Language and Assimilation
I had the TV on to keep me company as I was preparing dinner the other night when suddenly my attention was grabbed by a commercial in Spanish. No, this wasn’t a Spanish language network but the NBC East coast satellite feed. I had never heard such a thing before, and wondered if it was a mistake, or whether the commercial networks were becoming bilingual. And I just want to say that I think that would be a big mistake.
I bring this up because I think bi-lingualism is example of how our society is fragmenting. Call me alarmist, but our failure as a society to insist on one public language is an indication that we are coming to the end of our civilization. I don’t mean all of civilization as in everyone dying, but rather the culture. Our set of social mores, rules, and goals just don’t apply any more.
Charles Silberman once explained to me about the danger to a society when it stopped applying its rules. He gave as an example being on a minesweeper toward the end of the Second World War. Before Germany surrendered, only a few men would be transferred at any one time. They would learn the ways of the ship, and would follow the existing order. This manifest in how the men used water sparingly, and how they could trust each other, for instance, by leaving a pack of cigarettes out on their bunk without getting stolen.
But later, as larger numbers of new sailors would come on board, the societalization would break down. There would be too many new people for the existing population to train. Water was wasted and suddenly they were faced with problems like theft.
We are facing that problem in our society today. First because we have lost sight of who we are as a culture. The multi-culturalists have led us down a road to the point where in many places, there is no American culture.
It used to be that immigrants would learn our language -- the language of our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution — in order to become true and successful Americans. But not anymore. Today people immigrate into neighborhoods of their own culture. They find work locally, and don’t bother to learn English. And as many of them here are just to make money and send it home, they don’t have the same social ties that are essential for a healthy community.
Because if you can’t communicate, you can’t resolve differences and move forward. You stay in your own private enclaves. Soon the differences are more important than the similarities. And then the only thing people have in common is that they are sharing the geography of what used to be a nation.
And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.
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