Huntington’s Warning

NRO ^ | April 28, 2004 | Rich Lowry

[neverdem]

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April 28, 2004, 8:50 a.m.

Huntington's Warning
Who are we?

By Rich Lowry

“When E. F. Hutton talks," the famous TV ads for the financial firm once declared, "people listen." No one is going to make TV ads on his behalf, but the same deserves to be said of Harvard scholar Samuel Huntington, the most important political scientist in America. His last book, The Clash of Civilizations, forecast the civilizational tensions that became obvious to everyone in the post-9/11 world. When Huntington writes, people listen — or they should.

Huntington's prodigious credibility makes his warning of the possible end of the United States as we know it in his new book all the more alarming.

He writes that "few Americans now anticipate the dissolution of...the United States." But few anticipated the collapse of the Soviet Union either. Huntington warns, "The greatest surprise might be if the United States in 2025 is still the country it was in 2000 rather than a very different country (or countries) with very different conceptions of itself and its identity."

Huntington sees an America gripped in a "crisis of national identity." What is that identity? It is partly based on what Huntington calls The Creed, our belief in liberty, democracy, individual rights, etc. But The Creed has a particular source: America's Anglo-Protestant culture, which includes "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 heaven on earth, a 'city on the hill.'"

This culture forged a country where people from across the world could arrive and become rich, happy and free — if they assimilated. Huntington writes, "Throughout American history, people who were not white Anglo-Saxon Protestants have become Americans by adopting America's Anglo-Protestant culture and political values." He notes that this is "an argument for the importance of Anglo-Protestant culture, not for the importance of Anglo-Protestant people." The continued vibrancy of this culture is crucial for the country's future. Without it, according to Huntington, The Creed that sprung from it is in danger of collapsing — thus eliminating the two fundamental supports of America as it has been defined for centuries.

But Anglo-Protestant culture has taken a pounding during the past three decades. From multiculturalism, which rejects the idea of a dominant culture. From the assertion of group identities based on race, ethnicity and gender. And from "denationalized" elites, hostile to America's culture and determined to weaken it in myriad ways. "These efforts by a nation's leaders," Huntington writes, "to deconstruct the nation they governed were, quite possibly, without precedent in human history." All these forces have weakened the nation's ability to assimilate immigrants, just as it is experiencing a massive, decades-long wave of immigration. Feeling less pressure to learn English or naturalize, the new, largely Mexican and Hispanic immigrants have been able to establish unassimilated ethnic enclaves.

Huntington worries that this dynamic could create "a country of two languages, two cultures, and two peoples," as America's distinctive culture and The Creed atrophy. Huntington hopes for a better future — for the sake of all of us. "Americans should," he writes, "recommit themselves to the Anglo-Protestant culture, traditions, and values that for three and a half centuries have been embraced by Americans of all races, ethnicities, and religions and that have been the source of their liberty, unity, power, prosperity, and moral leadership as a force for good in the world."

A world of grief awaits Huntington. He will inevitably be misunderstood and smeared. On the contrary, only a writer of Huntington's stature has a chance to punch through the oppressive pieties surrounding these issues and force a forthright debate of them. Huntington says he undertook his new book in the spirit of "a patriot and scholar." A courageous one.

— Rich Lowry is author of Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years.

(c)2003 King Features Syndicate

 

	http://www.nationalreview.com/lowry/lowry200404280850.asp

[Preachin']

One true strength that we have in the USA is that we are formed by separate states. In the event that a major catastrophe were to occur, each state will still have it's own governor and will be able to work with one another to reunite.

[Doctor Stochastic]

..."few Americans now anticipate the dissolution of...the United States."

True.

But few anticipated the collapse of the Soviet Union either.

Not true. Few in the media failed to see what was happening, but most Soviet observers (not in the media) did. The Soviet Union was broke. No economic basis left. Even during the Depression, the US still had an enormous enconomic output.

