12/02/2019
Robert Weissberg, who was "cancelled" by Rich Lowry for having given a mild and irenic speech at an American Renaissance conference, reviewed Samuel Huntingtonâs Who Are We? â our Cyber Monday Deal â in 2004:
The Perils of Keeping America America
National Identity: Ethnic Balkanization or the âMelting Potâ?
Human Events, August 25, 2004
Samuel Huntingtonâs Who Are We? The Challenge to Americaâs National Identity barely hit the bookstores when it began to generate immense, often vitriolic, attention. In academic-speak, it is a âcontroversialâ bookâthat is, it tells unembellished truths on countless taboo topics guaranteed to offend sensitive souls.
Who Are We? stridently defends an Anglo-Protestant, English-speaking, law-abiding, god-fearing, moralistic work-oriented culture in which a limited government deeply respects individual rights. It similarly stands up for what Huntington labels âThe Creedââthe principles of liberty, equality, individualism, representative government, and private property. Both are, in his view, integral to our collective identity and together are, alas, under assault by a bevy of burgeoning forces ranging from multinational corporative executives bemoaning national borders as commercial nuisances to media moguls who genuinely despise WASP cultureânot to mention academics preaching a cultural relativism that rejects patriotism as âdangerous.â
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First, envisioning America as âa nation of immigrantsâ in which our culture comprises little more than a shifting average of those fresh off the boat is a grievous error. Settlersâthe Pilgrimsâwho brought their distinctive WASP culture created America, and while each immigrant wave added distinctive touches (the German kindergarten, for example), these fresh arrivals largely absorbed this pre-existing foundational culture and creed. To assert that current immigrants enjoy an uncontested right to alter our self-definition is utterly wrong, even if they ultimately form a numerical majority. To repeat, the settler and immigrant distinction is criticalâvalues are not all equal as societal building blocks.
Second, Huntington further argues that America is inescapably a religious Christian nation, and this is believed gospel, not perfunctory church attendance. Protestant (now vaguely called âChristianâ) values reside in our national DNA, and these beliefs count save among certain elites construing a belief in Jesus as a dumb naĂŻvetĂ©. Todayâs secularist attack has nothing to do with restoring some make-believe âhigh wallâ separating government and church; it has everything to do with subverting national character. [More]