Caught a news article off MSNBC, who posted it from the wire:
"Student claims school's broadcasts disrespect country"
MILLERSVILLE, Md. - A ninth-grader is protesting his school's decision to broadcast the Pledge of Allegiance in foreign languages as part of National Foreign Language Week.
Patrick Linton said he and other students at Old Mill High School sat down rather than stand Wednesday when the pledge was read over the school's public address system in Russian. Linton's teacher told him if he had a problem he should leave the room.
He did, and did not plan to return this week.
"This is America, and we got soldiers at war," the 15-year-old said. "When you're saying the Pledge in a different language which nobody understands, that's not OK."
This, I think we can all agree, is completely contrary to American principles. Charles and Patrick Linton don't appear to have made headlines before, so this is an honest case. From the full article, it is apparent that Patrick (Little Turd of the Month) learned this from his parents.
"Official English", that English should be the one and only language of the United States, is a movement with I would guess growing support on the Right.
Government services in multiple languages were formalized under Clinton by Executive Order 13166, which states:
The Federal Government provides and funds an array of services that
can be made accessible to otherwise eligible persons who are not
proficient in the English language. The Federal Government is
committed to improving the accessibility of these services to eligible
LEP persons, a goal that reinforces its equally important commitment to
promoting programs and activities designed to help individuals learn
English. To this end, each Federal agency shall examine the services
it provides and develop and implement a system by which LEP persons can
meaningfully access those services consistent with, and without unduly
burdening, the fundamental mission of the agency.
The ties on the right can be seen clearly: The executive director of English First- a lobbying organization- Jim Boulet Jr., has obtained numerous column spots on the National Review and other conservative publications. Jim Boulet states that:
[The] National Review strongly support[s] official English
On English Firsts' site, it states
Senator Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) introduced legislation, S.557, to repeal Clinton Executive Order 13166 late this afternoon.
The Coburn bill, coupled with Congressman Peter King's E.O. 13166 repeal bill in
the House of Representatives (H.R. 136), means that for the first time since
1998, virtually identical legislation on the same official English issue has been introduced in both chambers of the U.S. Congress.
So this is something being worked on.
One thing to note is that this does not extend to balloting- multilingual ballots are mandated in the Voting Rights Act given a sufficient language concentration on the county level.
English First, of course, goes a little further than wanting to repeal EO 13166- being actively against bilingual ballots- on the basis that you need to speak English to be a naturalized citizen (what about other citizens?) and that
And there is no guarantee that the translation would be accurate. According to a report by the Orlando Sun-Sentinel, Ivy Korman, the Miami-Dade supervisor of elections' liaison with law enforcement, asked the FBI to investigate misleading "palm cards" which claimed to tell folks how to vote for Gore but instead gave Bush's number on the ballot.
Haitian activist (and a Gore delegate to the 2000 Democratic convention), Margaret Armand, explained to the Sun-Sentinel why this was a problem: "[Haitians without] a command of the English language vote only by number."
. On the basis of this, it is somehow concluded that the answer is to force everyone to learn English. And that because some people in Florida didn't know English very well, that they probably wern't citizens anyways. The English required for naturalization is of course
very basic, and we all know that people who've been using English all their lives had plenty of trouble with the Florida ballots.