English First and Only - Conservative Thought

Why English

As Americans, we have scant few things that unite us.
Skin color doesn't. Some of us are white. Some are black. Some are red and some are brown...
Religion doesn't. Some are Christian. Some are Jews. Some are Moslem, some Hindu.
Ethnicity doesn't unite us. We've come here from all corners of the world.

And so, if we are not united by race, religion or ethnicity, what then unites us?
Well, until recently, we were at least united by a common language.
To be sure, we still maintain pride in our individual heritage. We still follow customs from the old country. Some eat calzones, others eat knishes. Pasta, Kilbasa, bagels, falafel and gyros.

Flags of different nations adorn cars in big cities. A veritable U.N. on wheels. We have a right to be proud of our heritage. But in the past, our parents went to great lengths to learn English. They insisted that their children learn English. And that's what united us. No matter how poor or uneducated the first generation was, the second generation made them proud. Our parents, while proud of their heritage, were equally proud to become American. They thanked God for the privilege of being American.

We never assumed that any one ethnic group lacked the brainpower to master our language. Scandinavians learned English. Italians did it. Austrians, Portuguese, Germans, Poles, Hungarians... What's more, many immigrants had to learn a whole new alphabet. Greeks, Russians, Turks, Japanese, Chinese, Koreans...

Curiosity beckons... when did it become acceptable to assume that Hispanics lack the intelligence to learn our language? Is it not insulting to Hispanic children to expect less of them than we did of children past?

So one is left with two possible scenarios: (a) Hispanics are not smart enough to learn English; (b) Hispanics are defiant and refuse to learn English. Unless one can establish another reason for Hispanics being the only ethnic group in American history to require special treatment, one then logically must ask: (a) If Hispanics are not smart enough to learn English, does it really serve our country well to allow so many of them in? or (b) If their refusal to learn English is based on defiance, is it really fair to ask the rest of us to spend the billions of dollars that we waste on translating text books, election notices, phone bills, electric bills, government correspondence, recorded phone messages, etc.

So let's be blunt. Typical liberal hubris promotes quotas for blacks implying that blacks are incapable of competing on an equal footing with other Americans. The same liberal snobbishness is responsible for accepting lower standards from Hispanics. And in between, plenty of vultures have figured out a way to create more government programs and more set asides to, once again, take from hard working, productive members of our society and reward the lazy and the indolent.

It is not incumbent upon our side to defend English as our official language. It is up to those who want to change the status quo to explain why Hispanics should be treated differently and why our money should pay for this ignominious distinction.

Friends, bilingual education, by all accounts, has been proven to be an absolute failure. Let's admit that even a moron should be able to read a phone bill in English. And if you cannot read an election notice in English, you have no business voting in our country. And so we must insist that our elected officials stop wasting our hard earned money on anything bilingual. We must stop patronizing companies that use anything but English because it raises the price of their product and dilutes the importance of our national language. Hispanic children will flourish like the rest of us and the bilingual deadwood will eventually find real jobs.