America, we hardly know ye anymore...
Over the Independence Day weekend, I visited Hampton Beach for a time and attended the midnight fireworks show at the Weirs. At both locations, when watching and listening to those around me, I found myself faced with the reality that we are fast being swarmed by a foreign culture complete with a foreign language. Having lived here in the Lakes Region for nearly twenty years, and having spent parts of my summers since I was a teenager at Hampton Beach, I can attest that these large numbers of non-English speaking people have not always been the case. Starting within the last decade, however, everything changed. Since then, the loss of our American identity and common language has grown with increasing rapidity.
What can be done to change this? The only way to make these people learn the language of their newly-adopted home is to make it so that they have no choice. With multi-lingual product packaging, foreign language close-captioning and foreign language cable and satellite channels widely available, there is no incentive to learn English. Then add to the mix the oh-so helpful government schools offering instruction in their foreign tongues and the fact that the dunderheaded Congress voted just last week to continue REQUIRING voting officials provide ballot information in multiple languages. (Bass & Bradley were on the right side on this one, voting to strip the bilingual requirement) Why should any of these people expend the energy and effort to learn English? We’ve helpfully seen to it that there is no need. America’s gradual suicide continues. The only question is whether it will be me or my children that sees the final result of such apparent madness.
