Are we all Anglo-Protestants?

Claudio Lomnitz

Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity
Samuel Huntington
Simon and Schuster, $27 (cloth)

8 Have you ever felt bewildered by the question of American identity? Samuel Huntington is here to help. According to Huntington, American identity is neither racial nor ethnic. Nor is it based merely on adhering to a set of laws or democratic principles. If you think that you are American just because you have a U.S. passport, you’re wrong. American identity is defined by culture, and, Huntington explains, Americans are culturally Anglo-Protestants. If you feel American, odds are that you’re culturally Anglo-Protestant. Under certain circumstances, this principle may even apply to black Muslims.

Some Anglo-Protestants have a vain conceit. Theylike to think that they are more Anglo-Protestant than others. Butthey’re wrong about that. Indeed, the main features ofAnglo-Protestant culture are shared by most of us, and they are,according to Huntington, “the English language; Christianity;religious commitment; English concepts of the rule of law, theresponsibility of rulers, and the rights of individuals; anddissenting Protestant values of individualism, the work ethic, andthe belief that humans have the ability and the duty to try to createa heaven on earth, a ‘city on a hill.’”

Black folksshouldn’t confuse culture with racial background either. They maylook black, but culturally they are Anglo-Protestants.African-Americans are about as committed to English concepts of therights of individuals, the rule of law, and the work ethic as therest of us. Take Colin Powell, for instance. “When people look atColin Powell, they may see a black, but they also see a secretary ofstate, a retired four-star general, the leader of America’smilitary in a short, victorious war, and, if they are internationallyoriented, the principal proponent in the Bush administration ofmultilateralism in American foreign policy.” He’sAnglo-Protestant all right.

This definition of American nationalidentity is so obvious it wouldn’t bear repeating, if it weren’tfor some recent confusion. According to Huntington, American identitywas doing just fine until the 1960s, when a bunch of pettysubnational identities and sinister and disloyal transnationalidentities started to bring American identity down. “The Stars andStripes were at half-mast and other flags flew higher on the flagpoleof American identities.” Since then things have gotten evenworse.

The end of the Cold War left the United Stateswithout a common enemy. Its elites have become liberal multiculturalcosmopolitans. “Overall,” Samuel Huntington tells us, “Americanelites are not only less nationalistic but are also more liberal thanthe American public.” Indeed, only 22 percent of the Americanpublic self-identifies as liberal, whereas a whopping 91 percent ofleaders of public-interest groups are liberals. True, Huntington’sstatistics also show that only 14 percent of American business elitesand nine percent of the military elites are liberals, but let’s notsplit hairs: if you add them all up, “elites” areliberal.

And there is an even more urgent cause for alarm, amore pressing challenge to America’s national identity: the current“Hispanic” invasion.

Many people think that they don’t needto be told what the problem with Hispanics is (they’ve already metthem!). But whatever their prejudices may be, the honest truth aboutHispanics is that they don’t speak English. At least not until theylearn it. They may look about as Anglo-Protestant as Colin Powell,Condi Rice, or Clarence Thomas, but they’re not. Indeed Asian- andAfrican-Americans are true blue Anglo-Protestants in a way that thebusboys at your local restaurant may never be.

This is becauseMexican immigration is different from any other: it is morepersistent, more regionally concentrated, less committed to educationand more attached to its native culture and values. The net effect ofthese factors is disturbing: “In the late twentieth century,developments occurred that, if continued, could change America into acultural bifurcated Anglo-Hispanic society with two nationallanguages.”

Liberal elitists like Bill Clinton may ask you tobelieve that the United States cannot break apart into two cultures,that it is and always was a nation of immigrants, a mosaic ofcultures. It is no such thing.

The nation’s founding fatherswere not immigrants, says Huntington. They were settlers, and“settlers and immigrants differ fundamentally. Settlers leave anexisting society, usually in a group, in order to create a newcommunity, a city on a hill, in a new and often distant territory.They are imbued with a sense of collective purpose. Implicitly orexplicitly they subscribe to a compact or charter that defines thebasis of the community they create and their collective relation totheir mother country.”

