Author: Samuel P. Huntington
Publisher: Simon & Schuster (May, 2004)
ISBN: 0684870533 (available at amazon.com)
Central Question: How Will Americans Define Themselves?

• Erik Erikson, a leading scholar on identity – termed the concept of identity “all pervasive” but also “vague” and “unfathomable”.
• A nation emphasizes different components of its national identity throughout its history, and the relative salience of some components shift over time.

American Future: Four Prospects for American Identity

1. Ideological Commitment to the principles of the creed, which assumes that a nation can be based on only a political contract among individuals lacking any other commonality.
2. Bifurcated - America would lose its cultural and linguistic unity; some parts of the country would be Anglo/English, while others would be Hispanic/Spanish
3. Exclusivist - Native white Americans would revive discredited racial and ethnic concepts to exclude, expel or suppress other racial ethnic or cultural groups due to the perceived threat brought on by the rise of these other groups.
4. Cultural - Huntington’s Preference: reinvigorate core culture – recommitment to primarily Christian heritage, adhering to Anglo-Protestant values, speaking English, maintaining its European cultural heritage, and committed to the principles of the Creed.

Core Elements of American Identity

American Creed (liberty, equality, individualism, human rights, rule of law, and private property)

• Central ideas of the creed are essential dignity of the individual human being, of the fundamental equality of all men, and of certain inalienable rights to freedom, justice and a fair opportunity.
• Enlightenment ideas – long standing English ideas of natural and common law; limits of government authority; and the rights of Englishmen going back to Magna Carta;
• Puritan ideas of equality and responsiveness of government to the people.

Anglo-Protestant Culture

• Belief in individual responsibility, concept of the self-made man.
• Protestant work ethic – the right to labor and to enjoy the rewards of that labor.
• Principal source of status and legitimacy is work (not heredity, class, social status, ethnicity or family)

English Language

Other Points

• Nation of settlers – with core Anglo-Protestant values, institutions and culture – not a nation of immigrants.
• 1924 law prohibiting large scale immigration

America’s Civil Religion

United States is one of the most religious countries in the world - and whatever its formal sectarian designation is decidedly Protestant (argues American Catholics joined a Protestant society and became one sect among many.)

• America is a nation with the soul of a church - its civil religion is a non-denominational, national religion and, in its articulated form, not expressly a Christian religion.
• However, it is Christianity without Christ - it is profoundly Christian in its origins, symbolism, spirit, accoutrements, and most importantly its basic assumptions about the nature of man, history, right and wrong.

Fading Nationalism

1950 - Marked the high water mark of American national integration. The years since that time have seen an erosion of national identity due to cultural and political fragmentation. · Identifies four principal manifestations of this slow destruction of nationalism:

1. the popularity of the doctrines of multiculturalism and diversity among some elite elements
2. special interests that elevated racial, ethnic, gender, and other subnational identities over national identity
3. the weakness or absence of the factors that previously promoted assimilation, combined with the increased tendency immigrants to maintain dual identities, loyalties, and citizenships
4. the dominance among immigrants of speakers, largely Mexican, of a single non-English language with the resulting tendencies toward Hispanization and the transformation of America into a bilingual, bicultural society
5. the denationalization of important segments of America’s elites, with a growing gap between their cosmopolitan and transnational commitments and the still highly nationalistic and patriotic values of the American public.

Challenge To The Core Culture
Prior to the 1960’s Americans were one nation of individuals with equal rights, who shared a primarily Anglo-Protestant core culture, and were dedicated to the liberal-democratic principles of the American creed. Deconstructionists and Multiculturalist movements began to challenge this concept of America. America was “not a national community of individuals sharing a common culture history and creed, but a conglomerate of different races, ethnicities and subnational cultures in which individuals were defined by their group membership, not common nationality.”

Multiculturalism (defined in this book is an “anti-Western ideology that desires an anti-European civilization”) is a movement to replace America’s mainstream Anglo-Protestant culture with other cultures linked primarily to racial groups. Mutliculturalists argue that melting pot or tomato soup metaphors do not describe true America – it is instead a “tossed salad” America is therefore losing its national history due to “deconstructionist challenges” which have brought to prominence by histories of subnational racial and cultural groups, “If a nation is remembered as well as an imagined community, people who are losing their memory are becoming something less than a nation”

(Question: What is an alternative between deconstruction and the national myth? Redefine the “myth” of what America is as was done in 1865, again in the 1930s and now with the end of the cold war?)

Citizenship
After 1965 many factors previously important to immigrants – desire to be American, willingness to assume cost, risk and uncertainty, willingness to fight and die in wars etc. – are absent. “Assimilation is likely to be slower, less complete, and different from the assimilation of earlier immigrants.” Intellectual and academic thinking about citizenship would not impose an expectation of loyalty, patriotism, and identity on immigrants. They “deny meaning to American citizenship and also to cultural and political community that has been America.” Assimilation no longer means Americanization (assimilation into American culture and society)

1. Assimilation into subnational segments of American society
2. Non-assimilation – “in-but-not-of” – rather than be Cuban-Americans or Mexican-Americans, immigrants build large regionally concentrated communities in South Florida or in the Southwest.
3. Ampersand Alternative – “maintain dual allegiance, dual nationality and dual citizenship by utilizing on modern communications and transportation.” “Transnational cultural communities that cut across the boundaries between countries.”

Mexican (and Hispanic) Immigration and Assimilation
High levels of Mexican and Hispanic immigrants into American society, particularly in Florida, Southern California, and other parts of the southwest. Mexican immigrants in particular are responsible for many ongoing debates - illegal entries, English as official language, controversies over welfare and other benefits for immigrants, economic burden on Federal and State governments, average education skills of immigrants. If somehow Mexican immigration abruptly stopped many of these issues would go away.

• Mexican’s have very low rates of assimilation into American society and culture. “America is becoming a society of two languages, two cultures and two peoples.” The central Hispanic traits of mistrust of people outside of the family; lack of initiative, self-reliance, and ambition; low priority for education; and acceptance of poverty as a virtue necessary for entrance into heaven – are at odds with Anglo-Protestant values central to American culture.

Diasporas, Foreign Governments and American Politics
“America is increasingly an arena in which homeland government and their diasporas attempt to shape American policy to serve Homeland interests”

• Foreign governments promote and encourage diasporas so emigrants will return money and resources to families and communities.

Comment: Interesting points throughout the book. However, the overall tone and tact of the book – the manner in which the arguments are portrayed without any room for compromise - is one always seeking opposition. This is clearly written from the perspective, not of an objective academic, but a campaigner defining two stark positions. It reflects an America which stands by its prejudices - with no doubt or need to challenge, build upon or  further develop these positions.