Should English Be the Official Language of the United States of America?

Colonel Harry Riley and Others Say Yes

English is an official language of at least 50 countries. None of those countries is the United States of America. Are you surprised? The U.S. has never had an official language. At the very beginnings of the nation, in 1780, John Adams proposed an official, government sponsored academy of the English language. According to an ACLU briefing paper, the proposal was "rejected as undemocratic and a threat to individual liberty" by the Continental Congress. The Founding Fathers apparently saw the use of ancestral languages as a right, and didn't want the country to have a single official language, just as it has no official religion.

Since then, however, every time the U.S. goes through a recession and job prospects dwindle, an anti-immigrant backlash begins. Many white, English-speaking Americans would rather the immigrants just go home and leave the jobs to them. Along with this backlash often comes a push to adopt English as the official language of the U.S. - thus excluding people who primarily speak other languages, whether they are U.S. citizens, legal residents, or illegal residents.

I've been aware of the English-only movement for several years, but it recently came to the front of my mind because of an email that's making the rounds. It's a message from one retired Colonel Harry Riley, which tells about 32 or 33 (depending on your email) senators who voted against an amendment to the immigration reform bill which would make English the official language of the U.S. According to Riley, voting against this amendment was un-American and traitorous, and we should all remember this at election time, especially since four of the senators voting against the amendment are running for President.