The late American nation.

James C. Bennett, Anglosphere: The Future of the English-Speaking Nations in the Internet Era (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2004), 256 pp., $29.95.

Robert Cooper, The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2003), 180 pp., $18.95.

Samuel P. Huntington, Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), 428 pp., $27.

Jeremy A. Rabkin, The Case for Sovereignty: Why the World Should Welcome American Independence (Washington, DC: AEI Press, 2004), 255 pp., $25.

Anne-Marie Slaughter, A New World Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 368 pp., $29.95.

DURING THE 1990s there was a widespread recognition that, when it came to the topic of international affairs, the most significant book of the decade was Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. After the terrorist attacks of 2001, there was an even wider, indeed a worldwide, recognition that Huntington's book, with its analysis of the "Islamic resurgence" and "Islam's bloody borders" could well be the most significant book for this decade as well. Of course, when it was published, Clash of Civilizations produced its own clash between Huntington and a claque of critics, many of whom were hostile or even hysterical. But whatever the strength, or the noise, of the critics' arguments, they were blown into irrelevance by the terrorist attacks, for about these, the critics had nothing meaningful to say, while Huntington manifestly did.

Now Huntington has once again published a most significant book, this time about a clash of cultures within America itself and the remaking of American identity, and once again he has aroused a claque of critics, many of them hostile and even hysterical. They have appeared in venues as diverse as the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, the New Yorker, the New Republic and Foreign Affairs (although it is evident that many of them are published in the same locale, New York). Once again, the clash between Huntington and his critics will not be settled by arguments appearing on the printed page. If his somber vision of America's future is right, it will be settled by the actual events, perhaps great and bloody ones, that will be produced by a clash between the traditional American culture and the cultures that assail it.

Huntington's Three Controversial Theses

HUNTINGTON presents a comprehensive, detailed and scholarly analysis of the traditional components and the recent changes in America's national identity. In the course of this, however, he develops three highly controversial arguments or theses. First, he demonstrates that the core of American national identity has always been what he describes as an "Anglo-Protestant" culture. This cultural component of the identity has produced another, ideological, component, which is the "American Creed." Together, the culture and the creed have provided the enduring definition of the American national identity; they survived, even after earlier racial and ethnic components of that identity disappeared after the 1960s. But, Huntington argues, the American Creed alone is not enough to sustain a national identity, and the essential Anglo-Protestant culture is now under systematic and sustained assault.

Second, Huntington argues that the Anglo-Protestant culture and the American Creed, and therefore the American national identity, are threatened by large-scale immigration from Mexico, an immigration that is unprecedented both in its immense and sustained scale and in its resistance to assimilation. This gives rise to the phenomenon of Hispanization and the likelihood of a binational United States, with all the social and political divisions and conflicts that normally characterize binational societies (for example, Canada and Belgium). It is this argument about Mexican immigration that has received the most hostile and hysterical criticism from reviewers in liberal publications. They have not only rejected Huntington's conclusions about the danger posed by Mexican immigration; for the most part, they have also ignored or misrepresented his systematic reasoning and extensive evidence.

Third, Huntington demonstrates that the American elites have ceased to adhere to patriotic values and a national identity; rather, their views are now multicultural, cosmopolitan and transnational, actively opposed to the traditional, patriotic and national views of most of the American public. (Huntington presented this third argument in the Spring 2004 issue of The National Interest.) These elite views provide part of the explanation for their acceptance or even promotion of large-scale Mexican immigration. More generally, however, they explain why it is the American elites themselves who are the major threat to American national identity, and particularly to the Anglo-Protestant culture and the American Creed. (Indeed, from my own experience, Mexican-Americans who are evangelical Protestants or even devout Catholics have values that are a lot more in common with those of the original American Protestants than the values of the American elites, especially those of English descent and secular mentality.) Conversely, Huntington shows, the American public continues to adhere to the traditional American culture, ideology and national identity.

