Barack Obama wants a bilingual, English-Spanish U.S. (+more American bashing)

One of Barack Obama's most shocking statements was issued earlier today at a high school in Powder Springs, Georgia, where he said, among other things, the following (link):

"We live in a global economy. And, you know, I don't understand when people are going around worrying about, 'We need to have English- only.' They want to pass a law, 'We want English-only'... Now, I agree that immigrants should learn English. I agree with that. But understand this. Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English - they'll learn English - you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish. You should be thinking about, how can your child become bilingual. We should have every child speaking more than one language."

While I have no doubt that his supporters will spin that statement in ever more creative ways, the bottom line (in our universe) is that Barack Obama is calling for a bilingual English-Spanish U.S. In the unlikely event that he becomes president, it's not difficult to imagine him pandering by pushing for funding for programs designed to teach Spanish rather than just programs not specific to one language.

Which brings us to a replay of BitterGate, with him also saying this:

"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.'"

Per the article, he said that for "comic effect", but somehow I'm not laughing.

UPDATE 4: See the extended entry for an example of the useful idiots who aren't even aware they're assimilating to immigrants rather than the other way around.

UPDATE 3: Obama has "clarified" his remarks by disingenuously suggesting that he only said Americans should learn foreign languages (link):

I said something the other day down in Georgia, and the Republicans jumped on this. I said, you know, absolutely immigrants need to learn English, but we also need to learn foreign languages... This is an example of some of the problems we get into when somebody attacks you for saying the truth, which is we should want children with more knowledge. We should want our children to have more skills. There's nothing wrong with that! It's a good thing...

Unfortunately, there were apparently no real reporters around to call him on misrepresenting his own comments. See this for a related discussion.

UPDATE 2: As expected, BHO's supporters are mischaracterizing his remarks, pretending that he just wants Americans to learn other languages. But, that's not the only thing he said. He wants parents to make sure that their children learn Spanish. He singled out one language, and if he had said they should learn French, people would wonder what he meant. But, because he mentioned Spanish, everyone knows exactly what he means: he wants citizens to assimilate to immigrants, even if he gives lip service to the reverse process.

A press release from US English is here. And, last month Rasumssen Reports did a telephone survey (link):

Eighty-three percent (83%) place a higher priority on encouraging immigrants to speak English as their primary language. Just 13% take the opposite view and say it is more important for Americans to learn other languages... [in different surveys] Among those angry about immigration, 59% believe most government officials encourage immigrants to retain their home country culture... 77% of Americans believed that employers should be allowed to require employees to speak English while on the job... 65% of voters now believe election ballots should only be printed in English. Thirty-two percent (32%) say they should be printed in both English and Spanish... 54% of voters say it is more important to encourage all immigrants to embrace American culture than it is to reduce the number of immigrants. Just 36% take the opposite view and say reducing immigration is a higher priority... Only 26% believe that every American should be able to speak at least two languages...

UPDATE: I replaced the original link with one with a longer transcript. And, here's video:

UPDATE 4: The comments on a post by "smintheus" (dailykos.com/story/2008/7/14/104027/288/892/551357) help show a) how an echo chamber leads to unchallenged and thereby occasionally false statements, b) how BHO's supporters are willing to mislead about his comments and the complaints about them, and c) Americans assimilating to immigrants instead of the other way around.

"smintheus" starts out by pretending that BHO's comments were just about learning new languages, and at the end says "Many right-wingers just skipped what Obama actually said and declared that he wants to forcibly indoctrinate their children in Spanish, or make Spanish the official language of the US." There's a subtle difference between that misstatement of concerns about BHO's comments and the actual concerns outlined above: what Obama said would lead to a bilingual U.S. No one's said he wants to make Spanish *the* official language, but his comments above could lead to him making it one of them. And, it certainly is possible that he'd want to forcibly make Spanish a requirement, but he's only so far made it his personal opinion and hasn't yet come up with a proposal.

And, the comments show Americans assimilating to immigrants:

"...I live in California. I was recently layed off from my jog as a paralegal because my boss retired. There are a lot of Spanish speaking people here in Sonoma County. I just spent $200+ for Spanish learning CD's..."

