After Professor Samuel Huntington passed away on December 24, I held off commenting on his work during the first 30 days of mourning out of respect for the norms that govern such a period.  I believe we are now ready for a balanced review of his work.

The theme that runs throughout Huntington’s various works is best characterized as a theory of fear. His books typically identify a mounting threat, such as Mexican immigrants, Islamic civilization, or democratic proclivities, and then point to the need for strong national-unity building measures and mobilization of the people (including militarization) in response to the barbarians at the gates. Sometimes, the argument is formulated in basically analytical terms: If the required vigorous responses to the particular challenge at hand are not forthcoming, various calamities will ensue (e.g., the U.S. will lose a large part of its territory to Mexico and its Anglo-Protestant identity will be undermined) that will implicitly call for stronger countermeasures. In other cases, advocacy for powerful antidotes is quite explicit. As Huntington puts it in the Foreword to Who Are We?, he is writing as a patriot and a scholar, in that order.

Taken on its own, the threat-response thesis is unproblematic, a correlation the validity of which even people without social training can readily discern, and one that has often been repeated in the annals of social analysis. When the Nazis were about to overrun Britain, the country suspended habeas corpus. And few, even among the strongest supporters of Israel, would deny that while continuous threats from armed neighbors and terrorists and the responses to these threats have helped keep the segments of Israeli society together, they have also involved a measure of militarization and have imposed limits on civil rights.

The key issue then is to determine whether a nation truly faces particular threats or whether such concerns are largely drummed up, if not totally manufactured–say, in order to keep a nation under the control of one powerful elite or another and to make its citizens accept various governmental measures that they otherwise would not tolerate. These measures might include the curtailment of rights, economic belt-tightening, and discrimination against foreigners, among others. It is a familiar issue, seen for example in the debates over whether or not Saddam actually possessed nuclear weapons that could pose an imminent threat to the United States. Even more recently, it has been witnessed in the argument over whether or not Social Security is indeed in “crisis.” We must ask: If the various threats are real, what is their magnitude? And if the dangers are vastly exaggerated, what purposes are served by such a politics of fear?

In Who Are We?, Huntington argues that immigrants, especially those from Mexico, are undermining the “Anglo-Protestant creed” and destroying the shared identity that makes us Americans. These immigrants do so by refusing to assimilate, learn English, and become American citizens and by maintaining a segregated society centered on un-American values. According to Huntington, it is not entirely the Mexicans’ fault; it is also the doing of liberal policies. He writes:

Huntington argues that if this development is allowed to continue, it may lead to a profound breakup of the nation, or as he posits, “The possibility of a de facto split between a predominately Spanish-speaking America and English-speaking America …with…a major potential threat to the cultural and possibly political integrity of the United States” (ibid. p. 243). However, Huntington’s concerns go beyond the mere threat of a linguistically, culturally, and politically fractured American society. He ultimately fears that Mexicans might grab a large part of the United States: “No other immigrant group in American history has asserted or has been able to assert a historical claim to American territory. Mexicans and Mexican-Americans can and do make that claim” (ibid. p. 229). He later writes, “Mexican-Americans, in turn, argue that the Southwest was taken from them by military aggression in the 1840s, and that the time for la reconquista has arrived. Demographically, socially, and culturally that is well under way” (ibid.p. 246).

To avoid conflicts between Mexican immigrants the white population, Huntington implies, it is best to curb immigrations. Also, fostering unity and suppressing differences would be greatly helped by putting the nation on war-footing. According to Huntington, the collapse of the Soviet Union removed an external threat through opposition to which America derived a major source of identity: “The end of the Cold War deprived America of the evil empire against which it could define itself” (ibid. p. 11). Al Qaeda, he writes, provides a new threat, filling a void and offering hope for a reinvigorated American nation and Anglo-Protestant creed. Huntington emphasizes that a return to this creed is especially called for because Al Qaeda targeted the United States as a Christian nation.

