[Dialogue] The crusade for monoculture book review from Asia Times

[Ed Reames]

Interesting book especially the comments on Bush's election in 2000.

Ed Reames
La Rivera de Belén Costa Rica


BOOK REVIEW
The crusade for monoculture
Who Are We? America's Great Debate by Samuel Huntington

Reviewed by Chanakya Sen

The prophet-provocateur of international relations, Samuel P 
Huntington, is back to rattle some bones with a combative teaser on 
American identity. In the tone-setting foreword, he states that his new 
book, Who Are We? America's Great Debate, is "shaped by my own 
patriotic desire to find meaning and virtue in America's past and 
future". Americans are exhorted by the "clash of civilizations" guru to 
recommit themselves to Anglo-Protestant culture, the source of their 
identity and moral leadership of the world.

Prior to September 11, 2001, the salience of the American national 
identity was eroded. The proportion of immigrants with "other national 
loyalties" and dual citizenships had risen to record levels (7.5 
million). Intense programs of "Americanization" to assimilate 
immigrants into mainstream US culture had stopped since 1965. Various 
sub-national racial, ethnic and gender identities cropped up. 
Denationalized elites, intellectuals and business persons pursued 
multicultural diversity theories. The "global speak" of these 
"cosmocrats" was influencing US government policies.

Post-1991 Americans were shaky about the substance of their national 
identity, being "not what we were and uncertain who we were becoming" 
(p 11). They joined several other societies facing identity crises as 
globalization mixed and huddled various races and cultures. The absence 
of an external "other" after the collapse of the Soviet Union 
undermined American unity and bred splits. Rhetorically, Huntington 
asks, "Does it take an Osama bin Laden to make us realize that we are 
Americans?" (p 8).

Settler nation
Huntington bewails the half-truth that the United States is a "nation 
of immigrants". Americans' ancestors were not immigrants but 
Anglo-Protestant settlers who came to the New World in the 17th and 
18th centuries to create a new society. "Immigrants came later (1830s) 
to become part of the society the settlers had created" (p 40). The 
Anglo-Protestant settler culture and its political and economic 
freedoms attracted immigrants to America. Settlement was central not 
only to the nation's formation but also to its internal westward 
expansion, the "peopling of the frontier".

Liberal beliefs that American identity is defined entirely by political 
principles of liberty, equality and individual rights is another 
partial truth for Huntington. Settler Americans enslaved and massacred 
native peoples, segregated blacks, excluded Asians, discriminated 
against Catholics and obstructed immigration from outside northwestern 
Europe. From King Philip's War (1675) onward, white Americans 
ethnically cleansed "savage", "backward" and "uncivilized" natives. 
Until 1965, blacks were denied basic liberties and insulted as an 
inferior class of beings. Up to 1952, Asian immigrants were shunned as 
"a menace to our civilization".

Core culture
The core components of Huntington's American identity are 
Anglo-Protestant practices inherited from fragments of English society 
whence the settlers came. The English language, Tudor governance and 
Protestantism were the bedrocks from which emerged the "American Creed" 
(Gunnar Myrdal). "America was created as a Protestant society just as 
Pakistan and Israel were created as Muslim and Jewish societies" (p 
63). Evangelicals and Puritans carved the American national value 
system - extreme individualism, glorification of work and self-made 
men. The moralistic dualism of US foreign policy is derived from the 
same Anglo-Protestant culture that sets right apart from wrong and 
appropriate from inappropriate.

The United States, a predominantly Christian nation, was always the 
most religious country in the Western Hemisphere. Throughout American 
history, the proportion of church members has increased. Sixty-eight 
percent of respondents in a 1992 opinion poll felt that belief in God 
was "extremely important for a true American". So-called 
"de-Christianization" of the country was and is a myth. The US Catholic 
Church was "de-Romanized" in the late 19th century and adapted to the 
Protestant environment. American "civil religion", centering on special 
destiny and a mission to save the world, originates from the Protestant 
ethic.

Zigzag path
Revolutionary warfare in the late 18th century stimulated an American 
identity distinct from British colonial identity. The long spell of 
peace that followed uncovered sub-national, sectional, state and 
partisan identities. "English-speaking America could have become 
divided as Spanish-speaking America did" (p 114). However, the 
unqualified patriotism of the Civil War reified an identifiable 
American nationhood. Mushrooming of a national economy and national 
voluntary associations solidified the identity.

