Can we can any more disrespect?
“The government should quit mandating that various documents be printed in any one of 700 languages depending on who randomly shows up” to vote, said Gingrich, who is considering seeking the Republican presidential nomination in 2008. He made the comments in a speech to the National Federation of Republican Women.
“The American people believe English should be the official language of the government. … We should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so people learn the common language of the country and they learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto,” Gingrich said to cheers from the crowd of more than 100.
I happen to live in the ghetto. Well…it’s a rapidly gentrifying ghetto, but still inner city, dirt poor, strongly immigrant and heavily black. It gets a little tiresome having people suggest that we shouldn’t be able to read our ballots. We can’t vote until we learn the ‘language of prosperity’? I’d like Newt to come down here and tell that to a gathering of 100 people from my neighborhood. He’d get run out of town on a rail and with a white hood fastened to his thick neck.
Weird timing here. I was just watching a video of Al Gore being interviewed on Swedish television. (The host said happy birthday to him, by the way.) The interview was in English, with Swedish subtitles. As soon as Al Gore’s part of the show was over, the woman switched to speaking in Swedish.
I turned to Demetrius and commented about that. I asked, “Can you imagine someone on American television interviewing a foreign visitor in their own language?”
Rhetorical question-of course not. But the Newt offers such an extreme contrast to that. Not wanting ballots printed in other languages? Yikes.
In preparation for a visit this summer.
English has been a compulsory subject in Swedish schools for the past 40 years. Virtually all Swedes can speak English, and many can also speak the languages of their other major trading partner, Germany.
I have some Swedish and Norwegian exchange students right now and their English is nearly perfect in pronunciation, grammar, and so forth.
Of course, the Swedes have a very high rate of taxation so they have luxuries like excellent roads, universal health care, and first rate schools. The United States could have, too, if its ruling class hadn’t long ago made the choice to turn the country into a banana republic with nuclear weapons.
Our public schools, by and large, have been abandoned. Trying to get people to pay higher taxes is like trying to get them to take a nice long dip in a vat of acid. Yet the United States has one of the lightest tax burdens among industrialized nations. Go figure. The people with the lightest burden complain the loudest.
It’s REALLY hard to get rich in very egalitarian Sweden because of the high rates of income taxation. The result is that the Swedes don’t have extremes of wealth and poverty, just a big middle class. There’s not much difference in socioeconomic status between a doctor and a teacher, so people pursue occupations according to interest and not for the purpose of making money.
No, Sweden is not paradise and yes, the Swedes have problems. But the Swedes show what you can do if you have an honest government dedicated to promoting an egalitarian society.
And yes, I’m very much looking forward to my visit and practising my Swedish! I only the Swedes will allow me and won’t laugh at me too much!
Welcome to the concept of the welfare state (says this ex-pat Norwegian). I’m telling my dual-citizenship kids that they better pick the right one when they turn 21.
I don’t want to get into an argument about electronic voting, but I did want to say that if the ideal computer-assisted voting mechanism ever comes around, one of the things it should do is print out the ballot in a language of the user’s preference. I figure anyplace that has a non-English population of a sufficient size should be able to find people who can translate ballot measures and the like into the local second language.
My real point here is that there are solutions to “problems” involving assimilation and second languages that don’t involve (a) forcing the majority language on people or (b) calling it a problem.
It’s really all moot, though; “Everyone should learn to speak English” is just Republican code for “We’re xenophobes, racists and . . . well, if a linguist was a guy who discriminated based on what language someone spoke, we’d be linguists too.”
I despise Gingrich as much as the next sentient being does. But I think he’s right on this one. (Although I was born in the United States, my first language is Russian. I learned English in elementary school.)
I think that what people who are into this bilingual crap (and I am not just bilingual; I speak four languages) overlook is that today, anywhere, not just in America, if you can’t speak English, you are an idiot. Twenty years ago, it was normal for a French or a German university student not to be able to speak English. Today, a European university student who cannot speak English is viewed as hopelessly out of it. For Christ’s sake, even a goth band from Norway—Apoptygma Berzerk—that has no presence in America sings only in English.
Face it: English is today’s universal language. Anyone in places like Korea or Brazil who doesn’t speak English is dropping out of today’s global society. So how can it make any sense to support Americans not being able to speak English, when the non-English speaking world has come to the conclusion that its citizens must know English as a second language?
(That the United States has managed to make English the world language does not mean that the United States should not enter into the modern era with the rest of the world and adopt the International System of Units.)
the importance of learning english is obvious to everybody. but no one who is arguing the case for bilingualism is promoting it either in lieu of learning english or as an excuse to not learn english, which is how the issue is attacked from the right. (see “strawman.”)
bilingualism is about building bridges, or even safety nets, in critical areas, like many civic services, for those still learning the language. there will always be a segment of society in a language flux, and it makes perfect sense to support those not able to speak english while they eventually make their way through.
it is no surprise that the most vocal opponents of bilingualism, the gingriches, the tancredos and the goodes, are all race baiters. it is one of the many tools that they use to foster an artificial “us” vs. “them” attitude in people who want to jealously guard the privileges of living in american society against those “idiots” who don’t speak english.
Thanks for correcting me. I don’t know what was wrong with my instincts: of course anything Gingrich says is going to be crap.
Someone should ask Gingrich why his website, newt.org, has a link for Spanish content.
On May 12, I have to endure a commencement speech by Gingrich at the University of Mary Washington from where my daughter will be graduating. I welcome suggestions for protesting Gingrich’s appearance that will stop short of getting me kicked out and ruining what otherwise will be a day of celebration for my family.