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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| Americans embarassed about America |
| 2008-07-31 |
| Jay Nordlinger, National Review You are probably familiar with this semi-infamous statement of Barack Obama: "Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English -- they'll learn English -- you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish." But you may be unfamiliar with what came next out of Obama's mouth: "You should be thinking about, how can your child become bilingual? We should have every child speaking more than one language. You know, it's embarrassing when Europeans come over here. They all speak English -- they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe. And all we can say is, 'Merci beaucoup.'" |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #8 Blondie, you get around. Shh! My husband sometimes reads this! ;) But yes, there was a large Czech community in Cedar Rapids that got flooded this summer. They are trying to rebuild the National Czech & Slovak Museum downtown, and I hope they are successful. (I'm in a little town in between Cedar Rapids and Iowa City....we were lucky and were spared the devastation.) |
| Posted by: Swamp Blondie in the Cornfields 2008-07-31 19:27 |
| #7 Blondie, you get around. Desert, swamp, cornfields. Anywhooo, I think there's lots of Czechs in Cedar Rapids. In fact, I believe they had a Czech Village section of town where original settlers gathered. Unfortunately, I think the recent flood destroyed most of it. Are you at the U of I ? |
| Posted by: Woozle Elmeter 2700 2008-07-31 18:44 |
| #6 I spent 16 years of my 26-year military career overseas - in Latin America, Vietnam, Germany, and Great Britain. My overseas tours did a lot to make me proud of my nation and its people. The two things I found that most non-Americans didn't understand was how large our nation is, and how diverse our population. Because of THAT ignorance, a lot of their beliefs about Americans were false. If you can ever convince them that the United States, without Alaska and Hawaii, stretches as far as from Madrid to Moscow across, and from Stockholm to Malta top to bottom, then the idea of a single common language for such a large area becomes a miracle to them. Learning that ONE US state (Wyoming) is nearly the same size as the old FRG, with half the population of Hamburg, astounds them. There is a lot about this nation that isn't great, most of which happened before I was born. There are even more things about this nation to be proud about. If you're not proud to be a citizen of the nation that put the first man on the moon, that does more to aid others (the tsunami relief to Indonesia, for one), the nation that has defeated communism and gained the freedom of a half-dozen nations, that has such a long list of "firsts" and "discoveries" it would take a rather large book to list them all, that also defeated "National Socialism (Germany)" and militant expansionism (Japan), then there's something terribly wrong with you. Perhaps it would be best for all those Obamabots to go elsewhere and become citizens of nations they CAN be proud of, since they're so deficient in patriotism and love of THIS country. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2008-07-31 17:28 |
| #5 Many of my fellow Americans were terribly embarrassed to be American. That's because of the NEA and the education establishment brainwashing the kids from the start about all the warts of American history without all the tremendous accomplishments. BTW English is the most prevalent second language on the planet. It is the basis for which other cultures communicate technology, science, medicine, aviation, etc. There's a reason for that and that is what the Obama's of the nation refuse to acknowledge. It wasn't done by conquest or enslavement. It was done freely in an open market of ideas and concepts. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2008-07-31 17:25 |
| #4 I'm a language nut (Russian major, Spanish minor back in college, with a smattering of French). Hell, I like foreign languages so much I even married a foreigner. That being said, if our little boy decides to learn Czech while we are here in Iowa (there's a lot of Czech and Slovak descendants here in SE Iowa, as evidenced by the fine selections of beer you can find most anywhere), I'd have to discourage him. Not because the language isn't lovely, but because the only European languages really worth studying any more are Spanish and possibly Portuguese....and that's solely because of the growing economic importance of Latin America. I personally could care less if all my son ever learns of French is "merci beaucoup", or a few more selected phrases from Berlitz. If that's good enough for the Messiah (he speaks Bahasa Indonesia, but no French to my knowledge), it's good enough for him. (And yeah....on the use of Russian in Eastern Europe.....I instantly "forgot" my Russian when I crossed the Estonian border back in the late 80's. Even then it was not a good idea to advertise that you were familiar with Russian. English or German was a much better choice if you didn't want to get your plate spit upon, get ignored by the sales help, etc. Russian was only useful in Prague for guesstimating what a sign meant, but I still wouldn't speak it in public.) |
| Posted by: Swamp Blondie in the Cornfields 2008-07-31 16:21 |
| #3 French is the preferred language, and France the preferred destination, of the proper progressive liberal. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2008-07-31 15:08 |
| #2 considering population and industry... wouldn't a second language of Mandarin, Hindi or Spanish make a whole lot more sense then French or German? ‘Merci beaucoup.’ |
| Posted by: 3dc 2008-07-31 13:16 |
| #1 Sometimes an American will be silent and not defend his country while abroad out of a politeness or an unwillingness to get into an arguement with the locals. I for one went on an English language tour of the Rauthouse in Hamburg to fine America blamed for firebombing Hamburg (we didn't the British did) and for all sorts of other things (tour guide never mentioned why the US might have had a beef with Germany). My wife had to help me keep my anger in check. It is my experience that most people are nice and decent and polite to travelers but there are some that are just plane ignorant fools no matter what country they are from and Europe seems to be knee deep in them. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2008-07-31 12:59 |