Let America Be America Again? When Was It Not America?

[Solidarity]

John Kerry: "It's time to let America be America again."

What is that suppose to mean?

[Eric J in MN]

1. It means that we have an illegitmate-President who is a crook and

It means that we have an illegitmate-President who is a crook and we aren't achieving our ideals of civil liberties or international respect.

[CJCRANE]

2. No, let it be Patriotica n/t

.

[Vickers]

3. I believe he is talking about American ideals that have been neglected by

the current administration.

Things like:

- freedom of speech

- freedom of (and from) religion

- freedom from illegal search and seizure

etc.

All of these (and more) have taken a hit, and it's time to embrace them again.

[Solidarity]

17. Perhaps He Would Do Better Just Saying What He Thinks

Why should we have to guess what Kerry means? If he actually means what several posters guess he means, perhaps Kerry should just come out and say it!

Oppose the Patriot Act. Say it's a war for oil. Defend the Bill of Rights, etc.,

Saying "Let America Be America Again" seems totally devoid of any real meaning. Just a sort of snappy campaign slogan. Kind of like "Let A Thousand Flowers Bloom" or "Standing Tall For American Values" and "We Need To Build, Not Tear Down". Meaningless dribble!

[Fear]

4. The stupidiest line ever thought about.

:puke:

Somewhere there's been running a thread about this.
To me it sounds like - let's go back to the Good 'ol 'we're all stupid' America.......but oh no - this should be Bush's line.

[PROGRESSIVE1]

5. I believe that JK meant that this Mis-Administration's CRIMINAL....

actions, undermining Constitutional Freedoms and Starting an Illegal War, are against what we stand for!

:kick:

[Fear]

6. IT"S BAD!, i mean seriously, everybody starts it's reply with

I BELIEVE.....nobody's for sure, the line failed. - all guessing :S

[Vickers]

8. It's got folks talking, huh?

Yeah, it's a miserable failure.

[Fear]

13. yup@talking, perhaps a positive point then :S

[markses]

7. When was it EVER America? is the correct question

Langston Hughes, Let America be America Again

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!

[cindyw]

15. That is why we must use this line. It is wonderful.

Gives me chills.

For those of you who think it speaks to being the america of slavery and war, then you need to read this again. I'm am very tired of playing to dumbest in America. Hand out the poem to people if you have to. Kerry is talking about a vision of America we all should have.

Get over your problems with it. It's brilliant.

[coloradodem2005]

9. I understand what it means.

We want to live in a land of true freedom and opportunity. This is something that we have gotten pretty far away from under the Current president Bush. Now, we have an illegitimate President, The Patriot Act, a fumbling Economy and a war for oil. Our ideals have been compromised by the current administration. Kerry is talking about getting away from that.


I would have said "Let America be America." Omitting the "Again".

[psychopomp]

10. It helped me to read the original poem

edit: removed poem to save b/w since it had just been posted

The choice by the campaign of a slogan with such a complicated subtext (that "America" still has yet to be) was done with the best of intentions, though the phrase sounds like a trite soundbite.

OTOH, how is it possible to summarize what is at stake in ten words or less?

[JohnOneillsMemory]

28. "Let's realize the America the Founding Fathers intended in 1776."

This image of the original American Revolution against King George should be the theme park flavor of Kerry's campaign and the Dem convention in Boston.

He can simply endorse the Original Bill of Rights and rule of law and put the Repubs on the other side of those issues.

You want to think you're the Master Race, Mr and Mrs TV Nation? Then live up to the responsibilities.

STOP THE GLOBAL LYNCHING AND DOMESTIC EUGENICS.

[Syrinx]

11. seems obvious to me

[Bozita]

12. It changed in 1980 with an "October Surprise"

Soon after, the PATCO strike told us that the race to the bottom was on.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

21. I tend to go with the MIC, post WWII.

But yours is good, too.

