In this light, works like that of Falch (1973) tell us nothing about why a particular polity exhibits particular policy conditions. It is as if the choice of language policies was totally random, from `off the shelf', as it were, without any relationship to the historical, social, cultural, educational, religious conditions extant in a particular area. There may indeed be such an appearance of randomness in certain polities--certainly there have been autocratic rulers and megalomaniacs who made single-minded decisions, but even so, we can demonstrate that such autocrats are usually the products of their own culture; they are deeply embedded in some sort of cultural tradition. This is not, of course, to attempt to excuse these behaviors, or offer some kind of ``cultural defense" but rather to try to get at the cultural conditions that spawn these beliefs, instead of simply dismissing them as misguided.