If you were ever so declined, as I was, to open up and read the 2008 Republican Party Platform, you might have noticed something, printed lovingly, on page two of the pdf document. It’s a few words, barely a line or two, from “America the Beautiful”.

This platform is respectfully dedicated to our

“…heroes proved

In liberating strife,

Who more than self their country loved

And mercy more than life.”

_______

America the Beautiful

Katharine Lee Bates

My first thought, though I probably shouldn’t say this, was, “Wasn’t she a Socialist?” But then I grabbed the nearest two-by-four and smacked myself over the head, because I was getting her confused with Francis Bellamy, the author of The Pledge of Allegiance, who, it turns out, is a guy! (I did say I shouldn’t say this, didn’t I? Serves me right.) Anyway, the man who wrote the Pledge of Allegiance did not believe in the same things today’s Republican Party believed in, but they still feel they should recite his words at every political event. Not that I’m trying to say they like to turn patriotism into a political issue or anything. Ironic indeed. Hey, did someone say “ironic”? Just wait, there’s more!

By now I was feeling ever so inclined to look up this Katharine Lee Bates woman. Who was the woman whose words so inspired the authors of the report (THE COMMITTEE ON ARRANGEMENTS FOR THE 2008 REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION. Yes, they were very loud about it) that they would quote her on their dedication page? No, it couldn’t be her. (It wasn’t. Whew!) Well, here’s what the Women’s History section (of About.com) had to say about her:

Katharine Lee Bates(August 12, 1859 – March 28, 1929) Probably best known as the author of the words to “America the Beautiful,” Katharine Lee Bates was a prolific poet and a professor of English and head of the English department at Wellesley, where she had been a student in its earliest years. Her father, a Congregational minister, died when Katharine was less than a month old. Her brothers had to go to work to help support the family, but Katharine was given an education. She received her B.A. from Wellesley College in 1880. She wrote to supplement her income. “Sleep” was published by The Atlantic Monthly during her undergraduate years at Wellesley. A trip to Colorado in 1893 and the view from Pikes Peak inspired Katharine Lee Bates to write the poem, “America the Beautiful,” which was published in The Congregationalist two years after she wrote it. The Boston Evening Transcript published a revised version in 1904, and the public adopted the idealistic poem quickly. Katharine Lee Bates helped found the New England Poetry Club in 1915 and served for a time as its president, and she was involved in a few social reform activities, working for labor reform and planning the College Settlements Association with Vida Scudder. She was raised in the Congregational faith of her ancestors; as an adult, she was deeply religious but could not find a church in whose faith she could be certain. Katharine Lee Bates lived for twenty-five years with Katharine Coman in a committed partnership that has sometimes been described as a “romantic friendship.” Bates wrote, after Coman died, “So much of me died with Katharine Coman that I’m sometimes not quite sure whether I’m alive or not.” Bates’ teaching career was the central interest of her adult life. She believed that through literature, human values could be revealed and developed.

How many of the following things do the Republicans not know about the author from whose worked they borrowed?

She was an English Professor (those damn liberal teachers);

She attended and taught at Wellesley College (the very same one Sen Hillary Clinton went to);

She was inspired to write the poem after a visit to the same state where the Democrats just held their convention (which shows the Democrats have good taste);

She was a social reformer (sometimes known as a “community activist” if you will);

She helped work for labor reform (but not in the way the Republicans would like);

She had a hard time finding a church in whose faith she could be certain (unlike Republicans, who are certain of their religious beliefs);

AND, to top it all off, she was very likely a lesbian! (Just in case they missed the family values angle.)

And this is the person whose words they wanted to use on their dedication page? She was everything the Republicans despise in a woman. I can only hope the rest of the document is this ironic.

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