The 1898 Spanish-American War spawned mass jingoism and patriotic 
indoctrination of previously unseen dimensions. The cult of the Stars 
and Stripes, "equivalent of the cross for Christians", was a 
development of that era. Americans deplored cultural pluralism as 
fissiparous during World War I. Major social movements to Americanize 
immigrants and infuse them with nationalism flourished in the inter-war 
years.

National identity climbed to its zenith during World War II and stayed 
there until the 1960s. Huntington lays the blame for bringing the flags 
down after that on "tossed salad" deconstructionists who hoisted 
affirmative action. Government institutions, newspapers and businesses 
supported the "replacement of individual rights by group rights" 
through racial preferences, even though the majority of Americans 
opposed quotas for admissions and jobs. Federal administrators, judges 
and intelligentsia promoted minority languages and downgraded English 
against the will of the majority of Americans (pro-English forces won 
11 popular referendums between 1980 and 2002).

Multiculturalism, which Huntington vilifies, was anti-European in 
essence and "challenged the Anglo-conformist image of America" (p 173). 
It removed patriotism from the educational curriculum and marginalized 
national history. American youth lost memory and "became something less 
than a nation" (p 176).

For Huntington, the greatest threat to American "societal security" 
(identity, culture and customs) came from waves of Hispanic 
immigration. Sixty-nine percent of illegal immigration to the United 
States is of Mexican origin. Latin American immigrants were reluctant 
to approximate US norms, especially Mexicans, who remained highly 
concentrated. Separatist Mexicans engendered the "most serious cleavage 
in American society" by converting the country's southwest into a 
"MexAmerica" that has the potential of going the Quebec way.

Ampersand efforts for not getting Americanized were supported by 
liberals who claimed that ethnocentrism was dangerous. A "reactive 
ethnic consciousness" resulted, especially among Mexican immigrants, 
whose identification with American values was zilch. They grew 
"increasingly contemptuous of American culture", living "in America but 
not of it" (p 256).

Non-assimilatory immigrants detrimentally affected the meaning and 
practice of US citizenship. Naturalization was trivialized into an 
exercise of claiming government economic benefits. Lacking any 
requirement of loyalty and nationalism, US citizenship was rendered 
unexceptional.

Hispanization, in Huntington's assessment, can threaten the political 
integrity of the US, what with the Mexican Embassy issuing consular 
cards to illegal immigrants. "The Mexican government, in effect, 
determines who is an American" (p 282). Congressional contests in the 
US are fought between opposing diaspora lobbies. Cuban dominance of 
Miami has transformed the city into an "out-of-control banana republic" 
with an "independent foreign policy" (p 251).

'Thank God for America'
Nationalism is today alive and well with huge majorities of Americans, 
giving hope to Huntington. Americans rank first in extent of national 
pride in every world values survey. The number of unhyphenated white 
Americans is on the rise. More Americans identify themselves as pure 
"American" instead of relating to their ethnic background. Younger 
blacks prefer the title "African-American", an affirmation of their 
multi-racial heritage. White American nativism and racism do pose 
specters of renewed intolerance and division.

Elite multiculturalism and mass American craving for national identity 
stand at loggerheads. The public feel that the federal government's 
efforts to curtail illegal migration have been "very unsuccessful", 
although they identify it as "a very important goal" (p 331). 
Governmental policy is deviating more and more from the wishes of the 
plurality of Americans.

Huntington concludes that political creeds cannot alone sustain a 
nation. They cannot match the deep emotional content and meaning 
provided by religion and culture. The dramatic resurgence of 
conservative Christianity in the US responds to the psychological and 
moral needs of Americans. Perceived decline in morality and family 
values played a big factor in George W Bush's election in 2000. The 
September 11 attacks "pinpointed America's identity as a Christian 
nation" (p 358). What the US must do is rediscover its Anglo-Protestant 
roots in this "age of religion".

Huntington's populist crusade for monoculture misrepresents categories 
such as "elites" and "race", broad-brushes institutionalized 
discrimination and structural violence in US society, and fails to link 
the images of evangelical Brother Jonathan and imperial Uncle Sam. To 
those hoping for a milder, mellower and more tolerant United States, 
reinvigoration of US nationalism pours fuel over the inferno.

Who Are We? America's Great Debate by Samuel Huntington. Penguin Books 
India, September 2004, New Delhi. ISBN: 0-14-303241-0. Price: US$7.50; 
428 pages.

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