[Bozita]

49. Please help with "MIC"

TIA

[JohnOneillsMemory]

14. Standard 'back to Eden ' before my opponent rhetoric. Never existed.

America has always been a rhetorical concept, not reality. And the use of the rhetoric of democracy has always been a substitute for actual social justice.

It's called propaganda. The US has the best PR in the world and the neocons tore the red-white-and-blue bunting off the cover of the torture manual that has been the American operating system for almost 400 years. Kerry wants to put the cover back on to bring back the illusion of American virtue and reduce resistance to US hegemony to make it more cost-effective. Opposition eats into the profits, you see.

This sentimental rhetoric is exactly what is used to cover up the fact that the US was a model for Nazi Germany and a haven for hundreds of Nazis after WWII who continued their horrible tactics in the Cold War.

The myth that the US is Superman Cowboy Jesus is maintained by the propaganda from WWII that the defeat of Hitler proved the international virtue of this now unchecked hyperpower. The current state of mass atrocity is, much to Bush haters without historical perspective, nothing new. Atrocity and terrorism are the main driving social forces of United States history.

The US gov't has been slaughtering weaker and darker skinned people for centuries for economic gain and has a body count far exceeding the Nazis.

Consider:
1) The Native American holocaust that Hitler modeled his Final Solution on.

2) The slavery, murder, torture, lynching, apartheid, segregation, disenfranchisement and eugenic neglect that African Americans still suffer from in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.
Here are 80 years worth of souvenir lynching postcards from that very popular American pasttime.
http://www.musarium.com/withoutsanctuary/main.html

3) The many US corporations that profiteered by building Hitler's Third Reich after WWI. Many were unable to fill US orders before WWII at FDR's request because they were busy making money off Hitler.

4) The plight of German Jews was known long before anything was done about it and a ship overloaded with Jewish refugees was turned away from US shores.

5) As former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara has admitted, the US committed the same horrible war crimes against civilians that got Nazis hung at Nuremberg. He has suggested, correctly in my opinion, that had the US lost WWII it would have been charged with the same war crimes. McNamara helped plan the months of firebombing of Japanese cities that killed hundreds of thousands of women and children. The Japanese gov't was desperately trying to arrange a surrender by May 1945. The communication systems within Japan were so devastated by the time of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear attacks that it was difficult for the command structure to even know what happened to those cities, never mind 'get the message' of America's terrible new weapon.

6) The Vietnam War might be characterized as a large scale massacre. This is simplistic but the 'destroy to save' concept of ideological combat is easy to see as self-fulfilling delusion at other's expense. The illegal carpet bombing of Cambodia and Laos killed around a million peasants and wrought a havoc that enable the murderous Pol Pot to continue the slaughter of another few million.

7) The US/CIA overthrow of democratically elected leaders and sponsoring of torture and death squads is responsible for the deaths of millions. Read this first hand account by former CIA station chief John Stockwell where he claims in a 1987 speech that CIA actions led to the deaths of up to 6 million people.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4068.htm
John Stockwell is the highest-ranking CIA official ever to leave the agency and go public. He ran a CIA intelligence-gathering post in Vietnam, was the task-force commander of the CIA's secret war in Angola in 1975 and 1976, and was awarded the Medal of Merit before he resigned. Stockwell's book In Search of Enemies, published by W.W. Norton 1978, is an international best-seller.

8) Consider the secret US wars in Central America where death squads filled mass graves and eliminated unionists for US corporations.

9) Consider the support of Saddam Hussein and many other slaughtering dictators. So many of them. Ever heard of the School of the Americas? Or seen the torture manuals that came out of it for Latin American governments to use against their opposition?

10) Consider this year's US coup in Haiti where the Pentagon had dumped 20,000 new M16s for terrorist thugs and then US Marines kidnapped the twice democratically-elected Aristide away to the secluded Central African Republic.

I could go on and on but I think I've made the point that the propaganda does not match reality. It is a tool to affect more atrocity for strictly economic and strategic power purposes.