It is easy to see why these three theses of Huntington have been controversial. Most reviewers have never regarded themselves as either Anglo or Protestant, and indeed many of them look with fear and loathing upon anyone who does. Furthermore, most reviewers see themselves as an integral part of the American elite, and many of them happily see themselves as multicultural, cosmopolitan and transnational. There is no mystery why they hate Huntington's arguments. However, for them to directly attack the Anglo-Protestant culture might appear mean-spirited or even bigoted, and to explicitly defend the elite might appear self-promoting or even elitist. This probably explains why the usual rhetorical move of Huntington's critics has been to attack his other argument, the one about Mexican immigration and Hispanization, and to accuse him of being a nativist or even a bigot.

Huntington's Problematic Solutions

HUNTINGTON calls for a return to and reassertion of the core components of the American national identity--the Anglo-Protestant culture and the American Creed. Although he is not very explicit and concrete about the solutions to the problems he analyzes, it seems that he would greatly reduce Mexican immigration and greatly enhance programs that would bring about the assimilation of all immigrants into the traditional American identity (culture as well as creed). At one point, he imagines what America would look like if Mexican immigration were abruptly stopped while every other demographic trend, including immigration from elsewhere, were to continue on unchanged. It is clear that he would prefer this outcome. But nothing in his book gives any expectation that this is going to happen. Rather, his analysis leads to the conclusion that Mexican immigration is virtually inevitable and that the transformation of the United States into a binational society is also very likely. He describes all of the powerful economic and political interests in favor of large-scale Mexican immigration; the only opposition to it comes from a widespread, but disorganized and inconstant, opinion within the public.

More fundamentally, it seems that Huntington would have the American elites change their multicultural, cosmopolitan and transnational views and conform their values instead to the traditional, patriotic and national ones of the American public. (It would seem logical for him to argue that the American public should replace the current American elites with new elites more in keeping with the public's values, but he does not actually go this far.) At bottom, Huntington is calling for a revival of the Anglo-Protestant culture, one that would reach even into the hearts and minds of the American elites.

A Revival of Anglo-Protestant Culture?

WHAT ARE the prospects for a return to and reassertion of America's Anglo-Protestant culture, either on the part of American elites or on the part of the American public, which could then produce new American elites? Unfortunately, the prospects are bleak.

Many years ago, a noted sociologist observed that a principle norm of Anglo-Protestant culture was to "not give offense." (1) Today, virtually anyone in America who is not both English in ancestry and Protestant in religion is likely to take offense when they hear American culture described as "Anglo-Protestant." This is despite the fact that Huntington does carefully distinguish between an Anglo-Protestant people and an Anglo-Protestant culture, and he demonstrates how most Americans who are not English in ancestry or Protestant in religion have still willingly adhered to the Anglo-Protestant culture.

The Anglo-Protestant culture might form the core of American identity, but it is nevertheless a culture that for almost half a century has not dared to speak its name. (How many WASPs are willing to call themselves such?) By now, there is almost no one in America who is willing to identify their culture and themselves as "Anglo-Protestant." First, no American of non-English origin (probably 80 percent or more of the U.S. population) is going to adopt an explicitly English or "Anglo" cultural identity. An "American" cultural identity is the most that can be expected, and this will have a tendency to drift downward toward an identity that is merely an ideological one (that is, "the American Creed") or one that is based merely upon American popular culture (which is hardly a culture at all). Further, even those Americans who do have English ancestry have in practice largely abandoned any explicit idea of an English or "Anglo" cultural identity. The "Anglo" component of the national culture may be real enough, but very few Americans know about this reality and the few that do are not willing to assert it. If an identity exists as a fact, but not in the mind, is it a real identity?

