by Joseph Robertson

Created on: May 13, 2008   Last Updated: November 23, 2008

The United States of America has never had an official national language, and it doesn't need one. In fact, it would raise serious issues of Constitutional legitimacy, given the wording of the First Amendment, to establish any single language, whether for government interaction with the public or the public sphere in general. The human space is fluid, adaptable, sensitive to evolving circumstance, which is what makes democracy the only legitimate form of government, and diversity a complex legacy we should work to protect.

The identity of groups, or for that matter of individuals is not implacable, nor is it absolutely relative. Identity follows the vicissitudes of the human health and mind, prejudice and curiosity, fear, want and need, and requires sincere dialogue with the other in order to reach its fullest potential.

The push to establish a single national language can only be sustained on the basis of a number of false premises. We will explore seven such lies and misperceptions here, all of a particular sort, having to do with a way of rationalizing one's aversion to difference or to change. And, in each case, it is fairly easy to illustrate how the lie works against the interests of both a democratic society and American tradition itself.

1.

The first key false premise is that there is an irrevocable danger to one's identity, one's security, one's community and the integrity of one's culture, if confronted with difference, if (to use the logic of the open market) one is forced to compete in the realm of ideas.

This is not only patently untrue (as will be shown in the enumeration of the other misperceptions that provoke xenophobia), but it would require that we reject both American history and the values of a democratic society. American society has never been uniform, has always had to find ways to bring harmony among disparate groups, and from the Constitution forward has sought to defend the rights and the role of minorities in society.

During the Second World War, the most decorated division was comprised largely of Japanese Americans from the Pacific Northwest and Native American tribes have lent soldiers, code-readers and specialists to all the wars since then.

E pluribus unum, the national motto, meaning 'of the many: one', has long been interpreted not as a call to flatten and evacuate the richness of an immigrant and pioneer culture, but to harness it, to make a more vibrant and adaptable continent-wide market, rich in ideas, abilities, distinctive

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