Ceremony and ritual like the recent WWII commemoration serve to perpetuate war by reinforcing the American myths of heroic killing and dying that send people like Pat Tillman to go to Pipelineistan to 'defend our freedoms.'

We are all suffering from the 'friendly fire' of propaganda.

[cindyw]

16. Did you even read the poem? "America" is not the actions of the worst in

our society. It is the dream of the great.

[JohnOneillsMemory]

22. The poem and my criticism of real history were posted at the same time.

I agree with the hopes of the poem. It says much of what I just wrote about the failings of this country. Did you notice?

BUT.

My point is that the RHETORIC IS MISTAKEN FOR REALITY AND ACTUALLY PREVENTS JUSTICE BECAUSE IT IS ASSUMED TO HAVE ALREADY HAPPENED. And the reality is so horrible that only a few Americans can stomach facing it. Hell, Bush* says nice things and mentions God and people take his words as reality. Same with the nationalist myths of Land of the Free, Home of the Brave.

America has been almost 400 years of atrocity, not at all the sentiments espoused before July 4th picnic fireworks displays.

[JohnOneillsMemory]

26. Don't let the 'few bad apples' theory of American apologetics be denial.

Smiley face bandaids don't cover mass graves.

What this country really needs are Truth and Reconciliation committees like South Africa's to air out the bloodstains. Reperations and contrition are in order.

And more of the nurturing strength of humility instead of the belligerent arrogance of 'greatness.'

More 'God Forgive America' bumper stickers instead of 'God Bless America.'

[RapidCreek]

30. Couldn't have said it better myself.

It's time to draw that red white and blue curtain...the animate picture of Dorian Gray who sits behind it, pulling the levers of hegemony is so unpleasant. I don't want to look upon it anymore.

RC

[indigobusiness]

35. Your post begs the question

of whether America will ever grow up enough to take a hard look at itself, and make the difficult adjustments, before it self destructs.

[WillyBrandt]

18. It seems obvious, and touches a chord with me...

We've strayed from what we should be--in a very major way--under this dope, and need to return.

[JohnKleeb]

19. means to me that the america I saw as a younger kid needs to come back

its simliar to George McGovern's "come home america"

[Solidarity]

24. I Don't Like It

Kerry should give credit to Langston Hughes for that line.

I guess the "Let America Be America" campaign slogan is suppose to somehow make us feel all warm, cuddly and fuzzy inside. And better yet it can mean whatever you want it to mean!

I don't like it.

[Eric J in MN]

29. People know its from Langston Hughes. nt

nt

[Name removed]

32. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Tarheel_Dem]

37. thank you sandnsea.....

for your spot on debunking skills. i was enraged that the author of this thread chose to pull a single phrase from an entire speech, and not reference its context. :eyes:

[sandnsea]

41. Oh for the love of pete

Waa Waa Waa, fine, here's the quote. God forbid anybody be confronted about their bias and lack of intellectual honesty in pursuing the truth.

"So how do we honor the legacy of Brown? That question was answered some 20 years before that decision by a son of Lawrence, Kansas and one of America’s greatest poets – Langston Hughes. In one of his most soul wrenching poems, Hughes challenged the nation to “Let America Be America Again.” He called that generation to fulfill the unmet promise of America:

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.

And so we honor the legacy of Brown by letting America be America – by reaffirming the value of inclusion, equality, and diversity in our schools and across the life of our nation. By opening the doors of opportunity, so that more of our young people can stay in school and out of prison. By lifting more of our people out of poverty, expanding the middle class, providing health care, and bringing jobs, hope and opportunity to all the neighborhoods of the forgotten America."

http://www.johnkerry.com/pressroom/speeches/spc_2004_0517.html

[tritsofme]

20. Its too close to "Let's Make America Great Again"

for my comfort.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

23. Wow you never seem to miss an opportunity to lob an ad hominem attack

against Kerry.

Gosh, for me it invokes the America that was a party to the Geneva Convention.
The America that passed the Civil Rights Act.


