Globalizing Everything?

Peter Schneider's theory that Latin was the lingua franca of Renaissance dissidents is a stunning insight. But as a former professor of American literature, I must remind uncritical enthusiasts for globalizing everything using English what Thoreau said when hoopla for the then newest medium of 1853--the trans Atlantic telegraph--got out of hand: "What will be the first thing to come into the broad, flapping American ear--that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough."

The saddest part of Americanization is that it amplifies only our shallowest, merely technocratic achievements: McDonald's, Disney, MTV. Where are Walt Whitman, Louis Sullivan, and William James in this global dissemination? Largely unheard.

Beginning, of course, in America itself. A society that opts for the bland fakeries of Las Vegas instead of its true heritage is a very, very bad example for the world to follow.

As I try my damnedest to learn German at age 74, I fear American monolingualism not because English has taken over airport control towers, but because we Americans use our variant of English to promote mainly the least important elements in our heritage. That's a formula for eventual failure.