Pat Dollard | Young Americans

NRO

‘It’s embarrassing,’ & c.

By Jay Nordlinger

You are probably familiar with this semi-infamous statement of Barack Obama: “Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English — they’ll learn English — you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish.” But you may be unfamiliar with what came next out of Obama’s mouth:

“You should be thinking about, how can your child become bilingual? We should have every child speaking more than one language. You know, it’s embarrassing when Europeans come over here. They all speak English — they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe. And all we can say is, ‘Merci beaucoup.’”

At least one Impromptus reader wrote to say that this reminded him of a piece of mine, from long ago: “Love on the Arno.” It told of my time as a student abroad, and how it increased my conservatism, and patriotism. Many of my fellow Americans were terribly embarrassed to be American. And that had an impact on me — it was nauseating, actually.

You could call those embarrassed Americans “self-hating Americans,” as many do. But I have always found this designation a little misleading. Such people, in my experience, are not really self-hating: They are supremely self-loving. It’s just that they hate you — or, in any case, are embarrassed by their country.

I have a piece on Americans and foreign languages in the forthcoming National Review. The issue will be available, in digital form, on Friday. I very much hope you’ll read the issue, and that piece along with it.

I’d like to say a little more here. In the above-quoted statement, Obama said, “It’s embarrassing when Europeans . . .” Some Americans will always be embarrassed, especially in front of Europeans — just as adolescents are embarrassed in front of their parents. But adolescents grow out of this. So do most Americans who are embarrassed by Americanness.

But some never do. And, in a hundred ways, the Obamas, husband and wife, seem like unreformed college students, still slapping the Canadian maple leaf on their backpacks. Do you know what I mean?

The embarrassed American says, “Oh, we’re so fat, we’re so loud, we’re so this, we’re so that! We use ketchup, we have the death penalty! We don’t learn foreign languages. It’s so embarrassing!”

One of the reasons I chose to write this piece for NR is that I’ve been immersed in foreign languages for much of my life — have thought a lot about them. Cherish them. I think I’ve studied five languages formally, and maybe the same number informally. I’m sort of a language junkie. Therefore, I have some confidence in pushing back against the Obama types.

You may remember that S. I. Hayakawa was the head of U.S. English — indeed, he founded it. That was important, because, not only was he “ethnic,” he was a distinguished linguist (a semanticist, in particular). You could not mess with him as a jingo, a racist, a xenophobe, a boob. (Of course, this didn’t stop the Left — nothing can.)

According to the Gallup people, a quarter of Americans speak a language other than English well enough to hold a conversation. That doesn’t seem so bad to me, all things considered. But be that as it may. Chew on a few facts and ideas.

America is a great big continental nation, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific. On our northern border is Canada, another vast continental nation. It is almost entirely English-speaking. On our southern border is Mexico, and a great body of water (the Gulf).

And guess what, sports fans? On our short border with Quebec, there is a fair amount of bilingualism — English and French. And on our longer border with Mexico, there’s a fair amount of bilingualism — English and Spanish. Exactly as you would expect. That’s the way these things work.

It’s not so much that Europeans know foreign languages out of intellectual curiosity or virtue; it’s that the languages come naturally. Take the Swiss (who give us an easy example): They live in a little country with four official languages. They are bumping up against “other” languages all the time. Now take Nebraskans: They live in a great big state in the middle of a great big nation, and are a long, long way from other languages.

But all the world’s languages come to America — just as all the world’s people do.

Let me interrupt to tell a little story — kind of interesting. I have a dear old friend who was born in Geneva. She spoke only German with her father, and only English with her mother. And French, of course, was on the streets. “You were so lucky!” everyone says. She just nods and smiles. But she’ll tell you privately that she never felt really comfortable in any one language — never felt truly at home.

Back to my expounding. Consider that, for better or worse — and I say better — English is the world’s lingua franca. And that bears on the question of Americans and foreign languages. We are born into a language that virtually the entire world speaks or seeks to speak. For hundreds of millions of people around the world, there is a great incentive to learn English. To learn other languages: less incentive (much).

By the way, have you experienced an old phenomenon in Paris? You speak to them in French, and they answer you in English (however badly). You speak to them in English, and they give you a stream of offended French. Sometimes being an American means not being able to win.