The situation is different in regard to the "Protestant" component of the national culture. As Huntington demonstrates, a substantial majority of the American public are quite willing to identify themselves as Protestant or, more broadly, as Christians. But this is not true of the American elites. Indeed, a large majority of these elites regard Protestants with fear or scorn, and they do everything they can to exclude real (Bible-believing) Protestants from the elite altogether. These elites are certainly not going to accept a "Protestant" or even "Christian" cultural identity. The most that can be expected is something like a "spiritual" identity, and this will have a tendency to drift outward into some kind of universalism or transnationalism (again, with hardly any cultural content at all).

Overall, then, Huntington presents a sober and somber view of the challenges to American national identity. And when we add to his analysis the bleak prospects for a revival of his core component--Anglo-Protestant culture--the resulting perspective is not just sober and somber, but stark and dark.

However, seen from the perspective of other traditions (for example, Catholicism or Confucianism) and other nations (like Germany or China)--from an un-American perspective, if you will--Huntington's view may not be stark and dark enough. For all of his concern about threats to the American national identity, Huntington expresses a typical American optimism that the fundamentals of this identity are essentially sound and therefore that a return to them would set things right.

But what if the Anglo-Protestant culture and the American Creed are themselves fundamentally flawed, that they have from their beginnings carried the seeds of their own destruction, and that these seeds have now matured in the particular circumstances--that is, the global economy and the information technology--of the early 21st century? As it turns out, when we peer into the core values of the Anglo-Protestant culture and the American Creed, we will see that these values created the conditions by which they eventually would be transformed into something different and perhaps be abolished altogether.

Anglo-Protestant Culture and Immigration

WE HAVE seen that one basic problem with the Anglo-Protestant culture as the core of American national identity is that the American elites decisively reject the Protestant part and that both the American elites and the American public decisively reject the Anglo part. But an even deeper problem lies with the very features--indeed the very virtues--of the Anglo-Protestant culture itself. The Anglo-Protestant culture certainly goes a long way in explaining the astonishing success of the United States in its rise over two centuries to its contemporary pinnacle of power and prosperity. But the same culture is also the cause of the threats to America's identity that Huntington describes.

The "Anglo" component of the culture has predisposed Americans to a greater emphasis on property rights, "the pursuit of happiness" and extreme individualism than can be found in any other culture. In recent years, a number of historians have demonstrated that, beginning in late medieval times, English economic development, and the "Anglo" culture that was the result, pioneered the protection and promotion of private property rights. In the modern age, this meant an unusually supportive environment for free enterprise and capitalist development. The "Protestant" component of the culture predisposed Americans in the same direction, at least in so far as Max Weber's famous thesis about the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism has any validity. Indeed, in a new and major history of America, Walter McDougall places the figure of the hustler at the core of the American character. (2)

From the beginnings of the English colonies in America, an Anglo-Protestant culture meant that entrepreneurs were largely unrestrained in importing cheap labor, even if these laborers were not English or Anglo or Protestant in any way. This was most obviously and momentously the case with African slaves as early as the 1610s, but cheap, non-English and non-Protestant labor has dominated immigration in every century since. At every point in American history when the immigration of non-English or non-Protestant persons became a political issue, it was businessmen of English descent and often Protestant religion who lobbied to ensure that non-English and non-Protestant workers would be admitted. Of course, people who identified themselves as English or as Protestant did form nativist movements in the 19th and early 20th centuries. But normally these could not prevail against the combined political force of Anglo-Protestant businessmen and non-Anglo and non-Protestant voters.

IN THE FULLNESS of time, many non-English and non-Protestant immigrants became as successful in business as the Anglo-Protestants before them, and they joined the grand political coalition in favor of open borders and liberal immigration. It is, of course, the current generation of businessmen who have been the principle political force promoting the vast immigration of cheap workers from Mexico. It is this very immigration, and the threat that it poses to America's national identity, which is the central concern of Huntington's book. This threat has been greatly facilitated, however, by a core value of the Anglo-Protestant culture.