[Gefreiter]

Huntington's influence on academia and public discourse is overestimated here.

[SMARTY]

I remember reading - "Capitalism is the shell secreted by the religious organism. What creature will crawl into the shell and make a home when the religious organism dies?"

[baltodog]

I was in ICBM silos in the early 80's.

We were making bets back then about the dissolution the USSR.

[Alberta's Child]

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn made similar comments as far back as the early 1970s when he was forced into exile from the Soviet Union. I'll paraphrase his assessment of his situation:

"I'll regret that I'm not able to live in the beloved land where I was born and raised, and I'll regret that I won't be able to see my family live in that land. But losing my Soviet citizenship is utterly meaningless . . . this 'nation' didn't even exist 60 years ago, and probably won't exist 25 years from now."

[nathanbedford]

A world of grief awaits Huntington. He will inevitably be misunderstood and smeared.


The dismal prophesy is only too true. Even on these threads one will be accused of racism if he wants to shut down immigration. The only position more likely to generate oblique is a questioning of the benefit to America of its devotion to Israel.

[Dems_R_Losers]

But Huntington is not advocating an end to immigration. He is advoacting an end to multiculturalism, bilingual education, and similar attacks on American CULTURE. Immigration alone presents no threat to America. Immigration without assimilation does. I think he is probably overstating the threat, but in today's world you have to be an alarmist to get anyone to pay attention at all.

[SMARTY]

Ortega y Gasset said about Communism: "Communism, now there is a piece of moral extravagance ... the concession we made to the Slavic sense of morality."

Everyone knew it was temporary. To bad. It put Russia and the Russians politically/economically/technologically, etc. about 70 years behind the 8 ball.

[swarthyguy]

Wonder if any country in history has allowed such a bifurcation of its national language to the extent has happened in the past few decades.

Previous waves of migration never challenged the dominance of the English language.

America now is a defacto bilingual society across huge swathes of the country with all the repercussions that may imply.

[happygrl]

Huntington's prodigious credibility makes his warning of the possible end of the United States as we know it in his new book all the more alarming.

He writes that "few Americans now anticipate the dissolution of...the United States." But few anticipated the collapse of the Soviet Union either. Huntington warns, "The greatest surprise might be if the United States in 2025 is still the country it was in 2000 rather than a very different country (or countries) with very different conceptions of itself and its identity."

Ping your CWII list.

[archy]

Ping your CWII list.

You bet. Good find.

[TLI]

buy more guns / store more ammo.

[Cannoneer No. 4]

The Jacksonian Tradition by Walter Russell Mead

Most Freepers are culturally Jacksonians.

Jacksonian populism can be originally identified with a subgroup among these settlers, the so-called "Scots-Irish", who settled the back country regions of the Carolinas and Virginia, and who went on to settle much of the Old West—West Virginia, Kentucky, parts of Indiana and Illinois—and the southern and south central states of Tennessee, Missouri, Alabama, Mississippi and Texas.

The Scots-Irish were a hardy and warlike people, with a culture and outlook formed by centuries of bitter warfare before they came to the United States. Fischer shows how, trapped on the frontiers between England and Scotland, or planted as Protestant colonies in the hostile soil of Ireland, this culture was shaped through centuries of constant, bloody war. The Revolutionary struggle and generations of savage frontier conflict in the United States reproduced these conditions in the New World; the Civil War—fought with particular ferocity in the border states—renewed the cultural heritage of war.

Honor

Self-reliance

Equality

Individualism

Courage

[archy]

Honor

Self-reliance

Equality

Individualism

Courage

Courage
Truth
Honor
Loyalty
Hospitality
Discipline
Industriousness
Self-reliance
Perseverance

[cgk]

Thanks for the ping... Pinging WPtG as well.

[Nebr FAL owner]

Whats the books title ? Who is the publisher? When will it be in bookstores?

