SwiftVets.com

[Doc Jerry]

"Let America Be America Again," Kerry's campaign slogan, happens to be the title of a poem written by Langston Hughes, a well-known Communist agitator in the 1930's and 1940's. In fact, one of his other poems entitled, "Good Morning, Revolution" has the following line in it:

"Greetings to the Socialist Soviet Republics. Hey you rioting workers everywhere greetings."

So these are the values that Kerry and Edwards are referring to?

[h3digital]

actually on the banner the slogan says " A New Team, for a New America"
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Let the Truth be let out.

[Doc Jerry]

If it is, it's probably out of the little Red Book Kerry carries around with him. The fact is that he's used this slogan, and he knew the source since he had an affinity for other Commies like Hanoi Jane.

[nakona]

[h3digital]

that's cool nakona, but the big sign on the stage that Kerry and Edwards stand on said the saying I stated. Once again "A New Team for A New America" nice ring to it., oh with the ha, ha ha bit , i laugh my butt off with the stuff i read on this blog. You could use this blog as a stand up comedy script sometimes, not all, because there is no such thing as all. So serious posting people Please don't take offense. Lighten up as Nakona put it.
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Let the Truth be let out.

[ASPB]

A Campaign Slogan for Kerry
Some background on “Let America be America again.”

John Kerry has been in search of a line or two of American poetry to suggest the challenge ahead, most especially his role in it. There has been much effort on the matter by his staff, and they finally came up with what they were looking for. According to Kathleen Hall Jamieson, "an expert on political messages" quoted by the New York Times, the line the Kerry campaign was searching for had to have resonance with Americans who believe the country is being taken in the wrong direction. As Ms. Jamieson analyzes the line, "It suggests someone's hijacked the country, without being a frontal attack."

The line was first tried out by Kerry in Topeka, Kan., on the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, and it seemed to glimmer on the candidate's lips, auguring a robust future. So Mr. Kerry used it again a few days later, and now it is being given very serious attention. The line is, "Let America be America again."

That phrase has something going for it. It was written by an American Negro poet, Langston Hughes (1902-1967). It is thought, in Kerryland, to be at once celebratory, poignant and galvanizing. "America" is cited, implicitly the paradise to which one should aspire, a great land that lies there waiting for us deep in coils of a lapsed American idealism, waiting to be revived by an inspired new champion.

But research on the phrase is not enjoined for the community that will sing it forth. The reason for that is that Langston Hughes wrote the poem "Let America Be America Again" in 1938, and it is not easy to summon to mind which America he was calling on his countrymen to restore, to be America again. There was little about America for the American Negro to celebrate in 1938 — unless you are willing to accept the proposition of George Washington Carver. Mr. Carver, scientist and philosopher, the son of a slave, said that American blacks had this to celebrate: that they had been plucked from African forests, brought to America, and baptized into the liberating faith of Christianity, which was the springboard for their emancipation. But Mr. Carver is not widely hailed by black Democratic progressives, the judgment on him being that he was too submissive to a culture that still practiced Jim Crow.

Langston Hughes, if he is in fact to emerge as the poet of the Democratic Party, will have to be bowdlerized. "Let America be America again" is a line from one poem Mr. Hughes wrote, and its vagueness is useful. But Hughes was not vague. And as for George Washington Carver's celebration of Christianity, Langston Hughes was, well, skeptical, as in the poem "Goodbye Christ" (1932):

Listen, Christ,

You did alright in your day, I reckon —

But that day's gone now.

They ghosted you up a swell story, too,

Called it Bible —

But it's dead now.


That exegesis of Langston Hughes would puzzle Democratic delegates in Boston in July, vibrant with life and mission. And it wasn't just that Langston Hughes had had a one-night stand with skepticism, along the way to capturing the need to let America be America again. No, Mr. Hughes had a very specific view about history, and his view was clear on the question of which historical road America should travel:

Goodbye,

Christ Jesus Lord God Jehovah,

Beat it on away from here now.

Make way for a new guy with no religion at all —

A real guy named

Marx Communist Lenin Peasant Stalin Worker ME.

Langston Hughes was asking America to "be America again," meaning, not an America that history had known and chronicled, but an America realizable in a new and different vision. The land of Marx and Lenin and Stalin. Mr. Kerry's campaign team is going to have serious homework to do before introducing Langston Hughes as the poet laureate of the Democratic Party in 2004.
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[coldwarvet]

Shameful, insulting, and not accidental.
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[ASPB]

Add the Edwards Slogan to the list.

Red Alert
It turns out "Let America be America again" isn't the Kedwards campaign's only communist-inspired slogan. John Edwards's claim that we are "two Americas" echoes a speech given by James P. Cannon to the 1948 convention of the Socialist Workers Party, a Trotskyite outfit:

There are two Americas--and millions of the people already distinguish between them.

One is the America of the imperialists--of the little clique of capitalists, landlords, and militarists who are threatening and terrifying the world. This is the America the people of the world hate and fear.

There is the other America--the America of the workers and farmers and the "little people." They constitute the great majority of the people. They do the work of the country. They revere its old democratic traditions--its old record of friendship for the people of other lands, in their struggles against kings and despots--its generous asylum once freely granted to the oppressed.

This is the America which must and will solve the world crisis--by taking power out of the hands of the little clique of exploiters and parasites, and establishing a government of workers and farmers. The workers' and farmers' government will immediately proceed to change things fundamentally--

Throw out the profit and rent hogs, and increase the living standards of the people who do the useful work.

Assure freedom and democratic rights to all, not forgetting those who are denied any semblance of them now.

Call back the truculent admirals from the seven seas--and ground the airplanes with their dangling bombs.

Hold out the hand of friendship and comradely help to the oppressed and hungry people in the world.

It really makes you wonder about the convention of coloring Republican states red.
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[nakona]

h3 -

I honestly don't even know what you're babbling about.

But please... don't tell me. I sense that it's better that I DON'T understand you.
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13F20P

[dmroyer]

Let America Be America Again
Langston Hughes


Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

From The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright © 1994 the Estate of Langston Hughes. Used with permission
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David K. Royer

[stop kerry]

Guess what-- he invoked the communist again yesterday at the NAACP meeting !!
So the whole world should know that kerry seems unable to find any
true patriotic American words or thoughts that will rally ALL Americans. He can only find a long forgotten black communist. I only hope he and Edwards are exposed for their extreme left agenda in the press on by someone who can get all of America to see these phonies.