Lady Liberty is peeking out at you. Dare you take up her challenge and look back?

In looking around America, related to the election yesterday, I feel like Lady Liberty has breathed a heavy and grateful sigh of relief. I think through the years of Bush, she was in tears a lot of the time.

"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!"

Remember her? She's back. At very least, she has her chance to return, to cast off the dark cloak of isolation and cowardice; to enter into the sunlight once again as the extremists scurry back to their dark corners of this nation.

America has a chance again to be great. The dark cloud of the Bush administration and those fear-mongered years and those who still survive them, the conservative shadow of the extreme right is reasonably and hopefully in its death throws.

But they are still there. Do not give up. Keep fighting for freedom and liberty, to advance into the future and not retreat into the past and the fears of our ancient, McCarthy era mentality (and now we know) minority. Yes, hard times are still about. But who we are, is all about how we deal with these times in being open minded, kind, compassionate, intelligent, bold, brave and in keeping our eyes wide opened.