Paranoia ✓

XIII: Conner - Party Debate (Part 2)

Conner raised his hand in objection. "And what if they refused to be deported? What if they are U.S. citizens, who have only known America as their home? What will you do to them? Kick them to some foreign land? Group them in with people that look like them and believe in the same things as them and expect them to get along, past the language barrier..."

"Oh please," Harry interrupted. "They all speak Islamic."

"Arabic," Dundly added.

"Whatever, what's not English doesn't matter."

Conner injected some reasoning into that comment. "How can you say that when both you and Caroline here have business experience; you having found your own car company and her having been a CEO? You know that many people in this country are Latino and speak Spanish. You also conduct business internationally. So clearly you've made your money dealing with people who speak different languages."

"And your point?" Caroline jumped in seeming offended that Conner brought her into the mix.

"My point is, maybe we shouldn't be forcing the world to speak English. Maybe we should improve our education system so that we could speak their languages as well as our own to prove that we're not just all strength and muscles, but also that we have a bit of brain power too."

Ferguson cut in and explained, "But it is traditional that a person seeking to live in another country learn to speak the language. We're not asking for anything fancy."

Conner calmed down, thanking God that there's at least a semi-intelligent person on stage whom he can have a real debate with. "You are most certainly right Martin. All people seeking to remain in this country should learn English. That doesn't mean, however, that we shouldn't learn other languages as well. Many nations have children learning two to three languages by high school. By the time they reach college they are usually fluent in three different languages. Why have we lagged so far behind in education that we can barely teach our kids to speak one language?"

Conner was hoping they would pick up the jab at the way Americans speak. It seemed the only vocabulary Americans knew was slang and curse words. None of them had ever picked up a dictionary let alone used one—and Urban Dictionary didn't count.

But of course they just glazed right over Conner's concern when Dundly raised his hand and signaled, "Let's move on. Mr. Knox, surprisingly, did raise an interesting point. He asked something along the lines of what will we do with Muslims who are legal U.S. citizens and are in good standing behavior? Will we force them out to a country they've probably never seen before? Ferguson, let's start with you."

The former attorney general opened his mouth and said one of the first stupid things Conner has ever heard him say. "Well in Islam there exists the Five Pillars of Faith. They are to them what the Ten Commandments are to Judaism and Christianity. One of the Five Pillars instructs Muslims to visit Mecca on a spiritual journey. Considering most Muslims are of middle-class status, they could afford this journey into Mecca, and thus many Muslims have at least visited their ancestral homeland. Therefore, even Muslims who happen to be U.S. citizens wouldn't feel that lost if we were to ship them back into the Middle East."

The zombie audience applauded his exposé on why it would be okay to send U.S. citizens to the Middle East. Clearly he and the audience must think that Mecca and the Kaaba is all just in the Middle East—that any nation in the Middle East can be Mecca. Or maybe they just think we can just ship the Muslims all into one location.

Conner shook his head stepping in. "And what about the Muslims who couldn't afford said spiritual journey? What do we do with them?"

Conner was waiting for this response; he saw it coming from a mile away, like a shore gently rising over the horizon as he steered his ship to port and readied himself to dock at a little bit of a history lecture.