Moron Republicans

During the most recent Republican debate, some one of those nutjobs or another (I can't be bothered to look) made the statement that America's an English-speaking country, and that "bilingual countries don't work."

Huh?

Let's think about this. First off, the premise is fundamentally flawed. The issue of bilingual education is to help kids whose first language is spanish actually learn something else while learning english? In what universe--other than in the Republican "we make our own reality" one--does it make sense to put kids who don't speak English into English-only schools and expect them to a) learn what everyone else is learning and b) learn English? The point is that they have some education in spanish so that they can keep up with their maths and sciences, etc., while they get better.

And then, of course, is the usual idiot Republican habit of just saying things that sound good (If we don't fight them there) that actually have no meaning whatsoever. Bilingual countries don't work? Um. Let's see. Oh, there's that big cold one to the north. And Belgium. And Switzerland.

It's the shades of the resistance to official bilingualism in Canada--they're going to ram French down our throats--but the scale of what's suggested isn't even remotely the scale of what happened in Canada. In Canada, we decided that every single Canadians should be able to get essential federal government services in French or English. That's HUGE. It's not "Let's make sure that immigrant kids and immigrants generally can get access to local services in Spanish." But by how the Republicans shriek, you'd think that the proposal was to make everyone speak Spanish.

Christ, some people in this country can't even speak English (Dubya) . . .