So I call Comcast telephone service. The typical automated voice drones: "Welcome to Comcast. Press 1 for English, 2 for Spanish ..."

What!? This has been an English-speaking country since Jamestown and Plymouth Rock ... but I have to "press 1" now to hear a recording in English?

I understand the commercial motivation for Spanish translations for plumbing equipment and tools at Home Depot. But it's coming -- separate lanes at fast-food drive-throughs.

People coming to America don't have to learn English. Everything is translated, from Brillo pads to cornflakes. We're not encouraging Hispanics to become true members of American society -- we're not weaving immigrants into the American social fabric anymore.

Everyone is for reasonable accommodation in America: wheelchair ramps and elevator buttons in Braille. Translation is not a birthright, it's not an entitlement, and definitely not an accommodation.

If you don't speak English, it's tough to climb a career ladder in America and impossible to participate in our political process. Are we "dumbing down" the American electorate? Are we seeing a return to the caste system? Who are the new peasants? Low-skilled Latinos who won't -- and don't have to -- learn English.

Marginalizing our language is disrespectful to American heroes who died for our freedom and the revolutionaries who gave us the Constitution. Mount Rushmore and Arlington National Cemetery will soon implode.

When Americans have to do anything to speak our national language, it's an insulting encroachment on our natural rights as American citizens.

Language accommodation is out of hand. Will schools make Spanish a mandatory language for our kids? Will coming generations listen as Spanish becomes the dominant language? No, let's listen now. We're fencing ourselves in, sports fans.

In 1907, President Teddy Roosevelt shouted: "... we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming an American, and nothing but an American ...

"There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag ... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language ... And we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."

Assimilation in America, exact equality, no divided allegiance, room for one flag, one language, one sole loyalty ... to the American people ... we should insist on this ... English only!

Money, money, money. American businesses want a share of the dollars of hardworking Hispanic people. In the lust for commerce, business is blind to the shape of things to come. We worship gold while throwing our country away.

Boycott businesses that disrespect English? Make this a campaign issue? Not gonna happen. Businesses want money, politicians want votes -- at the expense of our heritage.

I switched to Verizon; they're accommodating me for speaking the language I grew up with.

Bluepoint1@comcast.net