John Huppenthal, superintendent of the Arizona State Department of Education, wrote this on a blog:

“We all need to stomp out balkanization. No spanish radio stations, no spanish billboards, no spanish tv stations, no spanish newspapers. This is America, speak English.”

This guy is in charge of our schools!!!! And this isn’t even the worse thing he’s said or done! (See The Arizona Republic)

The kind of recommendation that he proposes is exactly the kind of thing that led to the balkanization of the Balkans. Intolerance and the desire to purify one’s own territory to achieve an ethnically pure state (one people, one language, one religion) is what led to the extreme violence that has plagued the region since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Tolerance is the solution not intolerance!