Found Writing 1: On a National Language
I’m sitting in my living room this afternoon, enjoying a perfect Berkeley afternoon, sad that Bruce and Dawn could only stay one night, and organizing my messy hard disk full of files. Here’s something I wrote in May 2006, but never published or sent to anyone, probably in response to something I saw in the news. I only vaguely recall writing it, but I think I still had law school on the brain at the time.
National identity and cultural identity are no longer congruent. There is no doubt that they were in centuries past, and that they are still in many places, but only coincidentally and usually at the expense of a minority population. This is a central consequence of the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution: that government (nation) must protect the rights of free assembly, speech, and religion (components of culture).
As such, the notion of a “national language” is only useful to the extent that it facilitates the efficient functioning of government (a famously insufficient condition, unfortunately). Note that commerce is exempt from this stipulation except where commerce and government intersect, that is, in the enforcement of contracts. Contracts themselves, however, are culturally neutral by design; a merchant need not speak english to expect that I pay him for his wares.
But what of the social contract that citizens of a nation undertake in their collective effort to coexist? I believe that it should not be subject to the imposition of a national language. Nations should make every reasonable effort to make the governing of their people independent of culture.
To that end, president bush should not insist that the national anthem be sung only in english.