And:

"...I am in Mexico right this very moment, learning more Spanish to use in my job. Oh, and I will get a multi-thousand-dollar per year biingual stipend, which doesn't suck at all..."

And:

"If I didn't know Spanish... I'd have had a bitch of a time communicating with the movers who loaded my apartment onto a Budget truck last week. The job got done right only because my Spanish was marginally better than their English."

Comments

Por espanol, marque numero dos, paisanos.

How many languages does B. Hussein Obama speak, aside from English? I'm all for people learning foreign languages -- I want to make them learn mine.

wow you sure twisted his comment. makes you soon like an idiot. you do know that south america is part of the americas right? fail to see how this is american bashing.

If anyone is "sooning" like an idiot, it's you Clay. This is the United States of America, which is not part of "the americas," whatever that is. This is a sovereign nation, not part of some non-democratic, dictatorial, elitist hemispheric fantasy you may have. Are you also aware that other languages (portugese, iniut, navajo, nahautl, etc.) are also spoken in "the americas?" Requiring Americans to adapt to the parasites coming to suck the blodd out of the host country (USA) is American bashing at its finest, even though the term "American bashing" never appears in this post, idiot. When 90% of Americans are in favor of english only, you have a losing candidate.

I stand corrected, as the parenthetical byline contains the "America bashing." However, this does not retract the truth of the idiocy of the leftist America-hating fucktards who comment here.

Press 1 for McCain in English; Press 2 por Obama en Espanol. The reason most Euros speak two languages (their own plus English) is because English is the international language. Spanish is not. Obama is clearly pandering to those who want to force the US to become a bilingual nation in order to accomodate the hordes of illegal aliens who would flood in under his presidency.

It's a parents job to give their child the best opportunities they can. Children learn languages better than adults. With international commerce more and more important, even if we put some restrictions on trade, a person who knows more than one language will have better opportunities than one who knows only one language.

English is the language of commerce George. Read a book.

I guess we Americans will be able to say "adios" to our country correctly when the illegal aliens take it over.

You people are a very, very special kind of stupid. Utterly ignorant of the fact that this is not 1710. You sit in your little cubes, with your little walls and your little "no YYYY allowed" and then sit there all up in arms and shocked, "Well jeez Jebudiah, were'ld all y'alls jobs a go??" They went to the dirt poor guy in India who can write a computer program, knows how chemistry works...and can speak your precious, precious language. You people really are so ignorant that you can't even grasp the fundamentals. For example, "english is the language of commerce" followed by 'read a book'. After I got done laughing my head off at the irony, I got enough oxygen back in my brain to allow common sense and logic to kick back in...uh...the notion that there is a 'language of commerce' is just pretty darn silly. Commerce requires communication. Commerce is based on supply-and-demand. And a whole bunch of other factors come into play, but I have to keep this dumn enough for the english-only folks...So, up to this point, most commerce has been carried out in the most popular language due to necessity. Now, for someone ignorant enough to believe that America should have an official language (contrary to pretty much everything those elitist liberal flaming French loving radicals that came up with America...) I could see where the logical Grand Canyon jump to "language of commerce" could be made. For someone that can get his head around "1+1" and what that means on a logical level...not so much. So, let's try it...for two seconds pretend that there is a world outside the walls of you traile...uh, I mean 'mobile home'. Wait, I forgot, why do I bother...just yell "America!" and "English" cause that makes a lot of sense. To reality: you are intellectually impared and fear any kind of anything resembling intelligence and you are just a bunch of lazy asses. First fatal flaw of the Internet: Exposing the URL to the end-user. Second fatal flaw of the Internet: Making it simple enough for rednecks to use.

