hundreds of thousands who gave their lives for old glory in
that conflict that almost tore you and subsequently freed the slaves. That fight was won in
reconstruction, when a deep wound began to heal. That fight was won in the defeat of Fascism in
World War I, and the liberation of those that hungered to be free. That fight was won when
Martin Luther King dreamt it, and then brought us to the days when one could be judged not by

the color of [their] skin, but by the content of [their] character. That fight was won when Reagan
declared, Tear down that wall and millions behind the curtain oppressed by Marxist ideals
were thereafter freed. That fight has happened in countless fights since won in the name of
individual liberty.

You, lady liberty, are the embodiment of that idea. It is you that has freed millions, and it
is you who still shines the light beckoning all to come into your liberating arms.

You, lady liberty, are that idea.

You, lady liberty, are the right to speak.
You are the right to worship.
You are the right to protect and defend ones family.
You are the right to property and privacy.
You are the right to life.
You are the right to the pursuit of your own happiness.
You are the land of the free.

You are freedom, and what was claimed in 76 will forever be the standard that the world
must rise to meet. That We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are
Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

When I came home from Europe, it wasnt that we as a people were any better, or more
important that made me so proud of you. All men are equal, just as you say. But it was all you
have done for the freedom of mankind. May your light continue to shine so that you may
continue to be the shining city on the hill.

May God bless you,

Jarrett