April 15, 2011 07:59 PM UTC

Santorum Steals Slogan From Gay Poet

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• by: Aristotle

Think Progress:

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.”

Dan Savage:

Langston Hughes was also a homo. And Hughes, unlike an idiot social conservative I could name/rename, wasn’t longing for a lost America. Hughes wasn’t trafficking in cheap and/or racist nostalgia for some supposed golden age. He was angry about America’s broken promises, by America’s failure to live up to its own land-of-the-free hype.

The poem is below the jump.

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-