Creedal Passions

GETTING ME WRONG

Samuel P. Huntington

In evaluating a novel, a poem, or a scholarly study, it can be useful and insightful to consider that work in the context of the author's other writings, if those exist. For social science, the relevant questions concern how the recent work embodies continuities or changes from previous works in terms of subject, style, methods of analysis, normative assumptions, arguments, and conclusions. Elaboration of these similarities and differences can greatly help a reader gain an understanding of the meaning and the significance of the volume under review.

Alan Wolfe is thus to be commended for his effort ("Native Son," May/June 2004) to relate my new book, Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity, to several of my previous studies. He is also, however, to be faulted for getting wrong the nature of my previous books and for misrepresenting the argument of Who Are We? I do not normally respond to critical reviews of my books, but his errors are such that I feel I must correct them.

Since whatever knowledge Foreign Affairs readers have of Who Are We? is likely to reside in their fading memories of Wolfe's erroneous description, I will first spell out what the book is not and what it is.

First, it is not a book primarily about immigration, which gets one chapter out of twelve, or the growing Hispanic presence in the United States, which gets another chapter. It is a book about the salience and substance of American national identity. Salience refers to the importance Americans attach to their national identity compared to the many other identities they have. The salience of national identity has varied over time, in large part reflecting the threats that Americans see to their country. Before the Civil War, national identity ranked low compared to local, state, and regional identities. The Civil War made America a nation, and the following century was the century of American nationalism. In the 1960s, however, subnational ethnic, racial, gender, and cultural identities rose in importance compared to national identity. The attacks of September 11, 2001, dramatically brought national identity back to the fore. As the profusion of flags demonstrated, Americans quickly rediscovered their nation. Since then, however, that salience has eroded; its future will depend in part on whether Americans experience or perceive major threats to their country.

Second, substance refers to what Americans believe they have in common and what distinguishes them from other peoples. My book argues that Americans have historically defined themselves in terms of race, ethnicity, culture, and ideology (what Gunnar Myrdal called the "American Creed"). Race and ethnicity have now been largely eliminated. Culture and creed remain but are under challenge. Central to American identity from the beginning has been the Anglo-Protestant culture of the founding settlers. Would America be the America it has been (and, in some measure, still is today) if it had been settled in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries not by British Protestants but by French, Spanish, or Portuguese Catholics? The answer is no. It would not be America; it would be Quebec, Mexico, or Brazil. Among the key elements of this Anglo-Protestant founding culture are "the English language; Christianity; religious commitment; English concepts of the rule of law, the responsibility of rulers, and the rights of individuals; and dissenting Protestant values of individualism, the work ethic, and the belief that humans have the ability and the duty to try to create a heaven on earth, a 'city on a hill.'" That culture has evolved and been amended by the contributions of subsequent immigrants and generations, but its essentials remain. This culture is also the primary source of the political principles of the American creed, which Jefferson set forth in the Declaration of Independence and which have been articulated by American leaders from the Founders and Abraham Lincoln to John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Wolfe begins his review with some favorable comments on The Soldier and the State, American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony, and The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. He argues that Who Are We? differs fundamentally from these previous works in at least three respects.

First, the earlier works reflected "a steadfast commitment to realism" and "distaste for sentimentality." These, however, are "gone" from Who Are We?, which is "riddled with . . . moralistic passion-at times bordering on hysteria." Wolfe does not quote examples of this passion or hysteria, and on the realism-moralism dimension Who Are We? is right in line with my previous work. All these books have their origins in my moral concern with major political and social problems, which often have been neglected. I then try to analyze them in strictly realist fashion. Wolfe says that in Who Are We? I "eschew" a "realistic treatment of American history in favor of romantic nostalgia for Anglo-Protestant culture." In fact, I argue that for three centuries race was central to American identity: Americans were white; blacks were enslaved and then discriminated against and segregated; Asians were excluded; the Indians were massacred and set apart on reservations. In addition, for two and a half centuries, Americans defined themselves ethnically, first as British and then as northern European. Only in the mid-twentieth century did Americans begin to think of themselves as a multiracial, multiethnic society. This is, I submit, a not very pleasing but highly realistic portrayal of American identity, free of moralism or hysteria.