It's interesting to think of what America might look like now if Esperanto had been adopted for all government business, and as a common language for the various ethnic groups. A neutral language might have done wonders for preserving diversity in culture here of all the immigrant groups. If people could read newspapers, take part in government, and interact within all the cultures of their neighbors with a third party language, there wouldn't be much need to replace their own language with the de facto official/majority language over the generations (there never was much of an idea to actually replace languages with Esperanto, right? Just to use it as a go-between), and we might still have German in Texas, Norwegian in Michigan, Dutch in New York, French in Louisianan, Russian in Alaska, and Spanish in California (well, majority native), in real significant numbers I mean. Not to mention stronger presence of native languages, if they weren't already irrevocably endangered by that point. What a more interesting place it could have been, and all without sacrificing the identity that goes along with being a unified nation state.

See that's what I think is the great potential of a neutral language, it allows people to communicate like English does now, which is so important, but it won't homogenizes them like Anglo culture is doing thanks to peoples keenness to let it (Well, at least in places the U.S. calls allies, lookin' at you northern Europe.), and a stronger ability to do so thanks to mass media. It can't really since "Esperanto has no culture" which people somehow try to use as a detractor, while I think it's kind of the whole point, because the diversity of the human race is such a great source of it's beauty and shouldn't have to be compromised for globalization. (I'm sure this is all very platitudinous to most people here, I'm new to the whole concept, sorry.)