In spite of global economic woes and sovereign debt crises and the run up to World War III in southwest Asia, there are some who still manage to find the time to call for English-only laws in communities across America. Most recently, areas of Minnesota and Maryland have been banging the drum to make English the only official language. The adoption of such measures, in these two places, as in most places in America, is meaningless in the practical sense because most local governments already do business in English only. But, such measures are symbolic measures designed to send a message to undesirables who are insufficiently nationalistic in their choice of language.

An obsession with forcing the citizenry to speak one government-approved language has long been central to the plans of nationalists everywhere. Nationalism, that ideology that one’s country is better than everyone else’s, and that every foreigner is just slightly less human that you, has long thrived on the completely false and unproven notion that multi-lingual societies always sit perched on the precipice of chaos. We hear this often from red-faced nationalist paranoiacs who claim that “balkanization,” which they define as the unspeakable horror of allowing people to speak languages other than the one preferred by the majority, is a road to destruction. This contention is easily proven false within seconds by simply providing counter examples. After all, we all know what war-torn hellholes Switzerland, Belgium and Canada are. The multi-lingual Austrian Empire, one of the richest and most prosperous societies in Europe for centuries, somehow survived centuries of the citizenry speaking German, Hungarian, and various Slavic languages. Unfortunately, it couldn’t survive Woodrow Wilson’s utopian meddling at Versailles.

But one doesn’t have to read tomes on European history to know what obvious nonsense is the claim that multi-lingual countries are unfeasible. Arguably, they’re much freer, because free countries allow variety that nationalist control-freak societies do not.In The Rise and Decline of the State, Martin Van Creveld notes that the idea of linguistic unity began to gain real currency toward the end of the 19th century. At that time, the ideology of the French Revolution, the idea that people in certain geographic areas should be forcibly unified under a strong state and coerced into adopting a single culture, gained a lasting foothold in Europe.

Certainly this idea was not totally new. English nationalism has been around since at least the 16th century. Thomas More found out what happens to those who insist on a more internationalist view, as did others, but it was in the 19th century that states really began to insist on cultural conformity from their own citizens and the citizens of those living in their colonies and conquered territories.

After 1870, the Italians simply made up a language based on a Tuscan variety. The French began demanding that all citizens speak the version of French spoken in Paris. Down the memory hold went languages like Piedmontese, Occitan, Mozarabic, and others.

Since the time of Queen Isabella and the reconquista, the rulers of unified Spain had been shoving Castilian down the throats of all Spaniards, and everyone in their colonies. They saw Castilian as a tool to hold the Empire together. Practically speaking, it was a good theory.

Back when the United States was a free country, it was multi-lingual, and even a cursory look at 19th-century America reveals just how pervasive was the reality of a multi-lingual society:

Louisiana was largely a French-speaking state (General Beauregard, Union Officer and later Confederate General, for example, didn’t speak English until he was 11 years old); German was widely spoken, and until World War I, and the anti-German bigotry that came with it, German-language private schools were common throughout the United States; New Mexico did not have an English-speaking majority until the 20th century; The Amish spoke the Pennsylvania German language; Many Americans of the Maine and Vermont borderlands were French-speakers only.

The reality of a multi-lingual society has been written into state constitutions as well. The original Colorado Constitution of 1876, for example, specifically mandates that laws shall be reproduced in three languages:

“Article XVIII, sec 8 (1876):

“The general assembly shall provide for publication of the laws passed at each session thereof; and until the year 1900, they shall cause to be published in Spanish and German a sufficient number of copies of said laws to supply that portion of the inhabitants of the State who speak those languages and who may be unable to read and understand the English language.”

We can also note that the rules of naturalization were a bit looser. Note the requirements for becoming a voter:

Article VII section 1 (1876)

“[The voter] shall be a citizen of the United States, or not being a citizen of the United States, he shall have declared his intention, according to law, to become such citizen, not less than four months before he offers to vote.”

One can only imagine and hackles raised by right-wing populists if a state today tried to adopt an amendment calling for all laws to be published in three languages.