A PROFOUND MISCONCEPTION

At the very core of Who Are We? lies Huntington’s basic misleading conception as to what makes America great. Throughout American history, and again recently, alarms have been sounded when immigrants did not seem to assimilate (or did not do so quickly enough) and appeared to maintain subcultural distinctions. As a result, various coercive measures have been advocated, both to stop immigration and to deal with those immigrants already in the country.

However, I join with those who see no compelling reasons, sociological or other, to assimilate immigrants into one indistinguishable American blend–to apply, as James Bryce put it, the great American solvent to remove all traces of previous color, stripping Americans of their various ethnic or racial hyphens. There is no need for Greek-Americans, Polish-Americans, Mexican-Americans, or any other group to see themselves as plain Americans without any particular distinction, history, or subculture. Similarly, Americans can maintain their separate religions, from Greek-Orthodox to Buddhism, and their distinct tastes in music, dance, and cuisine without constituting a threat to the American whole. Indeed, the American culture is richer for having had an introduction to jazz and classical music, the jig and polka, Cajun and soul food, and so on.

A melting pot is what Huntington has in mind. In contrast, the image of a mosaic, if properly understood, depicts the way in which American society actually functions in these matters, and very well indeed. A mosaic is enriched by a variety of elements of different shapes and colors, but it is held together by a single framework. The mosaic symbolizes a society in which various communities maintain their cultural particularities, proud and knowledgeable about their specific traditions, but they also recognize that they are integral parts of a more encompassing whole. As Americans, we are aware of our different origins but also united by a joint future and fate.

Huntington’s profound misunderstanding of, if not contempt for, the genius of American society is revealed in his treatment of language, often used throughout history and in many societies both as a major factor in assessing the integration of immigrants into a society and as a metaphor for their relationship to it. Huntington writes,

That is, Huntington holds that if Mexican-Americans learn English but maintain Spanish as their second language, it is an indication that they are refusing to become good Americans. But there is nothing un-American in maintaining a subculture and with it a command of the homeland language. (I note as an aside that regrettably many third-generation immigrants, Mexicans included, do not maintain such a command of their native tongue.)

Most important, the framework of the mosaic can be, and has been throughout American history, both reinforced and recast by immigrants. This cannot be stressed enough, as often reference is made only to the enrichment that the addition of pieces (or immigrants) brings to the American mosaic (or society) by providing greater diversity through the incorporation of a growing range of cuisine, music, and holidays. Certainly, the mosaic has been made more varied. But of equal importance are the changes made to the framework of the mosaic–to what unites us and makes us Americans. These days you can be a good American without being a Protestant or even a Christian. I am.

According to Huntington, American identity was defined for 200 years by Protestants–in opposition to Catholics. Slowly, over the generations that followed, Catholic immigrants acculturated and either joined Protestant churches or changed their faith to make it Protestant-like by developing community services, adopting lay trustees, and recasting the Church in an American, national way–a truly odd list. I fail to see what is Protestant about community services; lay trusteeism is a minor adaptation of the kind that the Catholic Church (like other religious establishments, Protestant included) made many over the centuries. But most notably, American Catholics chose not to break away from the global, hierarchical Church–a course that has defined Protestants. Instead, they merely increased the local autonomy of the American chapter. This is akin to increasing states’ rights, not to seceding from a federation.

Most important, American society’s core of shared values (call them a creed if you must) and the social institutions that embody them have changed over the generations and now accommodate different religions as well as secular bodies of belief. Indeed, differences on the key moral and spiritual issues of the day are often between fundamentalist and moderate Americans (found in all belief systems, Protestant included) rather than simply between the practitioners of different belief systems. It then follows that Huntington’s concern that Mexicans are not Protestantizing, is a problem not for America but only for his assimilationist approach.

IN PERSPECTIVE: A GLOBAL ISOMETRIC PATTERN?

Huntington’s particular slant stands out more clearly when his take on the threats that he claims Anglo-Protestant America is facing is viewed in the context of his previous works. Among these, the best known is his 1996 The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. It has become one of those books that educated people feel they ought to have read, and if they have not, pretend to know its content. Many people outside of the United States view the book as just one more significant piece of evidence as to how hostile the United States is to other belief systems and nations. (In 2002, I was a guest of the reformers in Iran at a meeting that they held at the new Center for the Dialogue of Civilization. And practically all of those who attended, from many different nations, railed against this work of Huntington’s).

