Saturday, November 18, 2006

Eugene Tan brought up something that inspired a long comment from me

Annabel Chong. [Her story's rather disturbing, buddy. You sure you want to...? We need to talk.]

No, that wasn't it. It was that "The world will be a better place if everyone spoke the same language."
It seems logical to me for the US to declare English our official language, but we've lived without such a declaration for so long already, who cares?

Most of the arguments I hear from the people who care seem are either so provincial as to be racist or so "multiculturalist" as to be balkanizing.

I want to scream, "Learn another language! Moron!" at one group and "My culture deserves respect, too!" at the other.

Humans are born with opposing tendencies to be both xenophobic and hospitable--loving our neighbors and enjoying the novelty of visitors from strange places. We need to understand and nurture the wisdom in both tendencies and apply that wisdom ... wisely.

That's one place where I'm a damn moderate. Somebody needs to articulate our position effectively.

Does it have to be me?

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