What has been true of the Anglo-Protestant culture has been even more true of the American Creed. Its central values have been variously defined as liberty, equality, opportunity, individualism, free enterprise, civil rights and the rule of law. None of these provides any principled basis for restrictions on immigration. Even those Americans who have not been engaged in business have in practice accepted or acquiesced in open borders and liberal immigration. At the core of the American Creed is the idea of individualism, and this has been the great solvent that has worked to dissolve community identity and to impede collective action. Indeed, none of the values of the American Creed provide any explicit validation for communities or collectivities. Once Anglos were deracinated and Protestants were secularized into individualized Americans, they became virtually incapable of pursuing any group identity and certainly any project which would preserve and promote Anglo-Protestant culture.

Seen coldly and clearly from a truly Protestant (sola scriptura or Bible-believing) perspective, the American Creed is a heresy. The very notion of a totally national and secular "creed" is an insult to the original Christian creeds (like the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed). As Huntington acknowledges, the American Creed is "Protestantism without God", while its associated "American civil religion" is "Christianity without Christ." For the original Protestants who founded America, it would have been no surprise that this heresy might come to a bad end. (3)

Identity or Sovereignty

HUNTINGTON'S perspective is not the only level of analysis employed by persons who are concerned about threats to the American nation. Whereas he focuses on the undermining of American identity, others, such as Jeremy Rabkin, have focused on the undermining of American sovereignty. The former emphasizes culture and society, while the latter emphasizes law and state. In some ways, the two levels of analysis can perhaps be seen, respectively, as the substructure and the superstructure of the American nation, or alternatively, as the two sides of the American coin.

Rabkin, a noted and articulate professor of international law and constitutional history at Cornell University, provides a vigorous and cogent set of arguments in defense of American sovereignty and against those who have sought to limit and undermine it, particularly many of the leaders in his own professional field: professors and judges who seek to shape international and constitutional law. His arguments will be very acceptable and useful to the Bush Administration and to neo-conservatives, for he shares many of their views. And his case is so informed, logical and thorough that others who are concerned about American sovereignty--traditional conservatives--will greatly benefit from his book too.

Although Rabkin's book is organized in a different way, his analysis can be seen as presenting parallels to Huntington's three controversial theses. Rabkin also wants to reassert a traditional core of the American nation, in his case the ideas and principles provided by the "American Founders" and the federal Constitution. He also identifies a major foreign threat, in his case the alternative and fallacious conceptions of sovereignty promoted by the European Union, particularly by the likes of France and Germany. And Rabkin also identifies particular American elites who are aiding and abetting the foreign assaults; in this case, however, these are mostly the academic and judicial specialists in international law, a much narrower indictment of American elites than Huntington's.

If the real threat to the American nation is to its sovereignty--to the nation's superstructure or to the upper side of the American coin--then Rabkin's diagnosis and prescription will meet the needs. The threat can be addressed with a relatively feasible project against a relatively feeble adversary: a restoration of the wise judgments of the Founders and the solid fundamentals of the Constitution, along with a rejection of the wrongheaded and self-centered views of European elites and their American academic and judicial collaborators. If, however, the real threat to the American nation is to its identity--to the nation's substructure or to the lower side of the American coin--then Rabkin's diagnosis and prescription do not go far enough.

If Huntington is right, the illness reaches much deeper. The Founders and the Constitution will only be respected and followed within a robust and pervasive Anglo-Protestant culture; the major foreign threat comes not from bureaucrats far across the Atlantic, but from a large community within the United States itself; and the collaborators in the destruction of the American nation are not only the specialists in international law, but they include most of the American elites. Rabkin's diagnosis and prescriptions will be necessary, but they will not in themselves be sufficient. Much stronger medicine--or more radical surgery--will be needed to restore health and vigor to the American nation.

The Structure of Elite Anti-Americanism

HUNTINGTON gives an extensive account of the American elites. Some of these elites have a cosmopolitan view of America's place in the world: America should merge itself with the rest of the world. Other elites have an imperial view: America should remake the rest of the world in its own image. With the exception of some political elites (for example, elected officials who are responsive to the patriotic values of the public) and also military officers, none of the American elites adhere to a national view--that America should maintain its national identity in a world that includes other nations. Huntington's review of the American business and cultural (including academic and journalistic) elites makes clear that they will not be the defenders of an American national identity; rather, they are working relentlessly to destroy it and replace it with various kinds of multiculrural and transnational identities.

