Let's do this thing!

So Pat Buchanan appeared at a conference over the weekend which advocated for making English the official language of the U.S. As ThinkProgress and Feministing pointed out, they misspelled their own banner.

You know, I think Buchanan might be on to something. Never mind the fact that the people who wrote our country's system of government basically from scratch (rich white men, all) didn't feel the need to make English our official language. Let's do this thing! I'm totally down with making speaking and writing correct English a federal law, punishable by massive fines if not obeyed.

For starters, we need to settle on what "English" means. The English they speak in Great Britain is very different from the English we speak here (go to London and order a biscuit with a napkin if you don't believe me). For that matter, the English they speak in NYC or Philly is a world apart from the English I speak in Piedmont North Carolina. "Hoagie" vs. "sub" vs. "grinder"? "Bubbler"? Good Heavens, don't get us started on the meaning of "barbecue." (For the record, though we may disagree on proper ingredients, it is a noun, not a verb!) Can I still have my "yonder" and "y'all" and "fixin' to"? Will we put dialect to popular vote like Prop. 8?

And then there's the newspapers. AP Style vs. Chicago Manual vs. Miss Draughn's 12th grade English class, all with different standards of capitalization and commas.

Anyway, let's stipulate that we reach consensus on all that. I want to hear about the fines. I want to know how much I will be charged as a Web blog commenter when I type "OMGROTFL." I want to know how soon the greasy spoon diner near my parents' house that sells "combo's with french frie's" will be put out of business. What about "it's" when the writer means "its"? "Their"/"they're"/"there"? Oh, we could pay off the national debt with this!

And can we shoot the "ain't"-ers and double-negative users on sight?

Seriously, this is just one more thing that certain conservatives are using to identify voters who might potentially be sucked into their (not "they're") racist/ethnocentric cause. They have no intention of establishing English as this country's official language. If they managed to do so, they'd (contraction of "they would") be like the proverbial dog chasing a car. All Buchanan and the other white supremacists want to do is convince you, the working class white person, that having to press 1 for English is an intolerable imposition on your rightful privilege so you'll vote with them next time.

Puh-leeze. (That would be poetic license used to impart my derision of the English-only crowd.)