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by AlecSchueler 458 days ago
Aren't individual freedoms and not having having to bend to communal norms core tenants of being American? I didn't expect to wake up to Trump introducing socialist policies today but things just get weirder and weirder.
2 comments

If precedent is what decides core American tenants... Every immigrant group in history has learned English over time, or at least their children have. Even if the majority of the country were ESL, English would still be the most commonly understood one by far.
> Aren't individual freedoms and not having having to bend to communal norms core tenants of being American?

I suppose you harbor similarly negative feelings towards affirmative action and the civil rights act?

Could you quote the parts of my comment where you felt my "negative feelings" were implied? I'm a European and a socialist watching this from outside. The idea of putting individual freedom above the common good is not one that I necessarily agree with, it's just one that I understood as being essential to the American experience, hence my question and surprise.

My point in essence is that I feel like this particular policy comes more from a desire to make life harder for those people who live non-normative linguistic lifestyles rather than to foster strength of community as was implied above. I'm all for community but I also believe in supporting diversity between communities as well as within communities. Hopefully that makes my feelings about the civil rights movement &c. clear to you.

> I'm all for community but I also believe in supporting diversity within communities as well as between communities.

A community is shared. You can't have a community if you can't communicate with your neighbor.