Trib Columnist: English Is Ticket Out of Underclass

For the full column by Michael Costello/Lewiston Tribune, click here .

Very few issues expose the perversity of this country’s cultural left wing more vividly than the debate over English as the official language of the land. The surest way to evoke its hyperventilating, name-calling and threats is to advocate English as the official language. It worked again last week when Washington State University’s College Republicans stood on the mall and advocated a law that would make English fluency a prerequisite for citizenship. Sure enough, the barking moonbats rose to the chum, accusing the Republicans of all the usual clichs that they keep in their unimaginative intellectual quiver. It is frankly indefensible that anyone would wish to condemn a fellow human being to poverty by linguistically isolating him from the economic mainstream. Alarm bells were sounded earlier this week when it was reported that 36 percent of Washington, D.C., adults were functionally illiterate. Functional illiteracy is characterized by an inability to fill out a job application or understand a bus schedule — sort of like Paris Hilton — Michael Costello /Lewiston Tribune.

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