Good point about the common experiences thing. You’re absolutely right–that would definitely bond people more, and it could possibly even help in combating racism since people would be forced to work together.

Regarding language, I was thinking of Machiavelli who specifically mentioned difficulties that a leader has when leading people who don’t speak the same language. I don’t know if there has been a strong multi-lingual country of this size. Even China has standardized language. I’m not saying it can’t be done without a common language, but I think it would be much more difficult.

I’d be more open to a few years of compulsory national service (not compulsory armed forces service, though that should fulfill the requirement as an alternative path) after highschool or college. Service could cover some national guard type duties such as providing assistance during natural disasters, or army corps engineers, surveying and assisting coordinating things like levee and bridge inspections (not professional labour, but unskilled or semi-skilled labour), working in wilderness areas doing restoration work, working in cities mentoring/tutoring kids, running athletic leagues, etc.

The then novel idea of civil service as a duty of a good citizen in France after the revolution did great things for France. Sure Napoleon ended up using the civil duty to serve brilliantly to create compulsory levies of men for his army, which in the end did not turn out so great for him, but even so…

Just dont play reggaeton and I am ok…I hate hearing it…

Most Europeans can speak at least more than 1 language (except for those Brits). So the USA is somewhat of an anomaly in that it’s primarily a monolingual country (not counting foreigners and their children).

Most Europeans–other than the monolingual Brits you mentioned–live in close proximity to other countries that speak different languages. Other than the people of some states in the South, most Americans don’t. Most Japanese and Australians are monolingual too. So it makes sense–if you live far away from other countries which use different languages, most likely you’ll just speak one language.

Aside from the obvious exception of colonialism, one modern exception to this rule is if there is a huge influx. I know some Korean people from a very Korean part of New Jersey who don’t speak English because they don’t need to. Some Korean Americans actually learn Korean by just hanging out with them. The same goes for Spanish in some Southern California locations. I know one anglo white dude who was totally fluent because his parents relocated there when he was young.

I have a feeling that knowledge of Spanish is going to increase a lot in the next ten or fifteen years. I don’t know about fluency, but knowledge and acceptance will increase. Dora the Explorer is hugely popular with young kids, and PBS has tons of Spanish language programming.

I think more lingualism (is that a word?) is a good thing, but I think that the law needs to take steps to somehow unite us with language. It would be terrible if someone running for President (or becoming President) was unable to talk to Americans in one part of the country just because there were so many languages being spoken. If this were the case, there would be massive inequalities that would be far worse than any race problems we’ve had.

That scares the hell out of many these Anglo-Americans. The recent controversy about the Star Spangled Banner being sung in Spanish is just a symptom of this barely concealed Anglo xenophobia.

But America would be well advised to get over its Anglophone nativism, as they will not be able to surpress the growth of La Raza–no matter how many anti-immigrant policies and 1000-mile border fences the USA tries to put up.