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Conservative Candidates and Languages

As a candidate myself, I have noticed that despite reality, we do not often enough pay attention to bilingual minorities or to those who do not speak English.

In fact in chagrin I plan a Spanish page on my own website after thinking deeper about this.

I had thought of this a while ago, and intended to try to push for us to not just get a person to write for us, but for every candidate to be able to passably speak and write a different language.

The value of knowing how to speak to minorities in their language is an amazing boost to the votes you can get from that group.

I believe Bush, a moderate, won due to his outreach in Spanish to Spanish Speakers. Every edge counts!

We Conservatives are correct in wanting to give everyone the gift of a single language, as studies show if you fluently speak and write English you earn more than otherwise (Statistically speaking).

But we also then ignore those who have trouble with languages, who feel they are to old to learn a new language, those who are deaf, and those the Democrats supress by placing them in ‘native language’ classes.

Lets not kid ourselves… legal immigrants are very staunchly pro-American, let us channel this for Conservative values.

To that end, finally, in January I started learning Tagalog (The Filipino language).

Having examined language programs I found one that can work for my schedule. I am not associated in anyway with, but just use a paid for copy, of an app called LLingo, which you can choose from dozens of languages.

Of course there is Rosetta Stone and others.

This is something we as an ideology need to incorporate into our structure. Being bilingual is not a chore, not useful…. but a necessity for stopping the tide of liberalism.

As always this is just my .02 cents.

COMMENTS

  • zachv

    Fact is, the Republican Party and conservative candidates DO need to conduct more outreach in non English-speaking populations. I believe most of us agree that English should be encouraged as the default language in the US, but at the same time, if no one ever delivers a conservative message to non-English speakers … why would they ever vote for us?

    I also agree with you Michael about candidates (and I’ll add non-candidates) learning second languages. Learning a new language is D.I.F.F.I.C.U.L.T. However, fluency has huge benefits beyond just being able to outreach to new voters in that it helps memory, your native language proficiency, appeal as an employee and general mind broadening.

    Good luck with Tagalog!

    • http://MichaelHarrington.org Michael Harrington

      That with modern technology language learning is fairly easy.

      I can go at my own pace, repeat a chapter as I want, and refresh as I feel the need to.

      Word association efforts are also built into LLingo so that when I for instance learned 7 to 12 in numbers, each number was associated with a color.

      Picture association also exists, and there are four different quiz types for each chapter.

      I was at level 15 out of 65 in two weeks.

      After putting it down three times for a week and a half each, out of two months beong at level 24 with levels 1 to 20 fully mastered and memorized is pretty remarkable to me.

      I dare say anyone can learn a language with modern technology… it may just take some longer than others.