THE ILLUSION OF THE DEFINITE & INVASIVE 'OTHER'

SEVEN LIES THAT INFORM THE PUSH FOR AN ENGLISH-ONLY UNITED STATES

The human space is fluid, adaptable, sensitive to evolving circumstance. This is why democracy is the only legitimate form of government. The identity of groups, or for that matter of individuals is not implacable, nor is it absolutely relative. It follows the vicissitudes of the human health and mind, and requires sincere dialogue with the other in order to reach its fullest potential.

The push to establish a single national language can only be sustained on the basis of a number of false premises. We will explore seven such lies and misperceptions here, all of a particular sort, having to do with a way of rationalizing one's aversion to difference or to change. And, in each case, it is fairly easy to illustrate how the lie works against the interests of both a democratic society and American tradition itself.

1. The first key false premise is that there is an irrevocable danger to one's identity, one's security, one's community and the integrity of one's culture, if confronted with difference, if —to use the logic of the open market— one is forced to compete in the realm of ideas.

This is not only patently untrue, as will be shown in the enumeration of the other misperceptions that provoke xenophobia, it requires that we reject both American history and the values of a democratic society. American society has never been uniform, has always had to find ways to bring harmony among disparate groups and from the Constitution forward has sought to defend the rights and the role of minorities in society.

During the Second World War, the most decorated division was comprised largely of Japanese Americans from the Pacific Northwest and Native American tribes have lent soldiers, code-readers and specialists to all the wars since then.

E pluribus unum, the national motto, meaning 'of the many: one', has long been interpreted not as a call to flatten and evacuate the richness of an immigrant and pioneer culture, but to harness it, to make a more vibrant and adaptable continent-wide market, rich in ideas, abilities, distinctive methods and innovations.

2. The second basic untruth to examine is that government sanction of a national language leads to greater unity and a stronger uniform sense of national identity. First, it's worth referencing the brief glimpse of American history above and the words of great leaders who defended the idea of a potent national character, stemming from the global origins of the US population, to see that this is not even the goal of American society.

But more importantly, there are clear examples that show that imposed uniformity does not bring a healthy sense of national identity. France has a national one-culture policy that proclaims French the national language and requires that immigrants assimilate seamlessly into that one culture, leaving behind the trappings and traditions of their homelands.

Children are forbidden from wearing culturally specific clothing in schools and the 31 other languages indigenous to France are simply ignored by the government as a matter of cultural policy. Foreign langauges spoken widely in people's homes, like Arabic, Berber, Lao and Vietnamese, are relegated to non-French status and communities that maintain close ties to their family culture often find themselves bunched into ethnic ghettoes.

The result of this one-language policy has been constant and oppressive tension leading to the near total isolation of communities lacking the resources or the opportunity to integrate into the larger officially French culture, despite being French-born for one, two or three generations.

The explosive tensions promoted by this policy, and reinforced by the tacit discrimination it appeared to permit, led eventually to last November's riots, which began in largely multigenerational immigrant ghettoes in the northern Paris suburbs and spread quickly to 20 such suburbs and eventually 70 cities across the country and into neighboring countries.

The French interior minister further inflamed tensions by suggesting that the young men involved were by nature "scum" and that he would deport everyone who was accused of participation, ignoring the proportion of French citizens involved, his view obviously obscured by racial considerations. He further pledged a comprehensive purge of immigrants; the one-culture policy fueled this irrational xenophobia, directed at communities invited into French society during the post-WWII period of rebuilding.

So, two evident problems with this lie of a sole unifying language: the declaration of a single culture does not erase cultural diversity —for this reason Europe pressured Turkey to eventually recognize its Kurdish minority, which it had officially labeled an historical fiction—, and in the case of Paris, most of the "immigrant" youths were French born.

It is not the difference in culture that creates cross-cultural tension, but the refusal of the majority to accept that their nationality is not diminished or degraded by the presence of people who think and behave differently, but who also identify with that larger national identity.

3. A third major false premise of the English-only movement is the belief in some sort of past golden age in which English was the sole unifying language, spoken by all and to the exclusion of all others. This is not only untrue —the gold rush of 1849 brought not only easterners to northern California, but also communities of adventurous emigrants from China and east Asia—, it is utterly ridiculous in its denial of historial reality.

Of the more than 300 languages currently spoken in the United States, at least 154 are indigenous languages, which predate the arrival of European colonists five centuries ago. Of those native languages still spoken inside the territory of the United States, about half are endangered, 7 have only 1 fluent speaker, and 42 have 10 or fewer speakers. [Full Story]

THE NET WIDENS: WHAT ELSE ARE THEY MONITORING?

NSA EXPERT HISTORIAN EXPECTS INTERNET COMPANIES ALSO COOPERATED WITH DOMESTIC SPY PROJECTS

Historian and expert NSA researcher Matthew Aid has told Salon.com that he believes it will be revealed in time that Internet service providers and cellphone companies also cooperated with the NSA spying and data mining programs. He offered no proof, but cited past examples of NSA overreaching and the key fact that the article exposing the collaboration of 3 major telecoms failed to explore the complicity or innocence of cable, cellular and Internet companies.

Aid is writing a comprehensive history of the NSA and has sources inside the agency, past and present. He noted that 30 years ago, as the nation was marking its bicentennial celebrations, the NSA scandal of the day was Project Shamrock, investigation of which had revealed that Western Union and other telephone and telegram companies had been passing information and content of communications to the agency, every day, for more than 3 decades. [Full Story]