Vera Mukhina, THE sculptor behind the worker and kolkhoz woman sculpture, would’ve probably convinced people to keep it purely for artistic value. She allegedly did it with the “Freedom monument” in Latvia, but the Latvian “Freedom” statue is so ugly I wouldn’t have listened.
if it were up to me i’d keep it. it doesn’t have as much baggage as any of the other famous monuments, and liberty can mean pretty much anything anyway. plus can you imagine how bad it would look to destroy “liberty”? at least any time during my natural lifetime. plus i’ve always kinda liked it. at the very least it would make a rocking flag, way less ugly and way less colonial than the current one.