Jack Engelhard
Jack Engelhard’s classic international bestselling novel Indecent Proposal, which later became a worldwide hit movie, has been republished to meet readers’ demands. His other major works include Compulsive: A Novel, his award-winning post-Holocaust Montreal memoir Escape from Mount Moriah, plus Slot Attendant: A Novel About A Novelist. His website: www.jackengelhard.comWell now, here’s a headline everyone seems to have missed. To drive a cab in New York City, you don’t need English anymore.
Here’s the headline: “New law cuts English language requirement for NYC cab drivers,” and here’s the story, starring our loony mayor Bill de Blasio, as it appears from Reuters. Yes, sir! Who needs English in America when we’ve got Somali, Swahili or Dari and Pashto?
Never mind the sarcasm. Let’s move to my first reaction which was – how awful. I started to write a scathing, rip-roaring commentary about what this means; that here’s yet another step to losing what remains of our Judeo/Christian culture and hard-earned values.
I was going to say that because of that, yes that, just that, our entire Western Civilization is at risk and set to crumble. Our heritage is being trampled.
I was ready to quote James Joyce, who wrote, “A nation is a people that thinks the same and speaks the same language.”
I think that’s his quote. If not, it’s mine. Yes, I read Ulysses. I understood maybe 20 percent of it, and besides, I think he’s right, I mean that part about what characteristics define a nation. Because if we all think differently and speak differently, well, we all know what happened to the citizens of Babel.
They were destroyed when G-d confounded their tongues. I was going to argue that here we go again, becoming another Babylon.
I mean, next time I get into a cab, now I’m the stranger. I need to speak his language. He does not need mine. English is now the foreign tongue.
So what language gets me to Carnegie Hall?
But we all know that she’s totally rotten and absolutely corrupt. Who cares, right? Right!
Big deal, you say? I agree. Or at least I am starting to come around. I am prepared to join the rest of the country and take everything ho-hum. Hillary Clinton, for example. Now wait. I don’t intend to get political. But we all know that she’s totally rotten and absolutely corrupt. Who cares, right? Right!
Let’s vote for her anyway because – well, because she has two terrific qualifications. She is a woman. She speaks English. Wow!
We are not to the point where running for president, or any office in the US, cuts out English as a requirement. You may have a president who speaks Arabic only.
We are not there, at least not yet.
Or, you may be the confidante of a candidate, as Huma Abedin is to Hillary Clinton, who vouches for no Constitution of ours, but for Sharia Law.
Big deal, you say? Me, too. But here’s something. In Israel, they still care. Corrupt politicians, yes even former prime ministers and former presidents caught red-handed are sent to prison. No chance of this happening here where we greet sleazy politicians with a shrug, that is if they are Democrats.
So I intend, over time, to take up the habit of slothful indifference that seems to work so well for so many of my fellow citizens, and if everything goes according to plan, I will quit imagining that every hurtful headline is meant personally for me. Let somebody else worry about it, will be my motto.
My lawn is overgrown and the neighbors are complaining? Too bad. Fact: The country is being overrun by people who bring with them their laundry of intolerance and anti-Semitism. Nobody else seems to care. So why should I care? Already, you see, I’m a quick learner.
Ann Coulter says that if Hillary gets elected she will bring in 35 million more migrants and no Republican will win an election ever again.
I agree. But that’s her problem.
Watch me as I pick up even more phrases to calm my anxieties: Here go the well-worn slogans I’m working on: 1. That’s none of my business. 2. Take one day at a time. 3. Go with the flow. 4. Don’t take it personal. 5. What’s that got to do with me? 6. It’s not the end of the world. 7. It is what it is.
Yes, I intend to kick the can down the road even about the cabbie situation that had me so perturbed.
I got to thinking that as to everyone speaking his own tongue and clinging to his own culture, no longer are we one nation under G-d.
We are many nations under many gods. That spells disaster.
Thanks to Hillary, we can relax, because as she says, and says it so well: What difference does it make?
New York-based bestselling American novelist Jack Engelhard writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. New from the novelist: “News Anchor Sweetheart,” a novelist’s version of Fox News and Megyn Kelly. Engelhard is the author of the international bestseller “Indecent Proposal.” He is the recipient of the Ben Hecht Award for Literary Excellence. Website: www.jackengelhard.com
