Our View - Friday

THE GOP'S NEW XENOPHOBIA
The gall of opposing bilingualism

Part of the conservative crackup that threatens to empower statists on the left involves a de facto platform of xenophobia. Countless leading conservatives have crusaded against the unlawful border crossings into the United States - a minor legal infraction - scurrilously portraying immigrant workers as criminals who will destroy the culture. How this became a "conservative" theme remains anybody's guess.

The lunacy reached new levels Wednesday and Thursday when conservative talk show hosts and bloggers attacked Barack Obama for one of the more lucid comments he has made during a campaign of nothing-speak. After addressing a crowd near Denver, Obama was asked what he might do about school children who don't speak English. Obama said:

"When it comes to second-language learners, the most important thing is not to get bogged down in ideology, but figure out what works. Understand that my starting principle is, everybody should be bilingual or everybody should be trilingual."

Absolutely. President Bush is bilingual, occasionally addressing Latinos in Spanish. Much of the world outside the United States is bilingual. The population of India speaks such fluent English that it has been able to take an entire segment of the telecommunications industry - customer and technical support - from the United States. The Chinese have become so fluent in English that even the owners of American mom & pop businesses are comfortable contracting with them. In the United States, professionals who speak more than one language can make more money than their English-only peers.

The advantages of knowing two or more languages are so enormous, and so obvious, that it's hard to imagine anyone disputing Obama's "starting principle." A statement like "I appreciate air" should have been more controversial.

Remarkably, some conservatives opted to object. Denverbased talk show host Dan Caplis, an erudite conservative lawyer on a major Clear Channel station, balked at the notion of Americans learning Spanish in order to help Latino children. He criticized Obama for not supporting a law that would make English the official language of the United States.

Obama didn't say Americans should solve the problems of immigrant children who don't speak English. He said "everybody" should learn two or three languages. Included in "everybody" would be children who speak only Spanish. How can it possibly be a bad thing for a Spanish-speaking child to learn English? To oppose that, one must be stupid, mean or both.

Leading conservative blogs attracted posts like these:

• Bull. English is the language of commerce and should stay that way.

• Everyone should be bilingual. Why? I live in America and I don't plan on living anywhere else. As long as I live in America, speaking English is sufficient.

Conservatives, of all Americans, should know that prosperity results from innovation and free trade. More and better communication and education can only bolster the tenets of prosperity. Conservatives should know that bilingual people have more options than those constrained by a single language.

In recent years, unfortunately, the conservative movement launched by economic and social intellectuals has morphed into a political culture of stupidity. A movement that once championed productivity and the value of work, today denounces and attacks some of the most productive members of society: Latino immigrants. Why? Because many committed a minor infraction, crossing a political boundary, in order to get to their jobs. True conservatives would criticize the regulatory barrier to progress; pseudo conservatives fear the new minority. They so despise this immigration wave, it appears, that they also fear the Spanish language.

Conservatives who understand the fundamental principles of liberty, human rights and free market prosperity should applaud anyone who advocates multi-lingual education. But millions of socalled conservatives no longer understand the guiding ideology that once made the movement America's great hope. They serve as caricatures that could have been drawn by the movement's most rabid opponents - those who would cast them as xenophobic redneck dolts who fear knowledge.

Conservatives need to understand that when a liberal advocates bilingual education, the liberal is right. To him, your criticism comes as a gift. The conservative movement cannot succeed by embracing the politics of stupidity. Criticizing the value of learning a language? That's just plain stupid.

COMPETITION FOR SPACE

One can argue that the successful touchdown of the Phoenix Mars Lander and the transmission of the first few photos is not the most exciting recent news in space exploration. A case can be made that the most exciting news is that a second, apparently well-financed company has announced plans to go into competition with legendary pilot and designer Burt Rutan and Virgin Galactic in space tourism.

Every organization, even those that are innovative and cutting edge when they begin, has a tendency to become bureaucratic and more concerned with making and following rules than with getting the job done and breaking new ground. The best corrective to that tendency is competition - the knowledge that somebody else is out there trying new things and trying harder to please customers. Competition tends to keep all concerned on their toes.

This brings us to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which has not had the benefit of competition before. After a startup period full of innovation and imagination it has become subject to the tendency toward bureaucratic lassitude.

Interplanetary exploration is testament to the endless curiosity of human beings, not only about life on this planet but about what makes the entire universe tick. However it is accomplished, exploring the bleak Martian landscape and what lies beneath fulfills what seems to be a deep human need.