I really don't see a point in this thread and yeah there are some things that WERE great about us that seem to be being drowned out.

[Solidarity]

25. Like I Said

Like I said. I don't like the line no matter who uses it. It's not brilliant. It's not slick. It's meaningless.

You can put whatever content you want into it. A right-winger, left-winger any everyone in between could use that line.

Wouldn't be surprised at all to see some right-wingers use that line. They would put their own special reactionary meaning and twist to it.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

27. The same thing could be said about the term "Solidarity"

[Solidarity]

31. Solidarity Not A Campaign Slogan

I don't think "Solidarity" has ever been used by anyone, right or left, as a central campaign slogan. It has mainly been used by workers and their organizations and movements at demonstrations, strike picketlines and in song such as "Solidarity Forever".

Here's a few campaign slogans I'd like to see but won't.

"I'll Bring The Troops Home".

"Defend Our Freedoms, Repeal The Patriot Act!"

"No More GI Blood For Oil"

[Name removed]

33. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[sandnsea]

42. One more time

"our young men and women will never have to fight and die for foreign oil,"

And again, Pay ATTENTION!

[Djinn]

48. and you beleive that?

I'm not an American so the whole Dean/Clark/Kerry etc fight has been one that's not really mine - but given that Kerry has already stated that he does not intend to "bring them home" but will bring "most combat" troops back by the END of his first term, it seems really niave to say that "our young men and women will never have to fight and die for foreign oil,".

And the sad fact is even if Kerry DID immediately bring them home, to pretend that no wars have been fought for resources or other stupid reasons under a Dem admin is truly sticking one's head in the sand.

Surely there are soooo many things to go after Bush on, I find focusing on Iraq kinda weird given Kerry's position on it isn't overly different in terms of actual plans for the future.

[indigobusiness]

38. Who respects slickness...or judgementalism, for that matter...?

This thread seems to have more than its share of cryptofascists.

[Betty The Younger]

34. I'm old enough to know I don't recognize America today!

The times they have changed. Meaner. Theres a hardness to life today than there was even pre 9.11. Bush* changed things for the worse. I hope not for good or for the long term.

[indigobusiness]

39. You are so on target.

Our culture has become a one that fosters greed, cleverness, and opportunism, while often punishing the innocent.

We have dumbed things down, sacrificed out basic common-sense decency and rewarded the sharks and snakes--i.e.Wallstreet/Washington scandals.

Good folks suffer in all sectors, for their goodness--deceit pays.

We, as a country, are eating ourself.

[robertpaulsen]

36. When specifically? December 12, 2000. Capice?

[Lorien]

40. When the Patriot act was signed

it stopped being America.

[Solidarity]

43. A Fluff Speech That Promotes Nothing Progressive

Tarheel_Dem wrote: "thank you sandnsea..... for your spot on debunking skills. i was enraged that the author of this thread chose to pull a single phrase from an entire speech, and not reference its context."

How in the world can someone give a speech on Memorial Day weekend without even uttering the word "Iraq"? That's what Kerry did. The speech was all about veterans and war. And the theme of the speech was "Let America Be America Again". The speech had nothing to do with the feelings and sentiments expressed in the poem. Unless you think better body armor for soldiers is what we need to end colonial wars like the one in Iraq.

Read the entire speech for yourself.

http://www.johnkerry.com/pressroom/speeches/spc_2004_0529.html

Read the speech of Dennis Kucinich on war. Compare it to the speech of John Kerry. It seems that, unlike John Kerry, Dennis shares most of the same values and views that most of us have on DU. And it appears that the DLC is trying to marginalize the views of liberals and progressives like Dennis Kucinich within the Democratic Party.

Dennis said:

" The United States was founded on hope, optimism, and a commitment to freedom. We can once again become a beacon of hope for the world. To do that, we must reject the current administration's policies of fear, suspicion, and preemptive war. It is time to jettison our illusions and fears and to transform age-old challenges with new thinking. This is the idea behind my proposal to establish a Department of Peace. This is the idea to make nonviolence an organizing principle at home and abroad and dedicate ourselves to peaceful coexistence, consensus building, disarmament, and respect for international treaties. Violence and war are not inevitable. Nonviolence and peace are inevitable.

