English attacked again

Jack Hoogendyk's bill to make English the official language of Michigan continues to be attacked by liberals. The Kalamazoo Gazette issued an editorial attacking it. They use the same sort of specious argument that they have used in the past:

"[A State Rep.] was one of only a few Republicans who voted against the bill. She was disappointed that it included no expenditures for promoting literacy or for English-as-a-second-language instruction. And she said she couldn't support it because it ``might be slightly divisive.''

Division is not what Michigan needs.

But it's an election year. It's time to trot out all the hot-button social issues that rile voters and create an enemy to fight.

Two years ago, gay marriage was the political punching bag, with states, including Michigan, rushing to ban it.

This election year, it appears the foe will be illegal immigrants and those who don't speak English.

We've had enough.

The state Legislature must quit this ridiculous, time-wasting pandering and get to work solving some of the very real problems the state faces. "

Opponents of the bill have been unable to come up with any actual arguments against the bill, and the Gazette doesn't even try. Instead, they trot out the old "election year politics" tripe.

Conservatives must be geniuses at election-year politics. After all, they secretly engineered the massive marches of hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens, right? They made sure that the illegals carried foreign flags and chanted in Spanish! They set up whole neighborhoods where only Spanish is spoken--and just for the election! There's no problem, it's just election-year politics!

As mentioned in the editorial, the Gazette made the same argument about "gay marriage" two years ago. It was just as stupid then. Apparently, conservatives somehow managed to get a bunch of liberal judges to overturn marriage laws and impose "gay marriage" and "civil unions" just for the election.

There's a pattern here. Liberals can push for what they want, and it's perfectly normal. When conservatives oppose them, they are just "playing partisan politics" with "hot-button issues." HOW DARE THEY STAND AGAINST THE INEVITABLE TIDE OF HISTORY?

I particularly like the "divisive" argument. Apparently, English is divisive. And not even the normal amount of divisive, but slightly divisive! In this argument, it doesn't matter how popular an issue is, as long as one person opposes it. Then it's "divisive, " which means that it must be opposed, regardless of merit. Somehow, I doubt that the Gazette has ever opposed anything that they otherwise supported because it might be "divisive." Was the civil rights movement divisive?

Meanwhile, in the U. S. Senate, Harry Reid trotted out the old "racist" argument to oppose English as our national language. Terry Jeffrey shreds that argument in his latest column.