What brought settlers to Americawas not British political interests or trading interests. “Theseventeenth- and eighteenth-century settlers came to America becauseit was a tabula rasa. Apart from Indian tribes, which could be killedoff or pushed westward, no society was there.” This is clearenough. Apart from the society that was there, there was no societythere. But immigrants are different. Their collective ideals are notso lofty—and they usually can’t kill everyone who is living wherethey are going, so they don’t get to be founding fathers. When haveyour average poor and huddled masses built a city on ahill?

We often fault the social sciences for failing togenerate scientific laws, but Samuel Huntington has managed toelevate this particular idea to the status of a “doctrine.” Theordinary Joe who thinks that American culture is a changing processhas not taken the “Doctrine of First Effective Settlement” intoconsideration. Huntington takes this doctrine from a geographer namedWilbur Zelinsky—who is no relation, I am told, to the Mr. Szalinskiof Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, though the Doctrine of First EffectiveSettlement does appear to have the capability of shrinking thehistory of cultural modernity down to the size of Jamestown, c. 1620.Thus, Zelinsky argues that “in terms of lasting impact, theactivities of a few hundred, or even a few score, initial colonizerscan mean much more for the cultural geography of a place than thecontributions of tens of thousands of new immigrants a fewgenerations later.”This idea may seem easy to ridicule. Afterall, if American culture was created in the 17th century, whyaren’t people wearing wigs and petticoats, chopping kindling,burning witches, and embroidering scarlet letters on the bodices ofadultresses? And what is it about that wise and ancientAnglo-Protestant culture that has led us moderns to use dildos, takethe SAT, and watch Jerry Springer? There are answers to all thesequestions. Culture has its outer frills (like petticoats and dildos)and an inner core (possibly like Jerry Springer). This core is like aseed, and everything grows out of it. Indeed, it was out ofAnglo-Protestant culture that “the settlers developed in theeighteenth and nineteenth centuries the American Creed with itsprinciples of liberty, equality, individualism, representativegovernment, and private property.”Huntington argues that none ofthe readily available stock of metaphors for American identity areaccurate. America is neither a “melting pot” nor a “tossedsalad.” It is neither an amalgam of cultures nor a mix ofcoexisting, indissoluble elements. Instead, Huntington suggests,American culture is best represented as “an Anglo-Protestant tomatosoup to which immigration adds celery, croutons, spices, parsley, andother ingredients that enrich and diversify the taste, but which areabsorbed into what remains fundamentally tomatosoup.”

Mexicans can’t get this into their heads. Allthis time they’ve been thinking that the tomato is a fruit that isindigenous to Mexico—they even believe that the word “tomato”is a perversion of the Aztec word tomatl! As a result, theystubbornly cling to the vain notion that they actually made acontribution to the soup itself. But then it’s just like theseMexicans to get hung up with tomatoes and miss the big picture.American culture is Anglo-Protestant, and the rest is frills.Huntington proves it by taking us back to the very beginning. Thevery English and very puritanical Founding Fathers proposed theprinciples of religious liberty as a mechanism to protect religionfrom the pollution of the state. “The ‘separation of church andstate’ is the corollary to the identity of religion and society.Its purpose, as William McLoughlin has said, was not to establishfreedom from religion but to establish freedom for religion.” Thus, for Huntington, the separation of church and state is actually theproof that Americans’ identity is Anglo-Protestant. Only a trulyreligious society wants no part of the state (Huntington dixit). Thatis probably why late-medieval Spain, which was such a notoriouslysecular society, set up the Holy Office of theInquisition.

The practical consequences of all of this aremind-boggling, but at its most basic the Principle of First EffectiveSettlement allows Samuel Huntington to effect the ideologicalequivalent of a leveraged corporate takeover: with only about 16percent of the shares, Anglo-Protestants get to be America.Huntington writes, “Throughout American history, people who werenot white Anglo-Saxon Protestants have become Americans by adoptingAmerica’s Anglo-Protestant culture and political values. Thisbenefited them and the country.” If there is anyone left in theUnited States who bears an un-Christian grudge toward the nation’sAnglo-Protestant core, Samuel Huntington reminds them that thetriumph against bigotry itself, which he views as America’sgreatest achievement, has only happened “because of the commitmentsuccessive generations of Americans have had to the Anglo-Protestantculture and the Creed of the founding settlers.” Like any trulygreat idea, the basic principle of Huntingtonian patriotism issimple: never recognize that anything of any real substance comesfrom anywhere but from the genius of Anglo-Protestant culture.