Anyway, this business of foreign languages — ignorance of — is one of many clubs with which to beat Americans. A pity Obama is embarrassed. He need not be, really.

In this column and elsewhere, I have quoted something the first Bush said, way back in the 1984 vice-presidential debate (with Ferraro). It has always stayed with me. He said, “I’ll be honest with you: It’s a joy to serve with a president who does not apologize for the United States of America” (meaning Reagan). Would Obama be that kind of president? We are to have a “decent respect to [for] the opinions of mankind,” said our Founders. Yes, indeed. But we should show a little self-confidence too, where it’s justified.

In turning over these questions, I talked with some of the smartest, ablest, most experienced people I know — people who have been engaged with languages, societies, and so on for a long time. May I share with you some of what they said?

I liked this from Roger Kimball: “Americans may be insular, but everyone else is, too. Who’s to say that someone from Peoria is more provincial than someone from Grenoble or Bonn? It’s just that Americans are less self-righteous about it all.” So true. Furthermore, Obama has “bought into a left-liberal cliché” — yet another one.

Paul Hollander, the anti-Communist sociologist (how often can you write that phrase?), was born in Hungary. Naturally, his parents and grandparents knew German, given the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In a later era, Hungarians learned Russian — unwillingly. Sometimes language is imposed, at point of bayonet.

(By the way, many Eastern Europeans, though they know Russian, won’t breathe a word of it. This despite the fact that Russian is, of course, a great world language.)

Hollander points out that the American education system is weak in foreign languages — but also weak in many other areas. How about history, science, and literature?

And here is something he says about Europe and English: It’s hard to find a Dutchman or a Scandinavian who doesn’t speak good English. And it stands to reason: Who else in the world is going to bother to learn Dutch or Norwegian?

As a foreign-born person, Hollander is perhaps especially well placed to observe Americans as guilt-ridden — always worrying about what others think. This worrying is sometimes commendable; at other times it is fruitless and self-defeating.

Jim Ceaser, the University of Virginia political scientist, is one of the world’s foremost experts on anti-Americanism. (So is Hollander.) He is also expert, of course, in other areas. And he points out that Obama seems a little shaky on identity. “If you lack confidence in who you are, you allow yourself to be defined by how others see you — or by how you imagine others see you.”

He further says that Obama’s comment about Americans and foreign languages is of a piece with what he said about Middle Americans, who “cling” to guns and religion (and hate foreigners, to boot). It all amounts to: “The average American is a dope.”

Our David Pryce-Jones points out that this same charge was once made about the British: that they could not, or would not, or at least did not, learn foreign languages. And it was never true. “People just wanted to stick it in the eye of the great power.”

He reminds us that American missionaries were masters of languages, as they roamed far and wide. And where is there a greater “linguistic pool” than in America, where people from all corners gather? Our previous ambassador to Afghanistan — then ambassador to Iraq, now ambassador to the United Nations — is a native Afghan. How many governments can field such an ambassador?

P-J makes this point, too: The more you come to know a country, the more you’re accused of being an imperialist. (This is how Edward Said made his sick career.) “Look at Kipling,” P-J says: “He absolutely loved the Indians. When you read him, you see that he’s in the grip of a real emotional identity with Indian life, in every way.” And yet he gets clobbered.

Finally, spend a moment with Anthony Daniels, a.k.a. Theodore Dalrymple. Like the rest of us, he is a great booster of learning foreign languages. He has acquired many. Yet learning languages is not the be-all, end-all. And however many you learn, you can only know a small minority of the world’s languages.

Furthermore, “What’s most important is having something to say in any language. I have known people who are brilliant linguists, but have nothing to say in any of the languages they know.” Most of the great authors in the history of literature have been monoglots. Are we to mark them down because of it?

Barack and Michelle Obama, and the Left at large, have their complaints about America. The rest of us do too, of course. Goodness knows I think this country has plenty to be ashamed of. Off the top of my head, I think of political correctness, foul popular music, neglect of the elderly, and abortion on demand. But those complaints don’t count, do they? Because they do not (for the most part) come from the left.

I do not judge Americans especially guilty on foreign languages, however. And that includes Senator Obama, who, by his own admission, does not speak a foreign language. I don’t believe that would impair his ability to be president. But, as I say at the end of my NR piece, other things would.