The perspectives and values of these American elites have a lot in common with those which Robert Cooper, a distinguished British diplomat, presents in his elegant and incisive book, The Breaking of Nations. Cooper is primarily describing European elites, and the term that he uses for their perspective is "postmodern." He distinguishes postmodern cultures (like Europe and America) from modern (China and India) and pre-modern (the Islamic world) ones. Cooper is acute in analyzing the origins and development of the postmodern perspective, but he is generally persuaded of its strengths and virtues. What he says applies to most American elites as well (the same ones described by Huntington), and indeed he provides a more sophisticated exposition of their cosmopolitan and transnational views than most of them could give themselves.

Anne-Marie Slaughter, Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton and distinguished scholar in international law, shows that the cosmopolitan and transnational conceptions of European and American elites have reached such a degree of development and integration that they have already brought into being a real "new world order." This order is composed of transgovernmental elites who continuously and cooperatively work together in the course of carrying out their governmental responsibilities within their own nations (such as they are). She gives a very comprehensive and detailed account of the administrative, judicial and legislative arenas where this takes place, and she is obviously pleased with this transgovernmental and transnational world order (she is the kind of elite professional about whom Jeremy Rabkin is concerned). For Slaughter (and for most American academics and international lawyers), America's national identity probably has about as much meaning and value as one of America's fading and now vestigial ethnic identities (read, Anglo-Protestants).

ALTHOUGH Huntington does not explicitly say so, his analysis makes clear that the only way the American national identity can be preserved is for the contemporary American business and cultural elites to be displaced. But these elites occupy crucial commanding heights of American society. As long as America is a liberal democracy (officially a representative one; actually, as Huntington states, an unrepresentative one), these business and cultural elites will determine the policies that affect--and extinguish--national identity. For America to recover its national identity, it would have to become an illiberal or populist democracy, which would then carry out a populist revolution within the major political, cultural and economic institutions. But this would of course mean a violation of many of the elements of the American Creed (particularly, conventional definitions of individual liberty, free enterprise, civil rights and the rule of law).

Even if a populist democracy were to displace the contemporary globalist, transnational elites with new elites who adhered to more American, national values, the realities of the global economy and of the information age would work relentlessly to convert these new business and cultural elites once again to a global and transnational perspective and to the accompanying values. In short, as long as business elites are drawn toward a global economy and as long as cultural elites are drawn toward an Internet technology, there will be no sound and stable basis for an American national identity. When business found its most profitable activities to be on an American, national scale, then business promoted an American, national identity. Indeed, it consciously and systematically promoted the American Creed. Conversely, when business found its most profitable activities to be on a global, transnational scale, it not only promoted a global and transnational identity, but it became actively hostile to an explicitly American and national one. As was the case with immigration, none of the values of the American Creed provide a principled basis for restrictions on globalization and transnationalism. Indeed, none of the values of the American Creed prevent its American dimension from being replaced with a global perspective and its creedal dimension from being replaced with a post-modern mentality.

Culture and the Anglosphere Alternative

ONE INNOVATIVE and imaginative author, James Bennett, instead makes the case that something like the Anglo-Protestant culture can provide a viable basis for a transnational order--the "Anglosphere"--whose scope would lie between the national scale and the global one. Bennett argues that the United States has much more in common with the English-speaking nations--especially Britain, Ireland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand--than it has with other countries around the globe, including those on the European continent. The English language and the English legal tradition shared by these nations have always been important, but they are even more so in the Internet era and the transnational economy. Consequently, these nations are now coming together as a "network commonwealth"--the Anglosphere. In addition to sharing English language and law, the nations of the Anglosphere share common conceptions about the proper roles within society of the limited state, the free market and the independent individual. Individualism is more pronounced and protected in the Anglosphere than elsewhere and, very importantly, so is the level of trust between individuals.

