Neocon poster child Phil Valentine slings shite in this Sunday morning's Tennessean Opinion section.

From the Tennessean:

Expecting people who come to live and work in America to speak English is not an act of racism. It's an act of preserving unity. We only need look north to Quebec's efforts to break away from Canada to understand how completely a divide in language can divide a nation. But a common language can unite a nation, as it has done in the United States.

Sweet Framers of the Constitution, Phil!  What a steaming pile of xenophobic horseshit!

Valentine asserts that the U.S. is "the best example of a diverse people that have bonded together, not by force, but by choice."  "What binds all this diversity together," he continues, "is a common language.
Really, Phil?  The thing that binds the Somalis and Kurds who've come to call Nashville is language and not the desire to be murdered by their governments?  The common link between South Asians and Central Americans in the Music City is a language that in itself is an imported mash-up of Germanic, Latin and Indo-European tongues?  That's like suggesting that what made Britain great was commonly held religious belief.

People come to America because the opportunity to build and own a business, or receive an education, or worship as they chose outweighed the personal, economic and emotional expense of uprooting themselves from home. Not because they were looking forward to sharing a common language.

My biggest question to Valentine, Councilman Crafton and other supporters of a legally mandated English-only government in Nashville is "what are you people afraid of?"  I haven't seen Metro setting aside funds to provide multi-language real-time translation of Metro Council meetings.  The school system is not facing budget cuts because Metro has been spending money translating all of its websites and street signs into Spanish, French, Urdu and Hindi.  The city doesn't need a new law preventing Metro's procurement department from going wild letting bids in six languages.  But just in case, English-only supporters would maintain, we should make sure that a law is in place to prevent any of these situations from happening.

Realistically, mine's a flawed arguement.  Metro isn't spending a whole lot of money making language accomodations now.   Is the thought that, by making English Nashville's one true tongue, that Nashville's governmental agencies will work harder to NOT speak Spanish because a law mandates it?

No.  My arguement is flawed.  But no more so than Valentine's assertion that one language is the glue that binds this country together.