Here is a P.S.: You’ll remember that, in a previous Impromptus, I talked about Omar Sharif. Yes, the actor. He went on Arab television and said that Americans were total ignoramuses about geography (and other things). I took him to task a little (or a lot).

Well, the other weekend, I was in Long Island, dining with some lovely Lebanese people. One of them said, “I heard that Americans didn’t know about geography.” (Maybe he was watching Sharif on television?) “But I came here and found it wasn’t true.”

Another Lebanese person, a lady, spoke up and said, “That’s because you’re in New York. If you went to the Midwest, for example — like St. Louis . . .”

I pointed out that I was from the Midwest, and so was my sister (the lady’s friend). She just smiled, weakly.

And I’d be happy to put the geographical knowledge of the average St. Louisian up against the geographical knowledge of the average Beiruter. Wouldn’t you? I’ll even go Missouri vs. Lebanon. (I wonder what the folks know in Lebanon, Tenn.)

Another night, another dinner — this time, I’m sitting next to a Taiwanese lady, a lovely person who works as a journalist here in Manhattan. Every time I have a discussion about Taiwan, I’m a little depressed — because this plucky democracy is disgustingly discriminated against.

Take this journalist: She is unable to cover the United Nations. The “world body” won’t give her a permit (or whatever). Why? Because she is not a citizen of a member country. Of course, Palestinians can do whatever they want at the U.N. They practically own the place. But the PRC blocks Taiwan, in every way conceivable. Even foreigners who work for the Taiwanese press are banned from covering the U.N. — because of the PRC, and how the rest of us kowtow to it.

The president of Taiwan, a democracy, is often unable to land his plane in another democracy, for the purpose of refueling — he flies hither and yon, way out of his way, trying to complete his business. Why? Because democracies are loath to incur the displeasure of the PRC. Rule No. 1 is that Beijing must always, always be appeased.

It is disgusting. It is disgraceful. It is dishonorable. I feel that if more Americans knew about it, they wouldn’t like it. Anyway, I’ll stop fulminating for now — but I plan to return to this subject often.

One subject I’d like to be done with, for now, is bumper stickers — we’ve devoted a lot of time to it in this column. But I’d like to bring up one more — brought to my attention by a reader. The sticker says, “Don’t Pray in My School. I Won’t Think in Your Church.” Is that the most pretentious and arrogant sticker of all time? Of all time? Quite possibly.

NR used to joke that, if a tornado hit Manhattan, the headline in the Times would be, “City Hit by Tornado; Blacks and Hispanics Hurt Most.”

Proving that parody is impossible, the following headline appeared this week: “House Majority Whip: Climate Change Hurts Blacks More: Clyburn says African-Americans ‘disproportionately impacted.’”

Oh, yes.

In my Impromptus of yesterday, I had an item on abortion — noting that Obama had voted against the Born Alive Act. I went on to say that this distinguished him from no mainstream Democrat — that’s the way they all are.

Received several letters saying, “Not so. ‘Mainstreamers’ voted for Born Alive, no matter their support of partial-birth abortion. Born Alive addresses a step beyond that — trying to afford protection to babies who survive a late-term abortion. Obama is more radical than any of these people.”

Quite right. One correspondent said that even pro-choice people he knew shuddered on being told that Obama had voted against Born Alive. Should this not be a big campaign issue? Does speaking out against Obama’s abortion extremism offend McCain’s notion of honor? Let’s hope not. And, if so — the rest of us should speak out, unmistakably.

In a column last week, I wrote about Natural Born Killers, and a longstanding dispute about popular culture. There are people who get very, very cross when you suggest that depraved movies and so on have a harmful effect on people, and therefore on society at large. They call you a dunce, a censor, a Neanderthal, etc. A reader writes,

Jay,

Then isn’t the converse also true? If you can’t be debased, degraded, depressed from experiencing a film, play, book, piece of music, poem, doesn’t it follow that you also can’t be inspired, uplifted, enlightened from experiencing a film, play, etc.? I remember WFB’s writing — probably quoting — that Bach’s music proves the existence of God all by itself.

An excellent point. And, no, you can’t say one, without saying the other.