Andthis brings us back to the Mexican problem. Why, one might ask, doesSamuel Huntington, who had until now concerned himself withdemocratic crises and the lofty epic of civilizations clashing, turnto the lowly Mexicans? Due to the volume of Mexican immigration, thequality of new communications technologies, and the support of anunpatriotic, multiculturalist, and cosmopolitan elite, Hispanics nolonger need to adopt the great values of the Anglo-Protestantculture. Especially vexing is the fact that Hispanics speak Spanish,they don’t adhere to the Anglo-Protestant work ethic, and they aremore loyal to their countries of origin than they are to the UnitedStates.

The educational level of Mexicans is comparatively low whenthey arrive to this country (it is not so easy to get Mexican lawyersand doctors to pick those grapes!). Mr. Huntington understands this.But intergenerational progress in education among Mexicans is alsoslow. The problem, it seems, is due to Mexican culture, which is bothstrong and, let’s face it, pretty stupid. Samuel Huntington has thekind of discretion and prudence that inhibits a potentiallyembarrassing discussion of this delicate matter, but, being a bit ofa Mexican myself, I can be more forthcoming about it and add my ownsense of dread and apprehension at the thought of seeing this greatnation invaded by Mexican kitsch. And still, discretion and all,Huntington is very concerned by the fact that Mexicans actually value their Spanish language, that they care about what happens back inMexico, and that they cede to the unpatriotic impulse of sendingmoney to their families across the border rather than investing ithere (the way American corporations do).

Plus, paying for all thatbilingual stuff is expensive business, and American taxpayers have notime for any of it. And it is even worse than that. Multiculturalism,we learn, “is basically an anti-Western ideology,” and it is“in its essence anti-European civilization.” The West has onlyever favored individual rights and has never seen or heard of grouprights before now. Apparently the British had no part in organizing asystem of “scheduled castes” in India, for example. And SouthAfrican apartheid was invented by the Zulus. More to the point, elitemulticulturalists have entirely forsaken Western education. Second-and third-grade readers in California and Texas “lack any story‘featuring Nathan Hale, Patrick Henry, Daniel Boone, or PaulRevere’s ride.’” Plato must be turning in hisgrave!

Without an education—or a Western education, at anyrate—what exactly are we to expect of these Mexicans? They worklike tortoises and multiply like hares. Americans, on the contrary,“work longer hours, have shorter vacations, get less inunemployment, disability, and retirement benefits, and retire later,than people in comparable societies.” Why? It’s that old AmericanAnglo-Protestant culture! And if you don’t like your benefitspackage you have no one but yourself to blame. “In other societies,heredity, class, social status, ethnicity, and family are theprinciple sources of status and legitimacy. In America, work is.”This explains why the current president of the United States is theson of a former president of the United States.

Citing anumber of Mexican authorities who are known to have had ampleexperience with hard manual labor (Jorge Castañeda, CarlosFuentes and a couple of others), Samuel Huntington summarizes thework habits of Mexican migrants thus: “the Mexican philosopherArmando Cíntora explained the educational and other deficiencies ofMexican-Americans by their attitudes expressed in three sayings:‘Ahí se va’ (‘Who cares? That is good enough’); ‘Mañana se lo tengo’ (‘Tomorrow it will be ready’); and ‘El vale madrismo’ (‘Nothing is really worth it’).” Maybe the busboys at the Harvard Club aren’t up to scratch. The point is, who needs them? Americans have been galavanting around the world for too long, and they should get back to the business of patrolling their borders. Huntington’s final point of concern is the Hispanics’questionable loyalty to the United States and the effects that theirnumbers may have on American culture. His concerns are summed up inthe concept of “societal security”: “While national security isconcerned, above all, with sovereignty, societal security isconcerned above all with identity, the ability of a people tomaintain their culture, institutions, and way of life.”

