Would a national language be unifying / disunifying?

[Bruce Wayne]

74. America's not that unique in its diversity--Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, India

area all functioning democracies with a great deal more cultural diversity and (except for Indonesia) great respect for their diverse traditions. And yet the US has a unique tendency to self-acculterate, or at least a stronger tendency toward conformity, among its cultural minorities. But that may be exactly why we don't need laws enforcing an "official" language. In the last hundred years there's been a virtual elimination of the once hundreds of Czech, Italian, Russian, and German newspapers published around the nation. Over the next 40 years you're going to see a significant reduction in the number of Vietnamese and Spanish languages papers (according to one media study I read).

We have a pretty widely accepted national language--American English--and those tiny pockets that differ from that generally head toward full English fluency within two generations of immigration. The only exception might be Spanish in a tiny few border regions, where the strength of Spanish language media can extend limited fluency into a third generation.

It's really not a problem; none of these linguistic pockets is large enough to threaten national cohesion. The entire "Official English Language" movement is predicated on factual distortions of a non-existent threat. It's red-herring politics of the worst sort,/ designed to enhance pro-Republican voting. But it's xenophobia, demagoguery, and entirely nothing else.