The outcome of the Senate vote was never in doubt. Seven senators supported Chinese as the language of the future; three Senators wanted to throw in the towel and make Spanish the official language, two supported Arabic since we have a severe lack of bi-lingual soldiers in our tours of the Middle East, one senator nominated Cherokee as the authentic native language and one suggested Esperanto as a compromise language.

This biennial perfect storm of political idiocy will be complete after the Senate has voted to amend the Constitution to protect marriage, ban abortion and protect the flag.

Today, the world's greatest nation has joined 51 other countries that have already proclaimed English as their official language-among them Sierra Leone, Swaziland, Gambia and Belize. Clearly the United States has now joined an elite alliance of English-speaking nations.

America has come a long way with English. The Continental Congress published its laws and proceedings in German, French and English.

In 1795 a congressional plan to publish legal proceedings in both English and German failed by one vote. (A tight-fisted German congressman from Pennsylvania cast the deciding vote for English only-contending the bilingual plan would cost too much.)

The Senate clearly misunderstood the language problem in the United States. (Not that I expect much more from them. They are well-groomed and excellent orators, but mostly not the brightest bulbs in the Christmas tree lights.)

The challenge we face is not speaking "English" but preserving the right to speak our native "American."

Desperate attempts have been made in the U.S. Congress since 1923 to make American the official language of the United States. For decades Illinois was the only state in the Union with "American" as its official language-until this was repealed in 1969.

English is a language spoken in England by a nation of short people with bad teeth. For them, a cookie is a "biscuit," the hood of a car is a "bonnet" and the trunk of a car is the "boot." Even their crudest ruffians insist that kicking a round ball is 'football."

Smart people in England insist that writers like Shakespeare and Chaucer are models of good English. Worse, they insist the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer are nearly perfect models of written English.

The Kansas Legislature should pass a law declaring "American" and not "English" as the official language of the state. Furthermore, it should ask the Kansas Board of Education to set up a task force to root out corrupting non-American words and books from our native state.

(Now that the Board of Education has resolved the Intelligent Design question, it has plenty of time to work on the Intelligent Language problem.)

The American language is now corrupted by foreign words. A simple American sentence is filled with so-called "loan" words: "The blonde (French word) went to the ranch (Spanish word) for a hamburger (German word) with tomato (Indian word) and a cup of coffee (Arabic word) before going to the rodeo (Spanish word.)"

Clearly such loan words need to be eliminated from our vocabulary and sent back where they belong.

I suspect there are pointy-headed Kansas University linguists sitting on Mt. Oread who will insist that languages constantly borrow words from other countries.

But I also suspect that if the Board of Education put them in a re-education camp in Finney County for a few years, they would change their minds.

Local citizens must take action. Is it true that taxpayers are paying for their high school students to learn Shakespeare? Do even some local church colleges pay homage to Chaucer and Beowulf in their English departments? Are there still older folks who carry King James Bibles?

This must be stopped.

An American language purged of corrupting foreign influences may reduce us to waving our arms and making animal sounds-but, by golly, these will be American noises and gestures.