Tag: Spanish

Ilana Mercer: Alas, Donald Trump is no cultural Marxist

Trump Walking The Culturally Conservative Talk
By Ilana mercer

WHEN IN THE US, SPEAK ENGLISH. Donald Trump’s retort to Jeb Bush’s rattling off in Spanish on the campaign trail conjures an old joke told in Israel of my youth. It was aimed at the ultra-orthodox Jew who dresses weirdly and won’t speak Hebrew. Here goes:

Walking down the street is a Sabra (a Jew born in Israel), clad in the pioneer’s outfit of shorts and a Tembel Hat. (“Tembel” is Hebrew for silly. The image below illustrates how not even a beautiful Israeli girl can dignify a hat so useless as to provide no protection from the merciless sun.)

From across the street, in Yiddish—the language of the diaspora—an ultra-orthodox Jew clad in black garb shouts obscenities at the Sabra. The minuscule ultra-orthodox community believes that speaking Hebrew before Messiah arrives is heretic and will delay the coming of Messiah (also known as the longest coming in history). For Messiah to materialize, the Jew must remain weak, dispossessed and persecuted—a sickly spirit without a corporeal country to call his own.

The Israeli shouts back, “Speak Hebrew, goy!” Goy meaning non-Jew.

Trump took a jab at Jeb for using Spanish to dismiss the mogul’s conservative credentials. Via CNN:

“‘I like Jeb,’ Trump told Breitbart News. ‘He’s a nice man. But he should really set the example by speaking English while in the United States.'”

The Trumpian reference was to the former Florida governor’s comments to reporters … about Trump’s policies. “‘El hombre no es conservador,’ Bush said, which translates to, ‘This man is not a conservative.'”

Not only was Trump’s visceral retort in defense of English righteous; it was also culturally conservative in the best of ways.

RESTORING TRUTH TO LANGUAGE. Paraphrased, here is a collection of Trumpian straight-talk on the Zeitgeist. (Donald’s “most notable insults,” as The Hill would have it):

  • We are led by stupid people. Very, very stupid people.
  • Media are dishonest.
  • Talking to Anderson Cooper is a waste of time.
  • War-all-the-time Charles Krauthammer is an overrated, clueless clown.
  • Anthony Weiner is the definition of a perv. [Or, as one Jewish writer you’ll recognize put it, the “Weiner worm is a poster boy for anti-Semitism.”]
  • Elizabeth Beck is disgusting. [She’s the wild-eyed attorney who turned a deposition of the busy businessman into a legal brief on pumping breast-milk.]
  • The once-great National Review … [Trump translated: NR is no longer great.]
  • “George Bush sends our soldiers into combat, they are severely wounded, and then he wants $120,000 to make a boring speech to them?” [Yet another insight about Genghis Bush shared by yours truly. My past post was referring, in particular, to Bush charging the “Helping a Hero” charitable fund for speaking (in tongues) to their beneficiaries. First Bush sent these soldiers to die for nothing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Next he robbed those who came back broken.]
  • Penn Jillette’s show is terrible. [A self-evident truth.]

“Do we believe in the gene thing?” roared Trump at a crowd that had assembled to hear him speak in Mobile, Alabama, last month. Yes, he mentioned the G Factor. Trump was touting his genetic lineage; says he comes from a family of high-achievers.

Hasn’t the guy received any briefings on the prevailing linguistic Cultural Marxism—euphemized as political correctness—in the country he seeks to govern? It is an axiom of liberal establishmentarians like Jeb, George and the rest that the nature-nurture debate has been settled, politically, at least.

According to liberal liturgy, of which Trump appears to know nothing; if not for largely exogenous circumstances—all human beings would be capable of similar accomplishments. Many a co-opted scientist will second the political dictum that there is no such thing as general intelligence. Speak, if you must, about the phenotype—even genotype—of all individual traits other than intelligence. As for the possibility of group genotypic intelligence: Don’t go there!

On America’s conflict-of-interest riddled, corrupt press corps, Trump quipped: “Shouldn’t George Will have to give a disclaimer every time he is on Fox News that his wife works for Scott Walker?”

That brings me back to the topic of intelligence, to which Scott Walker relates as Trump relates to the tyranny of political correctness. In the course of vying for the Republican Party’s nomination in the 2016 presidential election, the governor from Wisconsin came up with another “conservative,” cogent idea: equal opportunity fencing. Reflexively—and laboring to show he does not discriminate against Mexico—Walker showed himself to be an indiscriminate bumpkin. To wit:

Walker has called building a wall along the border between the US and Canada a “legitimate issue.”

Illegal immigration and the security of the southern border with Mexico have been major issues in the Republican race for president, but the northern border has not been discussed.

Mr. Walker made the comments in response to a question from a NBC News reporter.

“That is a legitimate issue for us to look at,” he said …

Like the official left, these self-styled “conservatives” are in revolt against nature and reality. Canadian or Mexican; to the Bush and Walker egalitarian, the potential of all people is the same. Therefore all borders must be similarly defended or undefended.

Does the US have a problem with a deluge of illegal immigrants pouring over the Canadian border? No. Canada is a high-wage area. The US is a high-wage area. Latin America is a low-wage area. Migratory pressure, Mr. Walker, flows from low-wage to high-wage regions; from the Third World to the First World (until migratory equilibrium is reached when First World becomes Third World).

Donald Trump’s tone is unhelpful, Jeb Bush keeps sniveling in that soporific singsong of his. On the contrary. Not for nothing do our linguistic tormentors (like their communist-party mentors) seek to regulate language. For to be vested in linguistic accuracy, is to be vested in the truth. The closer the language we use approximates reality—and, by extension, the truth—the greater the likelihood that our actions will follow.

