e-commentary

The movement to declare American English to be the official language reveals America’s increasing insecurity and desperation.  The movement may be harmless unless it includes some limitations on the use of other languages in law or commerce.  However, why allow more government intervention into our lives?  Let the markets decide.  If consumers desire an owners manual written in English, Spanish and Swahili, so be it.  The Chinese will respond to the demands of the market with little direction or resistance from their government.  We do not need any intervention from ours.  Immigrants learn English.  If the populace could reflect for a few minutes, there is one less problem to keep us awake at night.

The National Anthem in Spanish?  Americans should be proud that the National Anthem is translated into and sung in foreign languages.  They are singing our song in their language.  The song celebrates a flag.  Our flag.  That is an ad man’s dream.

American English should be the official language of the United States.  Spanish should be the second official language.  We in the Americas (North, Central and South) should do business and pleasure in both English and Spanish (and show deference to French and Portuguese along the way).  All signs, owner’s manuals, bill boards and beer ads should be presented in both languages.  No real man resorts to the instructions, but a real man can maintain his manhood by resorting to the instructions in another language.  It may be all Greek to him, but at least his manhood is intact.  “?Hey Larry, what’s a destornillador?”

Communication and transportation are key to economic growth and development.  Communication requires more than a network of telegraph lines and cell phone repeater towers.  A common language makes communication easier, more efficient.  A thousand languages and the thousand cultures that gave rise to the languages in the Central and South Americas were vanquished by the Spanish (with the assistance of the Portuguese, Dutch and English).  At this time, the Spanish language is one of legacies of the terror of colonialism.  A positive and promising legacy.  A common means of communication allows someone in Tierra del Fuego to communicate with someone in Bahia de Los Angeles.  Those citizens living in the City of Angels should learn how to communicate with others in Bogota.  Americans should be as eager to learn Spanish as most immigrants are to embrace English.

Sobre tierra de libres, la bandera sagrada!