Hispanicsare now the United States’ largest minority. In some regions of thecountry, they are already a majority. Given their commitments totheir countries of origin, their stubborn love of the Spanishlanguage, and their inferior work habits, this will no doubtoverwhelm the culture and identity of the first settlers (and I’mnot talking about the Hopi!). It is not fair to Americans that theyget to push economic reform packages in Mexico and stage coups inGuatemala and still have to take these countries’ immigrants. Onthis matter, Samuel Huntington warns:

All societies facerecurring threats to their existence, to which they eventuallysuccumb. Yet some societies, even when so threatened, are alsocapable of postponing their demise by halting and reversing theprocesses of decline and renewing their vitality and identity. Ibelieve that America can do that and that Americans should recommitthemselves to the Anglo-Protestant culture, traditions, and valuesthat for three and a half centuries have been embraced by Americansof all races, ethnicities, and religions and that have been thesource of their liberty, unity, power, prosperity, and moralleadership as a force for good in the world.

Huntington andI agree on one point. Americans have every right to concernthemselves with the ways in which their country and their mores arechanging, and they have no greater and no less a right than any othercountry has to try to regulate immigration. They shouldn’t pretend,however, that theirs is the only country facing economic and socialchange, and they should not forget that they have a significant partin contemporary changes in the world.

Mexican society andculture has been changed much more, and at least as negatively, byAmerican interests as the United States has been negatively affectedby Mexico. Both countries have affected each other positively, too.If Americans now need to learn Spanish in order to talk to theirgardeners in California or do business in Miami, think of the manyreasons Mexicans have to learn English. Samuel Huntington is right topoint out the need for more commitment to the education of migrants,but this education cannot simply be about the Pledge of Allegiance,Paul Revere, or re-remembering the Alamo. If Americans are concernedabout stemming the tide of people who are desperate to move here,they should join together with the other rich countries that sharethese concerns (European nations, Japan) and with the countries thatare sending migrants, and get serious about improving things in theworld. Samuel Huntington calls his solution to the American identitydilemma a nationalist solution. It is that, but it is also a deeplyreactionary solution. For all his pandering to the Christian right,Mr. Huntington is above all a political strategist, a bit of aMachiavelli in pastor’s clothing. This book is calculated for theworld of politics and not for a bible-thumping session in theOzarks.

Here is how Huntingtonian politics work. Despite all of thetalk of culture, what defines American identity is territory and citizenship.If you are born in the United States, you are American. Huntingtonmakes light of the significance of territory to Americans:“American identity has thus had several components. Historically,however, territory has not been one of them.” Tell that to theborder patrol! In fact, the centrality of citizenship and territoryexplains why Samuel Huntington can pick on Mexicans in a way thatwould be unthinkable if he had tried it with African-Americans,although they too have occupied a relatively stable position as an“underclass” in contemporary America.

Samuel Huntington seizesupon the fact that a portion of the American laboring classes areforeign and uses it to drive a wedge between “true” Americans andAmericans of dubious loyalties—“ampersands” (as he calls them),liberals, or multiculturalists. Anyone, in short, who does not adhereto a national culture of capitalism (American ideas of property,American sublimation of difficult working conditions). Moreimmediately, Huntington’s argument makes the Republican alliancebetween the rich and the religious right into a national romance.Their affair is the embodiment of Anglo-Protestant culture; it isAmerica. Only this “coalition of the willing” deserves fullcultural citizenship.

The move to imbue national identity with a specific and fixed content (the set of generalizations and abstractions that Huntington calls “Anglo-Protestant culture”) is a maneuver to shape what Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has tellingly called the American “race.” This move does not bury the racial tensions that have ravaged America—it only displaces them. Once you define the American race, once you define who is inside and who is outside, and once you are inebriated with a sense of moral superiority and collective entitlements, you can go about the business of ruling the world. As Samuel Huntington has not tired of saying, “culture matters.” <

Claudio Lomnitz is the editor of the journal Public Culture and the author of, most recently, Death and the Idea of Mexico. He is a Distinguished University Professor of anthropology and historical studies at New School University.