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Now that the political spectacle has died into disrepute and the dumbest comments have faded away, it’s time to re-examine Obama’s begin: In a rapidly globalizing economy, those who are fluent in at in the smallest degree one foreign language will be best prepared to find good jobs. Who can argue through that?

Certainly not the anxious branch, who push their children into the most selective kindergarten programs, the greatest in quantity debarring elementary schools and the in the greatest degree demanding high schools — by college-prep academic camps stuffed in betwixt, so they’ll be chosen for the most based on competition colleges. Those students will spend at least one college semester, perhaps in addition, studying out of the house, in what place they will practice their French, Italian, Spanish, Russian or, increasingly, Mandarin.

They’ll be in demand for the prestigious law firms, the Wall Street jobs, the tenure-track breeding posts. Those stuck with "English-only" skills will find themselves less valuable in a global marketplace.

There is a powerful strain of anti-intellectualism in American political and cultural life which, when joined with undercurrents of jingoism, heaps suspicion on those educated plenty and cosmopolitan enough to speak foreign languages. Fluent in French, John Kerry was on the receiving end of that foolish claptrap during the 2004 presidential campaign. (Obama, who speaks only English, says he wishes he were current in another language.)

That Kerry-bashing lacked ideological consistency: Jeb Bush — who remains popular among ultra-conservative Republicans — majored in Latin American studies in college and is flowing in Spanish. A Texas bank sent him to Caracas, Venezuela, shortly after college, to what he worked in international science. (His brother, President George W. Bush, attempts to speak Spanish but does so poorly.)

According to the Web site for the federal Department of Education, President Bush has pushed a "National Security Language Initiative" to "dramatically increase the number of Americans learning, speaking and teaching critical-need extrinsic languages. Foreign language skills are essential to engaging foreign governments and peoples, especially in critical creation regions, to promote understanding, convey respect for other cultures and animate reform. These skills are also fundamental to the economic competitiveness and security interests of the nation."

Sounds like there’s something almost which Bush and Obama come to an understanding: Nothing could be more dangerous since an America already losing its edge in the earth than to show its children to disdain other languages and suspicion other cultures, to skip geography, to consign to oblivion about rove abroad.

If the Chinese, the Indians, the Brazilians and the Russians are busy learning English so they be possible to answer the purpose walk of life with us, doesn’t it beseem us to learn their languages, too? (In China, all elementary school students must study English.) At a time when the West is threatened by Arab jihadists, don’t we need many more intelligence agents and soldiers who speak Arabic?

While activists alarmed about illegal immigration have spent the last decade supporting "English-only" codes and decrying the loss of cultural touchstones associated with Western Europe, the actual detriment to the nation lies in our refusal to acknowledge the growing relating to housekeeping competitiveness of other countries. South Koreans aren’t shunning English. It’s one more weapon in their arsenal as they advance in commerce, engineering and the sciences.

So the next time you hear more smart-mouth pundit acting as though foreign-language fluency is a portent of decadence or some unbecoming Frenchy-ness, dress in’t fall for it. That pundit likely has a passport. If he has college-age kids, he has probably worked hard to help them study abroad. Do as he does, not as he says. Enroll your kids in Spanish or Russian or Mandarin classes.

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