See the video of Barack's comments here, to see for yourself
Anyway, some of my thoughts are:
- Barack fared very poorly with Hispanic voters in the D primaries, so as with all the other classes of voters he dissed during the primary season (gun owners, the military, anti-terrorists, churchgoers), he must start pandering to those groups now - and this is just another example. It doesn't help him that McCain actually polls fairly well (for a nominal Republican) among Hispanics.
- In his comments, he says, "When Europeans come here, they all know English." To which I say - don't we already speak English? Isn't the fact that those sophisticated Europeans are learning English evidence enough that English is the language of the free world?
- He also makes a statement that we should not be "worried" about immigrants learning English, because "they'll learn English." To which I reply - Barack, if we make it easy for immigrants from Mexico and Central America to NOT learn English, then they will not hasten to learn English, and we will not have rapid assimilation, and we will see the balkanization of the United States, as we already are.
- I don't know what Barack learned about cultural assimilation in all that fancy college education he received, but he obviously doesn't understand that a common language is vital to a culture's and a nation's survival. We can not have "E Pluribus Unum" with every ethnic group doing business in their own language. It is for this reason that we MUST make English the official language of this country for business, and the government can press that issue by requiring all government forms and business transactions to be conducted in English. No more duplicate forms in Spanish. If businesses want to appeal to Hispanics by doing it, so be it - that's a business decision, driven by the profit motive, but official, government communications should be in English only.
- I have no problem if we decide as a country that we need to bring in 2M or 5M or 10M immigrants a year, the bulk of them from Mexico, if that is what we need in our labor pool. But, let's do it under some sense of order and seek rapid assimilation, and the fastest way to do that is to push hard for them to learn our language.
- Incidentally, the Barack campaign seems proud of the fact that their videos feature Spanish captioning.
7 comments:
Thanks for referring to my post. Below is my response to your comments, reposted here for convenience:
This whole notion of speaking languages has more to do with the traditional liberal strategy to divide and conquer than anything else. To compare the language capabilities of the United States to Europe is simply ludicrous. Europe occupies just over 10 million square kilometers of land while the United States occupies just under that number.
Since the birth of the United States, it has been a country of inclusion and assimilation. The United States hasn't always been warm and welcoming to all immigrant populations from the outset of their arrival. However, over time, all races, creeds and colors which are all too frequently used to divide people, have, instead, been able to assimilate in this country and make it stronger than any other nation on the planet. That has not been the case in Europe. The many and varied cultures that share the European landscape have not adopted a universal language, a universal economy, or, even a common currency.
What has served to make America strong as a nation has been its insistence on respecting the rights of individuals, so long as these individuals, in turn, work responsibly to assimilate into a melting pot. Europe, on the other hand, is a clear demonstration of what happens when multi-culturalism dominates society.
What has caused most of the problems in Europe has been their insistence on remaining divided culturally, linguistically, ethnically and religiously. These divisions have served to bring about the greatest threats to mankind and global peace.
In contrast, America, with the most diverse population on the planet has grown to become the world's only superpower. It was America's strength that saved Europe and the rest of the world from self annihilation. Where did that strength come from? What brought people from so many ethnicities, religions, and cultures together with so much power? Sharing the same language had a lot to do with it. Seeing ourselves as Americans first and descendants of specific nationalities and allegiances second also has a lot to do with our strength and success.
The United States benefited from a synergy of energy, ideas and a belief that when left to function without government interference, any individual could accomplish anything he could imagine if he worked hard enough.
Barak Obama and his liberal cohorts want to invert this scheme and shift power from the individual to the government. He wants to emphasize the differences in individuals and not their similarities. He wants to structure a “them vs. us” strategy and subtlety pit class against class, race against race, gender against gender. Ultimately he and his liberal friends want to see the United States “sacrifice” our strength, wealth and resources to those of a like mind with his.
He is for Mexican-Americans, African-Americans, Italian-Americans, French-Americans, Scottish-Americans, Irish Americans, Lithuanian-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Chinese-Americans, and even those who shout "God damn Americans"! He is against corporate America, wealthy-Americans (excluding himself and those with whom he shares power). He is against anyone who is brazen enough to stand up and say simply: "I am American!"
The question I have is this: If we transform America into a European like country which adores multi-culturalism and government beneficence, but despises rugged individualism and individual property rights; who will save Europe from itself the next time around? Who will keep the Middle East from attempting to obliterate every facet of mankind that does not look, think, speak and act like them?
I think Barak Obama has a point.
However the problem really is, which language? Perhaps it is time to move towards a global language, universally taught.
I would argue for a language like Esperanto, which has growing support.
Nine British MP's have nominated Esperanto for the Nobel Peace Prize 2008 for example.
Other detail can be seen at http://www.lernu.net
Brian - puhhhhlease. No one worlders here, ok?
Doc - I couldn't haver said it better, so I am glad you did. I think most Americans realize that Europe is a great place to visit, but, we are, indeed, the greatest country on the Earth for a reason, and these reasons are somethingn Middle-America knows without even having to articulate them. Elistists like Obama don't get that, and they never will.
Brian - we already have a universal language; it's called English. English is so widely spoken because it is the key to success: it is the key to Americanization. That is why Europeans hold us in such disdain. It's called jealousy.
Jay,
Let's home the majority of voters come from middle America, then. Those who reside in the large cities seem to have either forgotten or never learned what it is to be American by choice.
Please replace "home" with "hope" in the comment above. Thanks. :-)
Doc,
There are a group of people (I call them "nuts") who actually still believe Esperanto is some kind of achievable universal language, based as it is on the Western romance languages.
However, you are right, English, the world over, is the universal language of success, and the de facto universal language.
If you were running a business (and, I know, when government is involved, we toss logic to the wind), you wouldn't choose to re-educate everyone (French, Spanish, English, German, Italian) in Esperanto, when perfectly good, nearly universal alternative (English) already exists.
As for me, I am only asking that English be the universal language in this country, not everywhere.
I agree that this country should adopt an official language of English, but it is sad that there is even a debate.
Obama is doing everything he can to make himself palatable to the voters, but those of us that have values and beliefs that do not change with audience find this revolting.
I believe that we need immigration reform and document every alien that resides within our borders. Being a nation of laws, we should want those laws enforced and people no matter their origin to obey those laws.
McCain's compromise would have gone a long ways toward this goal, but instead nothing was done. So, nothing is better than moving in the right direction?
McCain has taken a huge amount of heat for his position, but he wasn't pandering to get elected. He was honestly trying to get the country moving toward reducing the 12 million illegals in this country. Say what you want, but we need to solve this problem sooner rather than later.
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