One of the five planks of House Speaker Steve Tilley’s Show Me Solutions Initiative priorities list is to end new driver testing in languages other than English.
In the section of his speech to the House calling for more accountability in government yesterday, Tilley said the state had the duty to require anyone wanting a Missouri driver’s license to pass it in the state’s official language.
You'd think you want people to fully understand the driving laws of the land so that they don't hurt people while driving, but apparently that's not the public safety issue here.
The Missouri State Highway Patrol conducts written tests of would-be drivers in 12 languages, including English, said Capt. Tim Hull, director of the public education and information office. The languages include major European languages such as Spanish, French, Italian and German, as well as Chinese, Greek, Korean, Russian, Vietnamese, Japanese and Bosnian.
If a driver cannot pass the road test, they may hire, at their expense, an interpreter from a state-approved list, Hull said.
With road sign colors and symbols based on an international standard, Hull said, the patrol sees no safety issues for drivers who are not well-versed in English.
So even the Missouri state troopers agree with this. They want people informed of the laws, and the whole point of shapes and colors on road signs is to make them recognizable without having to read them. In fact, part of the written test in just about any state is to recognize the signs without lettering on them, so Tilley's legislation is a moot point from a public safety issue. And let's not pretend everybody driving a car in Missouri (or any state for that matter) is 100% literate, either. That's why the signs are shaped and colored like they are.
Again, this is a moot point. So what's Tilley's real game here? The mask slips again thanks to a fellow Republican:
Rep. John Cauthorn, R-Mexico, said he likes the idea and thinks his constituents will, too.
“The average guy on the street hates Spanish, and it is everywhere,” Cauthorn said. “To the average guy, that is important. We are almost to the point of losing our identity as a nation.
“If folks are going to come here and work, they need to work toward learning the English language,” he said.
Ding ding ding!
In State Rep. Cauthorn's world, the average guy "hates Spanish" and presumably hates those who speak it, too. Those who speak other languages than English are robbing America of its identity, according to him. They're not American. They don't count.
Cauthorn seems to think the average Missourian is a nationalist racist asshole...and he's proud of this. Fascinating.
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See? You don't believe in the borders of the U.S. You conflate a sensible request with an act of racism against Latinos, despite the fact that more languages other than Spanish would be eliminated.
By the way, the government doesn't consider immigrants from Spain to be Latinos (or Hispanics, or whatever) despite the fact that their original language is Spanish, just as it is with people originally from Mexico and Puerto Rico. From personal knowledge, I also know that most Spanish-speaking people from South America consider themselves Spaniards, not Latino or Hispanic. And you wouldn't call an immigrant from Brazil a Hispanic (or Spaniard) since their original language was Portuguese, not Spanish.
So even the Missouri state troopers agree with this.
And who would that be?
...Capt. Tim Hull, director of the public education and information office.
One person, and that's the PR guy from Human Resources. These are the people pushing the bullshit known as "diversity". Believe me, I know, and I know "diversity" is bullshit. But to Zandar, the PR guy from HR is equal to all other Missouri state troopers combined. Brilliant use of (il)logic.
What a pathetic attempt at race-baiting.
"The average guy on the street hates Spanish, and it is everywhere."
Racist.
I rest my case.
"It's a depressingly cynical worldview, and in reality that's just covering up for fears of something far more nasty: that everyone who's still unemployed by this point is shall we say of a certain ethnic background."
Oh wait! That was you Zandar!
Racist. I rest my case.
Another CREDIBILITY PROBLEM bites ZANDAR the lying, ignorant, childish RAAAAAAAAAAAAACIST in the FAT ASS!
Oh No!
Not long for this blog now...
Puerto Ricans are, by definition, U.S. citizens.
For what it's worth, St. Louis, Missouri in its early days would have had its streets full of people speaking first French, and then from 1840 or so on, German.
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