[Travis McGee]

I'm now back to speed writing the sequel to Enemies Foreign and Domestic, which will be called "Domestic Enemies." It's all about what Huntington is discussing in this piece.

Domestic Enemies takes place five years after the end of "Enemies Foreign and Domestic," or notionally about 2014. The action happens between Oklahoma and Southern California, but much of it occurs in New Mexico. The state government of New Mexico has been taken over by nominally Democrat Party Hispanic radicals of the MeCha and La Raza variety, in wildly rigged “touch screen” elections. The NM electoral vote helps to put the ‘rat President over the top, so as you can imagine, no election fraud investigation is forthcoming.

One of the new radical state government’s top agenda items is “land reform.” Large Anglo-owned properties will be confiscated on the pretext that their original deeds and titles are invalid, under the Treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo, dating from the 1840s. In order to enforce the “land reform” the governor creates a new force, the “Milicia de Nuevo Mexico,” and arms them with surplus M-16A1 rifles from the state guard armories. (The actual NM National Guard is all deployed to the war in East Slambamistan.) The stage is set for a bloody showdown between Anglo ranchers who refuse to leave their ancestral lands, and the Milicia de Nuevo Mexico.

The state government passes “Solo Espanol” laws, in reaction after some other US states pass English-only laws. Police and other government employees who cannot pass difficult oral and written Spanish proficiency tests are fired. Milicia-manned checkpoints are pervasive, searching the cars of Anglos for illegal firearms. The checkpoints are a form of ethnic harassment, part of the new government’s unspoken plan for the ethnic cleansing of “Nuevo Mexico.” (The Indian tribes were bought off as part of the rigged state elections.)

"Voluntarios" from Mexico and Central and South America (as well as left-wing radical gringos of the DU type) are coming to NM for land and a chance to poke a sharp stick in Uncle Sam’s eye. Sort of a Barcelona 1935 atmosphere. Reds, "blacks" (anarchists) and lunatics of all stripes.

Volunteers of the Jim Bowie/Davy Crockett stripe are also heading to Nuevo Mexico to support the threatened Anglo ranchers; some of these "right wing militia" patriot types will be incorporated into the plot. But I'm not going to make it totally black and white, i.e., "Anglos good, Hispanics bad." I'm going to strive to include many of motives, pure and base, on both sides.

One major character will be a demoralized and disgusted FBI agent in Albuquerque. He's getting all of this incredible information on Chinese money, communist infiltrators from Peru to Cuba, but Washington FBI HQ does NOT want to hear about it. DC is in full denial mode. As long as the govt of NM mouths the right USA words, DC will ignore the revolution going on in NM at the street and ranch level.

Plus, to make it worse, HQ keeps sending nonsensical orders for the FBI agents in Albuquerque to investigate who else but....the right wing ranchers and others, who are resisting the NM govts "land reform" (confiscation) efforts! Don't mind the Chinese and other communist agents; go after the right wing "domestic terrorists" who are violating the strict federal gun laws and other new laws! The frustrated FBI agent lives in this insane PC world, where his DC masters are totally out of touch with reality. (Sort of like today.)

The final part of Domestic Enemies will take place in "Fallujah California" in areas which are no-go zones for Anglos. It will get into the near urban warfare aspects of the battle between the forces loyal to the USA and to the Aztlan vision. There will even be some Bosnia-style three or four way warfare between Anglos, Muslims, Mexicans, and African Americans. Still fairly low-level fighting, at this point. Sort of like Bosnia and Kosovo in 1990: sniping at policemen, blowing up police stations, out of control gang-led crime rampages, total corruption along ethnic lines, “narco-trafficante” Mexican Mafia bosses really in charge like warlords, elections a total sham in the ethnic power struggle.

[sport]

The biggest threats to the existence of the United States today is the democrat political party and the main stream news media.

They are some lesser threats but these can be dealt with as they emerge.

The democrats and main stream media are cancers that eat away from the inside like termites.