There has to be some deep sense of insecurity to explain this kind of reaction. A sort of worry that the very survival of the United States isn't something that can be relied on, but that somehow it's all liable to melt away like a dream.

In a world where - rather sadly in some ways - it seems that there is an inexorable move towards English being the universal language of globalisation, it seems a bit absurd for this kind of worry for its preservation as the dominant language in the USA to emerge.

I believe that the US Declaration of Independence was first printed in German, not in English; and that in fact German very nearly got adopted as the primary language for the newly founded United Sates. I wonder how that would have changed things.