Interesting use of ad hominem: lazy asses, stupid, ignorant, redneck... We are from "progressive" California, not Alabama, but nice try. This sort of ad hominem alone points to an intellectual deficiency unparalleled on these pages. You lost the argument when you resort to name calling instead of addressing the facts. First, if you are implying people don't know computer code or chemistry in this country, I would suggest you pull your head out of your ass. What language are you using to espouse your filthy contempt for your countrymen? ENGLISH! Second, the founding fathers wrote the Constitution in ENGLISH, Einstein. Nothing you say makes a bit of sense, even though it is written in ENGLISH. Third, do people speak spanish when trading on the floor of the NYSE? I think you know the answer to that one. ENGLISH is the language of commerce. Spanish is the language of the ghetto. Get over it, ghetto-lover. You and BHO just want to keep the brown man down by marginalizing him through language. Your racist comments not only reveal a racial hatred toward white, ENGLISH speaking Americans, but also racism towards those you want to keep down so you can control them. You cannot have a civil society when people cannot communicate with each other, and this is the DemoRats M.O.: divide and conquer. You can't have a unified opposition to tyranny when no one can communicate with each other. But your totalitarian views on nation and language are quite helpful in revealing what good little despot you are. Keep running your mouth off. It helps everyone to see just how intellectually deficient you really are. If you don't like it here and you don't like Americans speaking English, then I implore you to go live in the third-world cesspool and speak whatever lanaguage you like. But you don't. You live here and spout your drivel in ENGLISH. Too funny.

I guess the above commenter fits into that fringe 10% of people who don't want English as an official language. Those 10% are what they are: radical fringe American-hating pinko commie bastards wearing red diapers.

With a growing permanent Spanish speaking subpopulation, more and more Americans will be obligated to learn Spanish in order to work in the medical professions and in various types of jobs where one has to interact with the public. This is tremendously inefficient. Just think, all this Hispanic immigration was originally promoted as something that was good for our economy. Now the inconvenience and worse that is in store for us is gradually starting to dawn on people. But hey, we're white and we're always guilty, so we deserve it. Let's pretend Spanish-English bilingualism is good for us, and then we get to feel less guilty. That's what the liberal argument is often about, when you boil it down.

Hal K is right its all over our leaders want mexico here and now and with so few willing to stand up and fight back its going to become mexico with all its evils. White people may as well just shot your kids that would be the Merciful thing to do and face facts Obama wants you to kill your kids so he can replace you kids with 100 million new ones from all over the world. So next time your kid is beaten in some school just remember he or she had in coming. Don't buy guns just shot yourself, its the new and right thing to do for god and country, Obama has asked you to do the right thing and McCain needs your blood on the Ground and help his good colleagues in mexico city and in la raza to have a new idea of what is right and justice for all you low life non monkeys. So put a gun to your kids head and do the right thing for the people of the world, obama and McCain will thank you for this justice you must do, if you know what i mean?

Clay no one is am Idiot if you mean people can see and start to understand what is evil about 40-60 million third world drug dealers coming here with rape and murder as its plan of attack as being am Idiot i can see your point but with 40 percent of the cops inside the usa are drug dealers from south american so called nation state and many inside so called government who would be happy to start up death camps from the new jews ( whites and anyone standing against the one world pigs ideals )I understand you real well. If people just stand and look at the mass collision of ideals of race and civilization and the ideals of traditions and life and its philosopy of right and wrong and ideals of freedom and justice for all people , sad to say no hispanic country really has any real ideals of justice for its people why do you think that after this great nation become some monkey nation state the the ideals of human and civil laws would apply to non hispanics when in all hispanic nation states only the race has the right to live? see La Raza. see Bush and see McCain and see Obama talking to La Raza and mexico city, see a day of freedom from drug dealers in washington.

Yes, I also want to know WHAT languages Barack Obama speaks???

You fucking idiots. Did he say he would force people to speak Spanish??? Did he ever imply that Spanish would become an official language? No - he simply stated the people should broaden their horizons and educate themselves in another tongue. Boom. WHAT A BIG DEAL. I mean, what the hell is so wrong with encouraging people to speak more than one language???? Broaden your fucking horizons!

Petty Bourgeois is a true American patriot who stands up for his Country....white or wrong! This mass influx of unwelcomed hordes is CLEARLY dividing our Country. The job of our Government is to protect the citizens from exactly this sort of event. To do otherwise is TREASON!! Plain and simple. All of those who disagree with protecting American citizen[s] jobs; language; culture; standard of living; and the future of the Republic from foriegn criminal behavior [murder;rape;mariachi bands!ID and job theft, ect.] Should be considered enemies of the State and tried as such with the most severe punishment handed out to them......banishment to the third world they want us to become. We need more people like Petty Bourgeois and less anti-Americans......that's for damn sure!