In one of my first posts on this blog I mentioned the usage of “the” as a catch-all term to include a variety of government-”offered” “goods” and “services” that people in general refer to offhandedly (“the” schools, “the” roads, etc.).

The Florida Department of Health has launched a campaign to eliminate second hand smoke from bars, parks and other public (or should that be “public”?) spaces. And what better way than to get folks behind this campaign that to be as inclusive as possible. Thus, the marketing/propaganda material uses “our” as much as possible. “Make our bars smoke-free” says one. Another one: “Make our public spaces smoke-free.” And — because we care about “the” children — “Make our parks smoke-free.”

Democracy, the devil that triumphed.

“All gave some, some gave all” — just another statist piety. Most lives in war are taken.

Conscripts, especially, do not “give their lives for their country.” The state takes those lives.

The day after Veterans Day seems as good as any to drop dangerous terms of art and speak in plain language.

What distinguishes
Copyright from Censorship?
The profit motive.

~*~

This is a syndicated post, which originally appeared at Mimi and Eunice » IP. View original post.

Atoms form bonds of varying strengths with other atoms to form molecules. The bonds they form naturally are generally stable, whereas the ones that are forced by men decay rapidly — and give you cancer.

(Embrace it! Own it! )

[Cross-posted at Is-Ought GAP; HT fellow TLS blogger Robert Wicks for suggesting the second sentence.]

The state has a fetish for categorizing and classifying things, as if the label you “officially” stick on things changes reality. Yet that classification has legislative teeth. Lately I have become more aware of this destructive power. Not because it comes from the state–I am already used to that, but because often times government agencies, part of the executive branch, are the ones operating under rather wide legislative powers granted by Congress. None of this is new, of course. It just seems that it is becoming more prominent as the number of bureaucracies and bureaucrats continues to increase.

Instead of private law or contracts or generally accepted, time-honored societal agreements, the state corrupts reason and destroys language, replacing common sense with legislative fiat, all while making us more depending on the state to determine what reality is and how we deal with others.

Examples abound. The state controls the definitions of marriage (and of divorce, of course). The state defines who is an employee, who is an employer, and whether you have had “income.” Is Julian Assange a journalist? If he “is,” then according to the state he is treated in a specific way.

Classificationism goes hand in hand with licensing and other forms of control and regulation. If you want to open a kitchen or restaurant, better have the proper licensing. Usually the state will require licenses if you have a certain number of customers or some other category. Then, legally, you “are not” a “restaurant” if you do not meet the guidelines required for the license. But if you do, then magically you and your property are subject to the state’s magical incantation (also known as legislation). The FCC has recently been trying to reclassify ISPs so that they fall under the agency’s telecommunications category, extending the FCC’s power to control the internet.

A rather egregious and recent example of, in this case, re-classificationism, has to do with Obama’s administration trying to “crack down” on companies that treat workers as independent contractors instead of employees (so that unions do not have access to those workers). The IRS and other agencies can determine if someone is a “contractor” or an “employee.”

Even when it comes to the basic rights that the government is “supposed” to protect, classificationism exists. Is email like regular mail?. Is there an expectation of privacy? It all depends on how the bureaucrats massage language in the political arena.

Should e-cigarrettes be regulated like real cigarettes? What “is” a “firearm” or a “machinegun”? Or an “assault weapon”? Where“is” Emmanuel’s “residence”? What is a “controlled substance”? (A toy soldier “is” a “firearm” in British airports, by the way).

One could point out that the agencies in charge will have to have rules and regulations of their own, as the details of implementing and executing Congressional mandates lies with them. That is certainly correct. However, it is striking to see just how much agencies can control by merely moving from category to category entire industries, peoples, occupation, objects and actions. The power to classify is the power to destroy.

There’s no room for violence in our political discourse? But politics is merely war by other means. Political discourse within the state inherently involves the threat of violence and is ultimately backed by it.

