Speaking freely

The owner of a Philly restaurant is tired of hearing "Bistec con queso, por favor." So if you want a cheesesteak from Geno's, you'll have to order in English. Naturally, this has a lot of people upset:

Juntos, a Hispanic neighborhood organization, said it plans to send people to Geno's to try to order in Spanish and may pursue court action, depending on what happens.

America, 'home of the free,' take note: expecting potential customers to do business with you in your native language may now be grounds for a law suit.

Of course, the rest of the linked article portrays the owner as an ignorant bigot. I don't know the man. But I do know this: I'm tired of going to businesses where the employees barely speak English (this includes U.S.-born kids who prefer slang or Ebonics). I can certainly see how a businessman might resist the same problem from his customers. It's his business, isn't it? What happened to freedom of association?

We are NOT "one nation" anymore. Only a few worn threads hold us together: a currency, a common materialism, and a certain amount of inertia. Language and culture (including religious faith) are the true bonds of a people. It's possible to have a multiracial society, but next to imposible to hold together a polyglot of language and conflicting values. History provides ample lessons to this effect: the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and so on. If anything is to survive of the American experiment, we'd do well to heed some advice from a century ago:

"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American... There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag ... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language ... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people." Teddy Roosevelt, 1919

Instead of "E pluribus Unim," (from many, ONE), our national motto is becoming "Hable español o yo le demandaré" (speak Spanish or I'll sue). This is NOT progress...