There is, hence, no need here to rehash the book’s main thesis, but it is useful to revisit its main take on the world, which is surprisingly isometric to Huntington’s take on the domestic fate of American society–as if he applied the same pattern to both, only on two different scales. In The Clash of Civilizations, the role of the beleaguered and threatened party is played not by the United States but by the West, which is still powerful but, like other previously great civilizations, at its peak and unaware that it is about to be overtaken–unless it heeds Huntington’s warnings. The role of the threatening Mexican from Who Are We? is played by Islam in The Clash of Civilizations, and the roles played by other immigrants to the United States are reserved for other civilizations, especially that of the Chinese (”Sinic”). The same fifth column that bores from within the United States, helping the enemies of the state and the creed in Who Are We?, also exists in the West, this time as liberals in general and multiculturalists in particular.

Many scholars fell into the trap of treating The Clash of Civilizations as if it were a standard, scholarly text, questioning Huntington’s definition of civilization and arguing that there might be greater or fewer civilizations than the seven that he lists, and so on. Others held that 9/11 validated Huntington (and Bernard Lewis’) position. But, as I see it, the particular slant of the book is most evident in its dealing with Islam as if it were one body of belief. Actually, Islam is subject to fundamentalist and moderate interpretations. Thus, some Muslims see jihad as a call to holy war against all nonbelievers (including other Muslims who follow a more moderate line), while others interpret it as a spiritual journey. Seyyed Hossein Nasr describes this second interpretation, that of a softer Islam, as follows: “jihâd is therefore the inner battle to purify the soul of its imperfections, to empty the vessel of the soul of the pungent water of forgetfulness, negligence, and the tendency to evil and to prepare it for the reception of the Divine Elixir of Remembrance, Light, and Knowledge.” Generally, Wahhabi Islam calls for a strict interpretation of the texts, but Sufi Islam is much more moderate and accommodating to democratic and modern economic systems. Indeed, there are hundreds of millions of Muslims in Indonesia, Bangladesh, Malaysia, and Kyrgyzstan who are moderate and live peacefully together with people of other creeds. (Although the media has made much of some increase in militant Islam in these countries, most Muslims there continue to remain moderate).

It is not only empirically wrong but also psychologically troubling and strategically counterproductive to approach the world from an “us versus them” perspective and to hold that we bring light to the world through enlightenment, rationality, and democracy, while “they” are the force of darkness, the evil empire. A much more valid and healthier approach is to recognize that there are major moderate and fundamentalist camps in all civilizations and that the West should work with moderates everywhere and be on its guard against fundamentalists–everywhere. The West should also recognize that just as it brings to the world concerns of human rights and liberty, other civilizations also bring to the world valuable concerns that the West has increasingly neglected, for instance those of the common good and community.

The true dangers faced by those who buy into Huntington’s world are revealed when one examines both Who Are We? and The Clash of Civilizations in light of his first book, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations, in which he openly favors militaristic, authoritarian, and homogeneous regimes over democratic and pluralistic ones. Published in 1957, the book set off a furor in Harvard’s Department of Government, where Huntington was then a young and untenured professor.

At the time, only a few years had passed since the world had faced the threat of a Fascist regime, and many military-authoritarian regimes still dotted the map. Indeed, The Soldier and the State so infuriated Carl Friedrich, a leading political scientist at Harvard and a refugee of Nazi Europe, that he led a successful campaign to deny Huntington tenure, prompting him to leave Harvard (although he was invited back, a few years later).

The citation of but a few quotes from the last pages of this work in which Huntington compares the military academy of West Point to the nearby town of Highland Falls provides an ample idea of his vision of America. He finds that in the military academy:

Huntington goes on to conclude:

Few lines in Huntington’s work more effective summarize his viewpoint and provide the reader with a clearer insight into his way of thinking and a basis for evaluating his life’s project.

Amitai Etzioni is a University Professors at the George Washington University and author of The Monochrome Society. For more discussion go www.securityfirstbook.com.

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