The Subsidized Progressive Colossus

Not like the lady born of hope and trial,

Who lit a torch for those who dared to stand—

Here looms a clerk with open coffers wide,

A crown of forms, a leash held in her hand.

 

She lifts no lamp for freedom’s restless soul,

But waves a check and promises a plan;

Her flame is debt, her beacon eligibility,

Her name: The Provider of the Damned.

 

“Come not to build, nor strive, nor stand alone,”

She drones from towers financed by the state.

“Bring me your needs, your claims, your

grievances— We’ll feed them all. Independence can wait.

 

Give me your tired, your poor? No—give me more:

Give me the idle, the angry, the trained to ask.

Give me the masses taught that want is power,

And power comes from wearing down the task.

 

Send me the hopeful and I’ll make them clients,

Send me the free and I’ll make them depend.

I’ll trade them wages for permanent aid,

And bind them close till the system must bend.

 

Here laws are softened, borders redefined,

For need alone now grants the right to stay.

Remain, enroll, comply, repeat the oath—

The state will live for you. The state will pay.”

 

No door is golden now, but staffed and slow,

No welcome earned, but processed and approved.

I lift no lamp for liberty’s escape—

I raise a bill. The nation is removed.

 

When night falls quiet on the harbor stone,

And ledgers sleep where once a torch was raised,

She feels the weight of what her arm has lost

And hears the echo of a braver age.

 

“I was not cast to promise comfort first,

But risk, resolve, and freedom hard-won, earned.

I stood for men who asked for independence alone—

Now I stand still, while liberty is burned.”

 

BRING BACK LIBERTY!