THE REBIRTH of America's symbol of freedom, the Statue of Liberty, will be celebrated today.
Since 1884 the 25-ton statue has held her torch high to welcome the hungry, the tired and the poor. All came to America with a common goal: to be able to live in a system of government whose constitutional purpose was to protect each person's right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.
Miss Liberty's copper skin is tarnished by years of exposure to the elements and pollution, but it remains intact. When viewing the beautiful lady from the distant skyline of Manhattan, few people have noticed a defect in the beautiful monument.
The $230 million spent to restore the statue was necessary, not because of esthetics, but because massive rust and corrosion weakened the supporting beams and inner structures. This unseen decay eventually would have caused the symbol of America to collapse -- the Statue of Liberty decayed from the inside. Is this a message for the United States?
Can anyone say, ''America's moral fibers are as strong as when Miss Liberty first came to Bedloe's Island''? America's inner strengths always have been faith in God, oneself, family and country. These four fundamentals made America what it is today, and these same fundamentals are the inner structures that hold up our country.
Is the statue's inner decay a foreboding warning to all of us?