Receita Perfeita para Destruir os EUA: Bilinguismo

America is fast becoming two nations—one English-speaking and one Spanish-speaking. Last week, Senator Marco Rubio gave the Republican response to President Obama’s State of the Union speech in Spanish as well as English, the first spokesman for an opposition party to do so. (In the past, the Spanish response was delivered by a specially designated speaker.) Is this a milestone worth pondering? Correct thought on both Right and Left would say: “Absolutely not; it is bigoted even to mention the growing reach of Spanish, a phenomenon which should be of no concern to anyone.” (The English-speaking audience was likely unaware of Rubio’s Spanish speech, which he had prerecorded and which ran simultaneously on Spanish-language networks. It might have been interesting to see the reaction had he delivered the two versions live and in sequence on the major networks.) Elite indifference to the spread of Spanish may well be justified, but it would be useful if its rationale were fully articulated. It’s not hard to guess why the Left would celebrate Spanish’s increasing prevalence: it dovetails with the project of replacing a common American culture with multiculturalism. It’s much less obvious why some conservatives apparently believe that we should be serene about the matter. Two conceivable justifications come to mind—though neither is persuasive.