The Second Coming?

Rachel Lucas beat me to it. Two days ago, Sen. Barack Obama gave a speech that was overbearingly condescending to those Americans whom many an elitist academic and liberal refer to as being afflicted by the "disease of monolingualism" – namely some 90% plus of the population. Here's what the esteemed Senator said:

"I, I don't understand, when people are going around worrying about, 'we need to have English only.' They, they wanna pass a law, 'we want just, uh, we want English only.' No, I agree that immigrants should learn English. I agree with that.

But. But. Understand this. Instead of worrying about whether, uh, immigrants can learn English. They'll learn English. You need to make sure your child can speak Spanish! You should be thinking about how can your child become bilingual. We should have every child speaking more than one language.

"You know, it's embarrassing, it's embarrassing when, when, uh, when Europeans come over here. They all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe. All we can say is merci beaucoup. Right?"

Wrong. For one thing, not all continental Europeans speak English. In fact, outside of countries like the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Germany, and a few other countries where English is taught to children in school from a very young age, most Europeans do not speak English. Don't believe me? Try visiting Spain, where even in a cosmopolitan city like Madrid you will search in vain for a native Spaniard who speaks English fluently. Not that I think that to be a problem, mind you. When in a non-English speaking country, I consider it a moral obligation to try speaking to the people I encounter in their native tongue. And this is coming from someone whose knowledge of Spanish is less-than-perfect.

Now it is true that percentage-wise, more Europeans are multilingual than Americans. However, the multilingualism of many Europeans is something born of necessity. They inhabit a densely-populated continent with a variety of differing cultures and languages. If each state of our fifty had a different official language, you can be sure that a significant percentage of Americans would be multilingual as well.

Here in South Texas, Spanish is a fact of everyday life, but it is not impossible to get by knowing only English. The only people here that don't speak English fluently are recent immigrants or those who grew up in isolated towns on or near the border with Mexico. Personally, I have no innate bias against learning languages other than English, be that language Spanish, French, or something else. Being from the Texas-Mexico border, and having lived in Japan for four years, I am quite used to being around those who do not speak English as their first language, if at all. But I am quite annoyed by prattling schoolmarm-types who say it is the duty of Americans – living within their own country – to learn Spanish or other foreign languages.

Rather, it is incumbent upon foreigners – whether expatriates or immigrants – living in this country to learn English. Just as it would be incumbent upon me to learn Spanish or Japanese were I to permanently relocate to Spain or Japan. That is not cultural imperialism, it is common decency.

By saying what he said, Sen. Obama revealed that he is indeed the Second Coming…of John Kerry. I must conclude that Tom Kratman was right when he commented here last week, saying that that the American social and demographic landscape strongly favors Sen. John McCain. Obama is an elitist simpleton with a tin ear if he truly believes (and thinks it acceptable to say) that Americans are alone among Western peoples in having culturally isolated populations, and that it is his responsibility to enlighten us embittered hillbillies who not only cling to our guns and religion, but to our English language as well.

Of the alleged "sophistication" of average Europeans vis-à-vis Americans, Vox Day, who resides in Italy, writes:

Speaking as someone who has lived in Europe for close to half my adult life, rest assured that there are just as many European homebody dumb hicks as there are American ones. I have one teammate from Calabria, and he is every bit as unintelligible in Italian as the thickest-tongued backwoods Alabaman is in English. I've been in places where no one even speaks anything that is recognizable as a genuine language; they only speak a dialect called, appropriately enough, dialetto. (It means "dialect".) The only difference between a European hick and an American hick is that the European hick is far more inbred, since his family has probably been there for at least 500 years.

Lack of linguistic sophistication exists in all countries. America is no exception in that regard. If Sen. Obama is so concerned with learning Spanish and winning the upcoming election, he would do well to learn this phrase: callete el ocico.