Langston Hughes - Democrat Poet Laureate 2004

I actually like Langston Hughes. I did a paper on his poem "Let America be America Again". I appreciate the rhythms, thoughtfulness and restrained passion with which he penned his verse.

There is a certain lip-smacking tastiness that John Kerry has adopted Hughes' poem as part of his campaign. I have watched in horror as the great Democratic Party has spiraled down into the abyss of socialistic philosophy, and the adaptation of Hughes as this campaign's poet laureate brims with irony. You see, gentle reader, Langston Hughes was a big 'ol Commie.

Given the history of the times, a smart man like Hughes came by his socialistic bents quite honestly. He watched as Jim Crow gobbled up the impoverished black man, most stridently when the Scotsboro boys were railroaded into prison on dubious charges of raping two white women. The only folk willing to mount a robust defense were the Communists of that era.

Furthermore, capitalism of that day was quite brutish. Henry Ford said that the wage to pay a man should not be the least amount he will work for, but the most amount he could be paid and sustain the company. Conversely he felt that the amount charged for a good should not be the most you can charge, but the least you could charge and stay in business. These days we bask in the afterglow of Antitrust laws, and Fords' enlightenment has reached deep into the character of American business (Ralph Nader's inanities notwithstanding). Hughes' observations were that of company towns, company stores and their resultant exploitation when competition is curtailed. Hughes, observing bent men old while yet young from years in the mines could be excused for seeing Marxism as a remedy for robber barons who responded to pleas for better wages and conditions with truncheons and buckshot.

I am well inclined to be gentle with Langston, but modern Democrats don't have his excuse. Enlightened Capitalism has clearly outperformed socialism by any rational measure, failing only to reach the cherry-picked metrics of today's loopy Leftists.

"Let America be America Again" is a plaintive cry from a man who witnessed real live honest-to-goodness economic and civil oppression. In his day, starvation was a real possibility after losing a job.

Kerry's campaign claims that Bush is trying to unfairly paint their candidate as pessimistic. Think of that every time you hear Kerry in his naturally mournful tones read this legitimately mournful poem. They are erecting an absurd straw man, attempting to convince any who will listen that George W. Bush's America is that of Herbert Hoover's, complete with strikebustng Pinkertons. Consider the fact that he is equating today with that awful time.

Therein lies an enormous problem with the Democrats. Though they would be far better off setting a course to build upon the enormous successes since Hughes wrote his poem they instead have to call good bad and problematic dreadful. A party of drama queens is not fit to lead this nation.

Tim McNabb