Recent Quotes from commercials for our local Fox Network:
They work at your companies, they shop where you stop, they go to the same schools. The only thing is, they don't belong here...
The next day:
What's the official language of the United States? How 'bout anything you want. Why English is getting lost in translation.
It's important that the country start thinking about illegal immigration. It's important that the government start to work harder on suppressing illegal immigration. However, do these two quotes sound alarmist and a tad racist?
It's one thing to say that these immigrants aren't here legally and it's one thing to say that the issue needs to be addresses. It's another thing to say that these people don't belong here. Have we forgotten what this country is about. Have we forgotten the inscription, "Bring me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breath free."
It's hard for me to reconcile my opinion on the first quote, because I agree with the concept that illegal immigration should be handled, I just didn't like the way it was said. It's hard for me to reconcile, until I here the second quote.
This is the point that the conversation goes from slightly reckless verbiage to outright snooty white guy. It carries the implication that America is apple pie, baseball and English and anything else shall not enter our hollowed ground, sanctified by the blood of patriots.
Perhaps, Fox, is it possible that America is bigger than English. That it's bigger than the white middle class SUV driving members of the two major parties? Do you think that it was a sad oversight by the Founding Fathers not to name English as our official language? Or could it be that the Fathers with great purpose and forethought left the nation open to invite those who may not speak our great American Language (strangely named after a different country...)
I recently heard my favorite argument for mandatory English to all who aspire to be Americans. I was told, "all languages that have not been unified by language have fallen." Lest we forget, all nations is the history of the world have fallen.
This is a classic Aristotelian Fallacy. "Nations A and B did not have a unified language. Nations A and B fell. Therefore, Nations A and B fell because they did not have a unified language." This is a faulty syllogism. It fails to consider that Nations C, D and E also fell though they did have unified languages.
Oops, I'm ranting. The lesson for my local Fox affiliate is that regardless of what you think Uncle Sam would say, People who don't speak English are not necessarily subversive. The Fathers wanted an open country so that the Irish could come and work and the Chinese could come and mine (even though they didn't speak English).
Now, modern world what it is, it is important to secure our borders because we have enemies. However "Americans" must be diligent not to have a blanket distrust all peoples with olive skin and a funky language.
I shall leave you with a quote that my wife heard in the great modern symposium that is Wal-Mart from the great American thinker that is a fat, toothless woman.
[dropping her bags on the floor]"Honestly, do they have to saddle right up to you and babble incoherently!?"
