It's taken him quite a long time, but John Kerry has finally settled on a campaign theme. On 17 May 2004, Kerry told the Wall Street Journal that "Talking about 'Let America be America again' is tapping into that value system that people think makes this country strong." The problem is that "Let America Be America Again" was actually a rather bitter poem written by a poet named Langston Hughes in 1938. A poem that repeats the claim that, "America never was America to me," and derides America's "false patriotic wreath" in much the same manner that today's Liberals attack displays of patriotism.

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.")

This is the same Langston Hughes who wrote in 1932, in "Good-Morning, Revolution,"

Together,
We can take anything:
Factories, arsenals, buses, ships,
Railroads, forests, fields, orchards,
Bus lines, telegraphs, radios,
(Jesus! Raise hell with radios!)
Steel mills, coal mines, oil wells, gas,
All the tools of production.
(Great day in the morning!)
Everything—
And turn ‘em over to the people who work.
Rule and run ‘em for us people who work.

Boy! Them Radios—
Broadcasting that very first morning to USSR:
Another member the International Soviets done come
Greetings to the Socialist Soviet Republics
Hey you rioting workers everywhere greetings.
And we’ll sign it: Germany
Sign it: China
Sign it: Africa
Sign it: Poland
Sign it: Italy
Sign it: America
Sign it with my own name: Worker
On that day when no one will be hungry, cold, oppressed,
Anywhere in the world again.

Hughes also wrote in his 1938 poem, "Goodbye Christ,"

Goodbye,
Christ Jesus Lord God Jehova,
Beat it on away from here now.
Make way for a new guy with no religion at all –
A real guy name
Marx communist Lenin Peasant Stalin Worker ME –
I said, ME!

Yes, Langston Hughes was a Communist, and his poetry strongly reflected that belief system. He is described by James Smethurst in his 1999 book The New Red Negro: The Literary Left and African American Poetry, 1930-1946 as the author of "revolutionary or militant poems aimed at an audience defined largely by the cultural institutions of the CPUSA and the Comintern." Hughes was brought before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1953 to account for his membership in the Communist Party USA, but managed to convince the members that "the pro-Communist works he had published no longer represented his thinking." Unfortunately for his social life, "Communists bitterly resented the way he abandoned professed members of the party, including W. E. B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson, whom Hughes had lauded in earlier decades." Hughes had coldly abandoned his principles to save his writing career. This is the theme for the Kerry campaign? These are the values that "people think makes this country strong" -- anger, bitterness, cynicism and Communism? If we ask, "what people think that?" would we be told that it's none of our business?

Well, at least it does express the attitude of the anti-war activists Kerry once represented as a leader of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and those who still oppose freedom and democracy for the Iraqi people, while advocating Communism for all.

(Hat tip to CrushKerry.com for this one.)