When Democrats exploit the recent Tucson shooting to call for stricter gun control laws, they are threatening and ultimately calling for violence against those who wish to keep and bear arms. When Republicans object to cutting military spending, pulling out of overseas wars and military bases, and anti-war sentiments, they are threatening and ultimately calling for violence against unwilling taxpayers, furriners, and anyone else who gets in their bloodthirsty way. When politicians, pundits, and media talking heads of both major parties called for the assassination of Julian Assange, that was political discourse.

Stefan Molyneux says it well:

As does Glenn Greenwald: “…the mentality endlessly eroding basic American liberty:  namely, the belief that every tragedy must lead to new government powers and new restrictions on core liberties.” Click through to read his excellent article.

The standard nomenclature of libertarianism and anarchy suffer the double disadvantage of counter-productive cultural baggage and the factual stigma of being at best unclear and at worst inaccurate. Adopting, instead, the language of ‘voluntary governance’ has a triple advantage. It is a convivial language which doesn’t scare people and turn them off of our arguments before we’ve even made them. It is simply a more accurate description of our desired objective. And, given the actual state of affairs, it not only describes our ends, but also points toward the most promising means of getting to the desired outcome. In other words, ‘voluntary governance’ is not only rhetorically more convivial and substantively accurate, but also transitionally facilitating.

Michael McConkey lives in the socialist hotbed of Vancouver, Canada, where the mountains continually remind him of how puny are the grand designs of the state’s social engineers. He has a Ph.D. in communication from McGill University in Montreal and free lances in teaching organizational theory. He’s just finishing a book that aspires to reinvent communications theory through the application of Austrian and libertarian ideas to a discipline that has been painfully positivist and anti-market.

Read the Full Article by Michael McConkey

Afterwards, discuss it below.

In my first blog post here I pointed out how statism and monopolies had affected language. There is more to be said about this.

It’s not just candidates who invade our homes with political propaganda and petitions for votes. It’s also the almost exclusively pro-state media and academics. 2010 being an election year, rhetoric is rampant. Indeed, discussions about taxes and spending are all too common (and all too sad). And tax talk, of course, is not free of the very same examples of language corruption that allows the existence of certain ways that we speak about taxes and the desire for them.

Take the statement, “taxes give us roads and police.” Putting aside the monopoly aspects, what seldom gets asked is whether roads and police are needed, how much and of what quality. When someone complains about taxes or government spending, soon enough the reply will have to do about us being able to have bridges and other services. Sure, tax money goes to those and thousands of other projects.

Imagine a similar situation in everyday life. We go to the grocery store with a shopping list. The first item is “apples.” Fine–we need apples. But the list only says that. We do not know how many apples, what size, kind, or how fresh they should be. What about price? Whenever statists speak of roads, schools, bridges, police, education, health care, or anything else “offered” by the state, there is no specific mention of the multitude of aspects that a market entrepreneur would have to figure out (such as quality, quantity, etc.). Society needs such and such. That is all. Maybe there are too many schools. Maybe there aren’t enough. Where should they be located? How many students? What about curricula

One can go on and on about such minutia yet the point remains–the populous is not sold (or offered really, as these are taxes after all) a specific amount or number of goods or services but rather abstract, homogeneous, indistinct, monolithic blobs. While the entrepreneur risks scarce goods (time, labor, capital) trying to determine future market conditions to provide his fellow man with a good or service, the political process promises vacuous public works which are, due to the way they are financed and allocated, necessarily inefficient, for they bear no resemblance to what you and I and everyone else wants. (Not to mention that for every government project there is an army of bureaucrats making decisions “on our behalf,” somehow a) reading the minds of all of society; and b) trying to average out our desires. The result, far from being what “the people want” is rather what the lobbyists and politicians want.)

These days the hot topic is employment, with candidates/potential busybodies-tyrants promising an endless supply of jobs. The next time someone promises “jobs,” be aware of how corrupted (and corrupting) that sounds.

Also legislators’ needs for campaign contributions.

~*~

This is a syndicated post, which originally appeared at Mimi and Eunice » IP. View original post.