"My Congressman, Col. John Kline, is a long-time advocate of legislation establishing English as the country's official language. The principle is sound, but the question is, will the legislation make any difference? To the extent that we still hear, 'Press 1 for English,' the answer may be No."It's amazing that a conservative, presumably strongly in favor of free market principles, would make such an elementary mistake. The use of multiple languages in company operations is a direct response to competition among companies for customers. No company is going to try to exclude potential customers, whether they're Hispanic, French-speaking, gays or evangelicals. At the margins making another sale is pure profit and that's what companies do.
The same principle applies to government bureaucracies--while we aren't profit driven the more people we serve the more power we get on the Hill.
And the same works for colleges. Most colleges [Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc.] in the country started with an affiliation to a church. As time passed and they competed for students they found themselves leaving the affiliation behind.
Conservatives laugh at the French, who try vainly to preserve their language against the onslaughts of English. They need to look in the mirror.
No comments:
Post a Comment