Rick Santorum Borrows Campaign Slogan From Pro-Union Poem Written By Gay Rights Advocate

[Donnachaidh]

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/04/14/rick-santorum-langston-hughes/

Earlier today, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) announced that he will begin fundraising for a presidential run using the campaign slogan “Fighting to make America America again.” This eloquent turn of phrase, however, was not invented by Santorum. It is borrowed from the title of a pro-union, pro-racial justice, and pro-immigrant poem written by Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes — “Let America Be America Again”:

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.


More at the link --


oh my poor beaten down irony meter.... :rofl:

[joeybee12]

1. Irony just keeps on smacking this jackass repeatedly over the head...knr

[Blue Owl]

2. "Fighting to make Santorum Santorum again"

My what a frothy slogan...

[starroute]

3. Not to mention that John Kerry also used it in 2004

I remember because I didn't think much of it at the time. Here's what I said then:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1635765#1636175

"Let America be America" is an awful choice.

Bob Dole used the phrase in his 1980 primary campaign. Pat Buchanan has used it in several contexts, including when he was running for the Reform Party nomination.

Conservatives have regularly used it when calling for cutting taxes, downsizing the federal government, strict constructionism, telling off China, and invading Iraq.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x531509#531572

Text of Pat Buchanan 's speech announcing plans to seek the Reform Party presidential nomination: We need a new Supreme Court where only constitutionalists need apply, a court that will respect both state's rights and human rights, that will begin to undo the damage done this nation by judicial aggressions, beginning with that abomination they call Roe v. Wade. . . . As our fathers threw off a tyranny of kings, let us throw off this tyranny of judges and let America be America again.


Bob Dole for President 1980 Campaign Brochure: "My concern is to let America be America again…to get
away from building the federal budget and the federal bureaucracy and get back to building the nation."