We can conceive of peace as not simply the absence of violence but the presence of the capacity for a higher evolution of human awareness, of respect, trust, and integrity. We can conceive of peace as a tool to tap the infinite capabilities of humanity to transform consciousness and conditions that impel or compel violence at a personal, group, or national level toward creating understanding, compassion, and love. We can bring forth new understandings where peace, not war, becomes inevitable. We can move from wars to end all wars to peace to end all wars.

We must change the metaphor of our society from one of war to one of peace. The Department of Defense now requires in excess of $400 billion for its activities. A Department of Peace can be an effective counterbalance, redirecting our national energies towards nonviolent intervention, mediation, and conflict resolution on all matters of human security."

Read the entire speech at this link:

http://www.kucinich.us/issues/departmentpeace.php

Congressman Kucinich is the 2003 recipient of the Gandhi Peace Award. Former recipients include Eleanor Roosevelt, Cesar Chavez, A.J. Muste, Dr. Linus Pauling, Dorothy Day, Sen. Wayne Morse and Marian Wright Edelman. See website:

[bigtree]

44. You have posted a link to the democratic response radio address

Not a speech. There have been countless speeches from John Kerry on Iraq. You imply that Kerry has not addressed these issues as fully as Kucinich, but you are in error. John Kerry has spoken repeatedly to these issues. You have his web site, you can use the search engines. You just don't have the interest to dig and find out what he has actually said. It's a shame. You do no service to your cause by misrepresenting the views of John Kerry here.

Dennis won't be our candidate. John Kerry will. I would not be digging to find the omissions regarding your views in every statement, I would be emphasizing the powerful appeals and direction John Kerry has offered in the past months, and commit myself to broadcasting that reality.

But you won't. You seem content to replace his views with your own cynicism. Your approach is a disingenuous and self-serving meme. Folks who actually bother to follow what John Kerry has said and done can only regard your slap at Kerry and your advocacy of Dennis as a slight, or worse, an attack akin to the opposition's efforts to distort and obfuscate in this election.

[Solidarity]

46. No Need To Mention Iraq On Memorial Day Weekend.

bigtree wrote:

"You have posted a link to the democratic response radio address Not a speech."

Sorry. Clearly a huge mistake. He spoke on the radio but that was a talk, not a speech. Is that better?

"There have been countless speeches from John Kerry on Iraq."

That's true. But, he didn't even mention Iraq in a major memorial day speech .... I mean talk. That's truly amazing.

"You imply that Kerry has not addressed these issues as fully as Kucinich, but you are in error."

I made no such implication. He has talked about Iraq. Kerry's position is opposed to that of Dennis Kucinich and most posters on DU. Kerry supports the continued occupation of Iraq and says very clearly that we must "stay the course" and must not "cut and run" from Iraq. I take it you agree with that position.

"You do no service to your cause by misrepresenting the views of John Kerry here."

And what views did I misrepesent? I didn't comment at all on his pro-Iraq occupation views until now.

"I would be emphasizing the powerful appeals and direction John Kerry has offered in the past months, and commit myself to broadcasting that reality."

And what is John Kerry's powerful appeal on such issue as the Iraq war, NAFTA and the Patriot Act just to name a few?

[Andy_Stephenson]

47. Don't forget

his support of Homeland Gestapo.

[union_maid]

45. It's a great line

It's from a great poem that speaks both harsh truth and aspiration. Outside of the poem, it's a way to say that Kerry is going to try to answer the literary question, "Dude, where's my country?" which is a thought that's on so many peoples' minds and has been for quite some time. Many people will instinctively realize that America has not been America and cannot be America with this administration at the helm. It's perfect. Says a lot by saying a little.