America?s identity crisis

Samuel Huntington has written another controversial book, just been published in India.

Who Are We?
America’s Great Debate
Samuel P Huntington
Penguin
Rs 350

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Samuel Huntington, author of the famous — and to many, infamous — The Clash of Civilizations, recently produced another controversial book which has just been published in India. In many ways a companion piece to The Clash of Civilizations, Huntington's new book, Who Are We?, looks at the other side of the story: what is happening inside America, and to what extent it enables or disables the U.S. in dealing with the threats that the 9/11 attacks represent.

The Clash of Civilizations analysed the U.S.' new external challenges following the end of the Soviet Union, and predicted that the post Cold War world would be characterised by conflicts born from the discord between Islamic and non-Islamic, especially Christian, cultures. Who Are We? is Huntington's look inwards, and in it he suggests that the U.S. is undergoing a national identity crisis, one which again hinges on religious values. How the U.S. deals with this crisis, he adds, depends on whether Americans will choose between a universalist — and therefore weakly national — ethos, a radical Christian identity which is espoused by a minority, or the "Anglo-Protestant culture" which is, says Huntington, the root of the American nation.

Of these three choices facing Americans, Huntington discards radical Christian identity as unrealistic, because it will always be supported by no more than a minority, though it might appear to have gained ground in the short-term. While radical Christian coalitions achieved temporary salience from the 1980s on, he shows, their influence peaked with the 2000 election, when groups like the Moral Majority found that they could elect an administration but couldn’t change policies on key issues. Nevertheless, radical Christian coalitions moved the goalposts, bringing religious identity to the center of the political battle over American identity, and the 9/11 attacks furthered this trend by filling the vacuum that the end of the Cold War created with a new enemy — Islamic fundamentalism.

How the U.S. deals with its new enemy, Huntington argues, depends on the national identity Americans opt for. America's great debate is whether the U.S. is, or should be, a multicultural society united by a common political contract, or whether it is an assimilating society which requires new entrants to subscribe to a common national culture, as defined by its founding fathers. The distinction is vital, says Huntington, because societies that are united largely by a political contract rarely survive their identity crises, whereas societies with common cultural values do.

This is a familiar argument, and it has raged through the twentieth century, occupying the middle ground between the "blood and belonging" strain of nationalists and the universalists who hold that common values transcend cultural or national differences. Huntington is for neither — race, ethnicity and land are not key elements of American national identity, he says, and universalism is no substitute because national identity is formed through distinguishing one nation from another.

According to Huntington, the U.S.' common culture, and its distinctive national identity, was Anglo-Protestant, and combined the values of hard work, rule of law, religious dissent and evangelism. These values allowed the U.S. to emerge as a superpower.

Anglo-Protestant culture unified American national identity until the 1960s, after which its dominance was challenged by deconstructionists — in whose ranks Huntington includes former President Bill Clinton and the philosopher Michael Walzer — that encouraged the rise of sub-national identities and diaspora loyalties. In so doing they eroded the qualities that made the U.S. exceptional, weakened U.S. institutions and American self-perception, and reduced the U.S.' effectiveness globally.

Huntington is always provocative, and his new book has already drawn criticism in the U.S. The challenge to Anglo-Protestant culture that he suggests the U.S. is undergoing is, I think, over-stated — the values that he identifies as critical to American identity are clearly flourishing, and U.S. assimilation appears to be as successful today as it was in the early part of the twentieth century. Nor does the domestic threat that he zeros in on appear to be as important as he suggests.   

Nevertheless, we ignore Huntington at our peril. The clash of civilizations that he lamentably predicted gained salience after 9/11, and especially after the war on Iraq. It may be that the U.S. will revert to religious values as the most important element of American national identity, but I don't see Protestantism coming back as the unifying factor. If the U.S. is to choose the melting pot over the Macedoine salad — i.e., integration over multiculturalism — it will have to be through secularising the values of hard work and individual independence, while allowing all religions the opportunity to flourish.

—Radha Kumar is Visiting Professor at Jamia Millia University.