America's Racial Purity Czar Tancredo's head explodes

[Ian David]

Tancredo's head explodes

Tancredo's head explodes
by kos
Sat Jan 20, 2007 at 02:50:58 PM PST

Sen. Ken Salazar delivered the State of the Union Address "pre-buttal" Friday. Some highlights:

En la semana próxima vamos a subir el salario de 13 millones de personas que trabajan en empleos que pagan el salario mínimo, y en los meses siguientes, lucharemos por más:
- Vamos a tener una reforma integral de inmigración,

- Vamos a hacer que todos nuestros hijos tengan la oportunidad de ir a la universidad,

- Vamos a bajar los precios de la gasolina y de las medicinas.

Y también vamos a cambiar el rumbo de los Estados Unidos en Irak.

Xenophobic racist Rep. Tom Tancredo -- the GOP's face on immigration issues (thanks you very much!) -- wasn't happy:

"I must admit to you, the first thing that comes to mind is this is the kind of thing that would happen in a bilingual country - for instance, Canada," Tancredo, R-Colo., said when told of Salazar's plans.

"I've been saying for a long time, we're fast approaching that status: a bilingual country. I don't think that's a good idea. I think it's something that brings us apart, not together."

See? By demonizing an entire class of people and their culture, it "brings us together". While being part of a nation that has been historically multi-cultural and - yes -- even multi-lingual, "divides us".

More:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/1/20/173848/644

[xchrom]

1. it looks better as a jigsaw puzzle scattered around the landscape.

[Igel]

2. Postayannyi moi vopros:

A zachem tol'ko dva yazyka? Zachem granichit' kolichestv? Net lyudei drugikh natsii i stran v S-Sh-A? Yesli slyshet' svoi yazyk na samom dele yavlyaetsya pravom, kak mozhno ne dat' takuyu rech' i po-russki.

Bychom je slyset ne jenom rusky, a cesky a slovacky.

Feel more united?

Oddly, whenever I hear somebody speaking a minority language, knowing that the majority are excluded--whether the two I used or another--'our' never seems to carry the same generality as it can in the most widely used language. It can of course. It just seems that in the minority language a subset is being spoken to, and the possessive is more frequently defined as applying to just that subset; it can have a narrow construal in the majority, language, of course, but then the language isn't what seems to define the context. This seems to hold true whether it's Spanish in the US, Russian in Ukraine, French in Canada, Catalan in Spain, or Polish in Belorus ...