A Stitch in Haste

Alabama is not my most-beloved state, and the ACLU is not my most-hated enemy.

But this time they've flip-flopped -- the rednecks are right and the card-carriers are crazy:

A state judge could rule soon on whether Alabama must give driver's license exams only in English or can test potential motorists in 12 other languages as it has since 1998.
...
Alabama voters in 1990 approved a state constitutional amendment making English the official language. The state then stopped giving driver's exams in many languages.

In 1996, however, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the American Civil Liberties Union sued the state on behalf of non-English-speaking residents. The civil rights groups won a series of decisions in federal courts. The state won the case before the Supreme Court but decided to offer driver's license exams in many languages.

It's quite simple really: If you can't speak English, then you can't read road signs. If you can't read road signs, then you're a dangerous menace on the roads. There is no "constitutional right" to be a menace on the roads (see also, "anti-DUI radicals").

The anti-English response to this straightforward syllogism?

"If they don't have time to learn English, then they won't have a license, and that could lead to unlicensed driving, which is probably a more significant safety problem than not knowing road signs."

So if we don't let them be lazy law-breakers "just a little bit," then they might become lazy law-breakers "a whole lot"? Is that intelligent public policy? Is this really the way to maximize highway safety?

Of course not.

It's bad enough that our state and local governments are increasingly wasting (yes, wasting) taxpayer money on multilingual operations. But to extend the illogic to hurling multi-ton slabs of metal down public roads at potentially lethal speeds is, well, potentially lethal. And damn stupid.