In this sense, Trump’s blunt, in-artful language is immensely helpful.

**
Ilana Mercer is a paleolibertarian writer, based in the U.S. She pens WND’s longest-standing, exclusive paleolibertarian column, “Return to Reason.” She is a contributor to The Unz Review, America’s smartest webzine, and is a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies. Her latest book is “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons For America From Post-Apartheid South Africa.” Her website is www.IlanaMercer.com. She blogs at www.barelyablog.com
Follow her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/IlanaMercer “Friend” her on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ilanamercer.libertarian

US now has more Spanish speakers than Spain

The United States is now the world’s second largest Spanish-speaking country after Mexico, according to a new study published by the prestigious Instituto Cervantes.

The report says there are 41 million native Spanish speakers in the US plus a further 11.6 million who are bilingual, mainly the children of Spanish-speaking immigrants. This puts the US ahead of Colombia (48 million) and Spain (46 million) and second only to Mexico (121 million).

Among the sources cited in the report is the US Census Office which estimates that the US will have 138 million Spanish speakers by 2050, making it the biggest Spanish-speaking nation on Earth, with Spanish the mother tongue of almost a third of its citizens.

By state the highest concentration is in the former Spanish colonies of the south and south-west, with New Mexico top at 47%, followed by California and Texas (both 38%) and Arizona (30%). Some 18% of New Yorkers speak Spanish while only 1.3% of West Virginians do. Perhaps surprisingly, more than 6% of Alaskans are Spanish speakers.

The report, El español, una lengua viva – Spanish, a living language – estimates that there are 559 million Spanish speakers worldwide, a figure that includes 470 million native speakers and those with some command of the language.

The Index of Human Development ranks Spanish as the second most important language on earth, behind English but ahead of Mandarin. It is also the third most widely used language on the internet, although less than 8% of internet traffic is in Spanish. The report says that Spanish is the second most used language on Twitter in London and New York. It also comes second on Facebook, a long way behind English though well ahead of Portuguese, Facebook’s third language.

Source: Guardian

The tsunami of Latino immigrants to the US

Critics say the ginned-up fears of terrorism is a nearly non-existent threat. Americans are not about to be overwhelmed by Islam in the U.S..

Islam is used to distract whites from an enormous existential threat to their country, they say.

Immigration, legal and illegal, from Latin America must be stopped, or whites will be wiped from America, and many whites fear that it may already be too late. The Economist reports on the trend:

America is a country built by immigration, but nothing in its history compares to the rise in its Hispanic population. Changes to immigration law in the 1960s triggered a decades-long surge in arrivals, taking the Hispanic population from just 7m in 1970 to 57m today, a number that is set to double by mid-century.

At that point one in four Americans will be of Latino descent. In relation to the population of the day, there have been proportionally larger surges in the past, notably involving European migrations in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Two factors make the rise of Hispanic America different. Never before has such a large group of new arrivals lived so close to their ancestral homelands, linked to grandparents in the same time zone by cheap flights and Skype.

Secondly, America is entering an era of white decline. For almost two centuries, from the time of George Washington’s presidency to the election of Ronald Reagan, whites of European descent made up at least 80% of the population. That share is below two-thirds now, and the white majority is set to become a minority by 2044.

That brings both challenges and opportunities. Today’s Hispanics lag behind whites when it comes to education and wealth. But they are strikingly young, lowering America’s median age and offering workers to fill the labour market when other rich countries face greying decline.

Politicians too often discuss Hispanics as almost a single-issue group, as victims or villains of immigration. But five-sixths are legal residents and recent Latino growth has been mostly from births, not new arrivals.

Hispanics are dispersing across the country and their political clout will only grow: nearly 1m US-born Latinos reach voting age annually.

White kids no longer a majority in US schools

For the first time ever, U.S. public schools are projected this fall to have more minority students than non-Hispanic whites enrolled, a shift largely fueled by growth in the number of Hispanic children.

Non-Hispanic white students are still expected to be the largest racial group in the public schools this year at 49.8 percent. But the National Center for Education Statistics says minority students, when added together, will now make up the majority.

About one-quarter of the minority students are Hispanic, 15 percent are black and 5 percent are Asian and Pacific Islanders. Biracial students and Native Americans make up a smaller share of the minority student population.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan called the changing population a seminal moment in education. “We can’t talk about other people’s children. These are our children,” he said.

The shift creates new academic realities, such as the need for more English language instruction, and cultural ones, meaning changes in school lunch menus to reflect students’ tastes.

But it also brings some complex societal questions that often fall to school systems to address, including issues of immigration, poverty, diversity and inequity.

The result, at times, is racial and ethnic tension.

In Louisiana in July, Jefferson Parish public school administrators reached an agreement with the federal government to end an investigation into discrimination against English language learners.

Source: AP

American senator delivers speech in Spanish

Sen. Tim Kaine

Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, delivered a speech on the Senate floor in Spanish on Tuesday as he made his push for the chamber to pass his immigration bill.

Mr. Kaine said he would deliver his remarks in Spanish but said he would put an English translation into the Congressional Record.

The move highlighted the growing power of Spanish-language speakers in the U.S. Mr. Kaine, whose Spanish is outstanding after spending time as a Catholic missionary in Honduras, has used the language in his outreach to Hispanic voters.

Speaking Spanish in floor speeches is rare, but not unprecedented.

To use another language on the floor requires unanimous consent of the other senators, which Mr. Kaine sought and was granted. – Washington Times