Monday, February 13, 2012

"Homeland of the Free"


Langston Hughes is one of the few people who is so widely renowned and deserves every bit of it. He never disappoints. I could read “Let America Be America Again” a million times over and find new meaning each time. My favorite line is “Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath”. It resonates with me for some reason. I feel like patriotism is such a double standard in this country. Calling yourself “conservative” automatically stamps you with an American flag. The right has monopolized patriotism. The tea party is a radical group and they wave around American flags and they’re seen as patriotic. It’s fine for them to criticize President Obama because they’re just exercising their right as citizens. Oh, but if anyone said anything against President Bush they’d be shot down as unpatriotic. I mean, really, how dare anyone criticize a Republican president? Because to be Republican is to be more Patriotic than anyone else in the history of the country…ever! To me, being patriotic is to expect your country to be the best it can be, which can include criticizing a completely out of touch President.

America was built on good ideas but it has never really fully reached those ideals. First the natives were kicked out and then that whole slavery bit, it’s hard to build an equality based country when its foundation is so cracked. America was never America. And I’m not sure it ever will be. Equality is such a hard thing to get to, because part of life is that everyone will never be fully equal. It’s like the first thing we read in English this year, the excerpt from Harrison Bergeron. When do we draw the line on equality? However, when people are hindering other people from doing things, that’s when there’s a need for equality.

Hughes and Fitzgerald have very similar views of the American Dream, that it’s broken. They both go about it slightly different but the fundamentals of the statements they’re making are the same. People at the top are continuously pushing down people beneath them because they can, because it keeps them at the top.

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