It is clear that Bennett and Huntington have similar conceptions about the core elements of "Anglo" culture. But for Bennett, the dynamics of this culture, interacting with the global economy and Internet technology, are driving Americans beyond a mere national identity, which is limited to the United States, to a transnational identity, which is grounded in the dense inter-relations--the network commonwealth--among the English-speaking nations. The Anglosphere, Bennett foresees, will be the most coherent, advanced and effective association of nations of any operating and competing within the global economy and the information age. As such, Bennett projects a more expansive and optimistic future for Americans than that provided by Huntington's analysis. However, Huntington himself might respond that, with friends like the Anglosphere, the American national identity does not need enemies.

Identity and Catastrophe

OF COURSE, there was one earlier era--just a century ago--when the global economy and communications technology of the day seemed to be drawing some business and cultural elites--particularly those in the British Empire--toward a transnational identity. This earlier era of globalization was brought to a crashing halt by the outbreak of World War I. The ensuing mobilization of national economies and national propaganda enhanced national identities around the world. These developments were further reinforced by the Great Depression and World War II, and the era of strong national identities lasted for half a century. It was not until the 1960s that a new era of globalization would begin.

By now, globalization is deeply embedded in the economic and cultural institutions of not only the United States but of the European Union as well, and indeed of all the societies that comprise what was once called Western civilization. The elites of the entire West have become deeply opposed to national identities. The European elites have overwhelmingly chosen what Huntington calls a cosmopolitan identity (and what Cooper calls a postmodern one), while the American elites are divided between cosmopolitan and imperial identities (or between postmodern and modern ones). However, the dismal course of the Iraq War will likely temporarily diminish the imperial tendency in American foreign policy, leaving the cosmopolitan elites even more in control.

It would take a cataclysm on a world-historical scale (the equivalent of the two world wars and the world depression during 1914-45) to destroy the economic and cultural institutions which are so committed to global and transnational identities. Huntington does not speculate about any such cataclysms. He does consider three possible threats to American national security, however. The growing Mexican population in the United States might lead to a binational America and to a white nativist reaction, which obviously could take violent forms. He also considers the developing threat from militant Islam and, further in the future, the potential threat from a nationalist and expansionist China. Any one of these threats could conceivably issue in some kind of cataclysmic war, be the war civil (between the Anglo and Hispanic populations), transnational (Islamic terrorist attacks within America), or international (between the United States and China). A catastrophic explosion that happened to destroy the New York Times building might be a significant beginning, but even this might not be enough to change the minds within that particular commanding height of the American elite. In any event, out of such a cataclysmic war, some new kind of American national identity could arise, just as one did during the cataclysm of the Civil War 140 years ago. But what this identity would look like, or even if one would want to look at it, no one now can tell.

Absent this kind of exogenous shock, however, the indigenous logic or natural tendency of the American elite culture will continue to work its way, and that is to bring about the abolition of the American national culture. But since that elite culture, particularly its supercharged business enterprise and expressive individualism, is itself merely an exaggerated version of some of the core values of the old Anglo-Protestant culture and of the American Creed, in the end it is the American national culture that is working to abolish itself.

James Kurth is Claude Smith Professor of Political Science at Swarthmore College and a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, where he is chairman of the Study Group on America and the West. He will become the editor of Orbis beginning with the Fall issue.

(1) John Murray Cuddihy, No Offense: Civil Religion and Protestant Taste (New York: Seabury Press, 1978).

(2) McDougall, Freedom Just Around the Corner: A New American History 1585-1828 (New York: Harper Collins, 2004).

(3) I have discussed the American Creed as one stage in the declension of American Protestantism in "The Protestant Deformation and American Foreign Policy", Orbis (Spring 1998), pp. 221-39.