Professor Sam Huntington of Harvard has died at 81 on Martha's Vineyard.
He was a brilliant observer of developing trends and was the first to identify the 21st Century's great challenge: the spread of Islam. He coined the phrase "the bloody borders of Islam." Wherever he looked, where Muslim lands butted up against other lands, there was violence and conflict. Now, with the enormous flood of Muslim immigrants into Europe, the bloody borders are around Muslim self-ghettoized enclaves. His original essay on "The Clash of Civilizations?" appeared in the magazine Foreign Affairs in 1993 and was expanded to book-length in 1996. HIs basic point was that conflicts of the future would be principally along cultural and religious lines, with Islam looming as the principal cause of such conflict.
In 2004 Huntington addressed an urgent developing problem for Americans in "Who Are We?" The historical strength of American, he maintained, was indeed the flow of immigrants from all over the world who adopted the American Creed -- belief in liberty, democracy and individual rights --- but a critical component too many overlooked was their immersion into American culture: becoming a citizen, a loyal American and absorbing the Anglo-Protestant culture of the Founders. According to John Fonte, "This culture includes the English language; British traditions of law, rights, and limited government; the values of dissenting Protestantism (especially its moralism and anti-hierarchical spirit, which made it different from European Protestantism); the work ethic, economic opportunity, individualism, and Christianity."
What concerned Huntington, and why he wrote the book, was "since the 1960s, powerful forces among American elites have launched a sustained effort — one that is, “quite possibly, without precedent in human history” — to “deconstruct” American national identity." These forces emphasized the origins and cultures of the immigrants, not their assimilation of American values, and also embraced the transnational -- being citizens of the world -- and denigrated loyalty to and affection for the American nation, in short, patriotism, the belief that America is an exceptional nation. (This "deconstructionist elitest" attitude is remarkably shown by President-Elect Obama -- no flag lapel pin, no saluting the flag or covering his heart during the playing of the national anthem and his "citizen of the world" speech in Berlin, to say nothing about his taking in stride Rev. Jeremiah Wright's cries of "God Damn America.")
The deconstruction efforts of what Huntington terms the "denationalized elites" to turn America into something ordinary crops up in such things as ethnic, racial and group preferences, multiculturalism, bilingualism and opposition to English as the common language. These strike at a core principle of the American Creed: the concept of equal rights for individuals regardless of race. Huntington found disturbing trends of non-assimilation among Muslim and Mexican immigrants that showed that the efforts of mulitculturalist transnational elites to deconstruct American identity were having an effect.
Any renewed effort to regularize the immigration situation, particularly with regard to the 10-12 million illegals already in this country, must include an emphasis on Americanization. Polls show an overwhelming majority of Americans want new immigrants to become patriotic Americans just like them. Deconstructionist elites like Alan Wolfe of Boston College, who fervently support transnational world citizenry and multiculturalism rather than Americanism, should be beaten back. Although a lifelong Democrat, Huntington was loathed by the elite multiculturalists who inhabit academica today for his views on Islam and what it is to be an American.
Huntington's perceptiveness on Islam and American identity provides a lesson for today.
Multiculturism, as promoted by Professor Wolfe and his fellow transnationals is weakening the American fabric and allowing alien cultures, such as Islam, to grow in America, when all Muslim immigrants, like all immigrans before them, should aspire to be Americans first. Islamic supremacism, the goal being world rule, can be advanced by violence or separatism and gradual infiltration. Multiculturalism allows Islam to advance. During the major immigration periods of the past, Americanization programs for immigrants were common. Whatever academics like Alan Wolfe might say, such programs should be a part of any immigration or amnesty law. The nation needs immigrants who are proud to be Americans.
May Sam Huntington, patriot, rest in peace.
