1 I'm glad that there was no such test when my polish great grandmother came. My great grandfather learned english, but my great grandmother stayed in the home and never needed it. I'm so happy you weren't around to ship her back to all the strife in Poland. I know it's hard to believe this, from your perspective, but, to me, she was a great American, who raised a wonderful family.

2 And I'll disagree with you -- your grandmother's failure to learn English and become integrated into the community at large shows me that she was really not much of an American at all. I'm sure she was a marvelous woman (and having lived in a Polish community for some years as a teen and young adult, I've known few Poles whe were not great folks), but was she, in any real sense, ever more than a "stranger in a strange land"?

3 Yes, she was much more. She was the mother of great Americans who protected our country. She learned of her adopted country through her family members, and knew plenty about it. She just never mastered the language - a sin for which you would deport her ass to Polish turmoil. I truly can't believe you are making this argument. You are so clearly wrong, and you demonstrate such astounding ignorance of history, which reflects whole communities of people who lived a generation before adapting to the language, that I half suspect I am missing some kind of joke or sarcasm here.

4 Actually, the usual pattern in this country was for immigrants -- both the children and their parents -- to work towards assimilation in society via the acquisition of the English language. The ignorance of history is yours when you state otherwise.

5 Usual, yes, but universal? Absolutely, demonstrably not. The ignorance of history is yours when you state otherwise.

6 I concede your point regarding the universality issue (after all, it takes only one exception to disprove universality) -- but i said the USUAL pattern, not the universal one. Nice work demolishing that strawman.

7 Well, it's more than just one exception, RWR. There are communities like Lindsborg KS (sp?), and a history of foreign language newspapers serving a foreign language audience dating back into the 17 and 18 hundreds. Go visit The Hill in St. Louis (Dago Hill in less PC times) or the Baden neighborhood (probably too late there), and you will see little immigrant communities where their native languages were spoken years ago. I don't know when your family came here or from where, but many, many families cannot claim to predate Chinatown in SF or NYC.

You would dismiss this history as straw men? You are blinded by something - perhaps hatred, perhaps fear, perhaps ignorance, perhaps something more noble, but you are blind to our nation's history. And that's sad.

8 Again, another strawman, set up to distract from what I actually said.

Once again you make an irrelevant argument, but I'll engage you.

I won't dispute your comment about the availability of foreign language newspapers -- my family used to publish one. Yes, they retained the German language, but they also learned English and did it quickly so as to be able to integrate into the community around them. And as a former St. Louis resident, I know those neighborhoods well. But nevertheless, learning English was the key to successful integration into society, whetehr one was a german, an Italian, a Pole, or a Jew. While there might be a fraction who never learned the language, and a constant influx of new immigrants whose presence left the old language as essential of the new, It was English that enabled these immigrants to move beyond that community and into the mainstream. America did not adapt itself linguistically, the immigrants did, so as to become AMERICAN.

I love, of course, that you fall back on the argument of the desperate liberal -- the accusation of "hatred" and "fear" and "ignorance". None of those applies to me. My goal is the preservation of some core of American identity -- a part of which is the common bond of English. I celebrate America in all of its diversity -- no homogenized melting pot for me. Without that common language, though, we cannot hope to function as a single society.

9 I wrote a few posts about something similar to this back in May and July. Right here in Dallas, they're getting ready to legislate that school principals must learn Spanish in order to communicate with (presumably immigrant) parents who don't speak English. I think that's totally wrong. Americans are welcome to speak any language they wish. But it's wrong to mandate an American citizen to learn a foreign language simply to do a regular job here in the states. The onus should be on those who come here to learn how to communicate with their new neighbors. I wouldn't move to Japan or Turkey or Moscow and expect all my neighbors to learn English and make all their street signs in English just to cater to me – I'd make the effort to learn their language in order to fit into society. But then, that's personal responsibility, and that seems beyond the grasp of many a liberal intellect.

I don't understand where the idea of deporting Dan's Polish great grandma came from... I didn't see RWR say anything to that effect. The article was about mandating language classes for foreigners in Switzerland. Even if that idea had been implemented here, Dan's great grandmother would have simply been required to take a class in order to obtain a residence permit or citizenship.

The "history" of a group of people continuing to speak their native language has zilch to do with fitting into a society. People can speak any language they choose. But if that's all they know, they cannot, by definition, fit in with others with whom they cannot communicate. Dan made RWR's point by saying that his Polish great grandmother never learned English and didn't need to – because she stayed IN THE HOME. Voila! That's the epitome of NOT being involved in a community, which was what RWR said in the first place. And the point the linked article had made. Point, set, match.

It may work for a very few people who don't need to interact with their neighbors, but when an entire group of immigrants refuses to learn English, it keeps them isolated from the rest of America.