is unnecessary, legally irresponsible, and bad public policy.
By Nathan Moore
The “English only” charter amendment is bad, not because the Metropolitan government doesn't need to be speaking in English (it already is), but because it is completely unnecessary. The primary advocates, many of whom I have known for years, are pursuing bad government policy with reckless abandon and it is shameful. The call for a special election, which would cost the taxpayers somewhere in the ballpark of $350,000 for an unnecessary, legally irresponsible amendment, is absurd. The money Metro would be spending could just as well go to more accessible English as a second language classes, which would go further toward solving the perceived linguistic problems of our city than this silly amendment.
As Davidson County Republican Party chairman Tom Lawless noted in The Tennessean today, “What is the great immediacy of this?”. He is certainly right - there is no immediacy, especially not in the case of this poorly contrived law.
I tend to look for the best in people, and will give most the benefit of many doubts, but I truly cannot figure out what positive is being accomplished with this amendment. The state of the law will not change. The only outcome will be that costs to Metro will go up in the form of litigation from certain constitutional challenges.
There is no language crisis in our city. Immigrants are not “holding out” on us, refusing to speak in anything but their native tongues. No one comes to America (and more specifically, Nashville), not wanting to learn English. There is not some underground society on Nolensville Road that has pledged to speak Spanish or die.
But what does need to die is the English-Only charter amendment. It is giving conservatives in Metro an awful reputation, one that many of us do not deserve and strenuously resent. I strongly oppose the English-Only charter amendment and urge its backers to rethink their reasons for supporting it. Surely we can focus on something that would actually make Metro better, leaving the coarsely developed aura of this irrational xenophobia in the gutter where it truly belongs.
Comment
Nathan Moore is a Nashville attorney, conservative activist, former Davidson County Young Republican Chairman and blogs at MoreThoughs. I had the pleasure of hearing him debate the proposed Nashville English-only charter amendment that is on the ballot to be decided January 22. Nathan debated Councilman Eric Crafton, the author of the bill, at today’s First Tuesday Group, a monthly Republican gathering. I concur with the arguments made by Nathan and the opponents of the bill.
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