The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (87 page)

LAMB: Well, the other image, though, is that conservatives have liked you over the years. You‘ve been associated from time to time, I think, with the American Enterprise Institute.

HUNTINGTON: Yes. Which is . . .

LAMB: Well, let me just finish.

HUNTINGTON: Yes.

LAMB: And also, you have been funded by years for years the John M. Olin Foundation . . .

HUNTINGTON: Yes.

LAMB: . . . and sometimes by the Bradley Foundation . . .

HUNTINGTON: Yes.

LAMB: . . . and sometimes by the Smith Richardson (ph) Foundation . . .

HUNTINGTON: Yes.

LAMB: . . . which people view—which some people view as conservatives. And . . .

HUNTINGTON: Well, the Ford Foundation is a liberal foundation.

LAMB: I know, but you know what I mean, though. The mixed views on—how do you—does that all fit together . . .

HUNTINGTON: Well . . .

LAMB: . . . being a liberal Democrat that‘s going to vote for John Kerry and being supported by . . .

HUNTINGTON: Well, I never said I was a liberal. I‘m not. I view myself as a conservative. And—and I think the foundations you mentioned, which have provided funding for various projects, many projects at Harvard, many excellent programs at Harvard, including programs I have been involved in, are very respectable foundations and certainly award grants on the basis of the expertise and the probability of the project that‘s going to be funded producing some significant work. And they have funded a good portion of my work.

LAMB: So Harvard‘s not—they‘re not anti-conservative.

HUNTINGTON: Well, I‘m not going to judge Harvard. But the—and I think it is certainly true, and I have some figures on academic political views in the book, that Harvard faculty are overwhelmingly liberal and overwhelmingly Democratic. I don‘t think there‘s any doubt about that.

LAMB: You say that this is two different countries, elite and non-elite. What‘s the difference? Who are the elites? And what is the difference . . .

HUNTINGTON: Well, I don‘t think I say there are two different countries. There are two different groups. Obviously, in every society, there are the leaders and the people who have power and money and influence and play the major role in shaping events in the society. And then the great bulk of the people who work and, hopefully, earn a living and also contribute to the society but don‘t play a leading role. And one of the points that I make in the book, of course, is that the American public, in terms of comparative public opinion surveys, looking at a whole variety of countries, are among the most patriotic people in the world.

But in recent years, we have seen some segments of American elites become what I say de-nationalized. They are shifting their identities and loyalties away from this country, becoming cosmopolitan, transnational, defining themselves very explicitly as citizens of the world who just happen to have an American passport. This, again, is a result of the whole process of globalization. And our big corporations, who used to think of themselves exclusively as American corporations, now think of themselves as multi-national global corporations and act accordingly. They‘re operating on a global basis.

This is somewhat parallel to what happened in this country in industrialization after the Civil War, where businesses suddenly realized they couldn‘t just operate in one city and sell their products there. They had to operate on increasingly on a national basis, and businesses had to form national corporations. And now we‘re having American corporations operate globally and think globally. And of course, something I don‘t get into in the book is this has economic consequences in what is now commonly referred to as the outsourcing of jobs. If they can get people to do the same work that American workers do at a small fraction of what they have to pay American workers, they are moving their activities overseas.

LAMB: Who best—as long as this is a political year, who best, then, is recognizing these future problems, the John Kerry versus the George Bush? And if you‘re conservative, why wouldn‘t you be a George Bush fan?

HUNTINGTON: Well, I think—when I say I‘m conservative, what I‘m—I think you have to ask anybody who says they‘re conservatives, OK, what do they want to conserve? And I want to conserve American society as it has evolved and American culture and develop it, obviously—it has to change. But basically, what that‘s what I‘m interested in conserving. And American society, culture, and particularly our political institutions, are, of course, very liberal in their substance. But that‘s what it seems to me a real conservative should want to preserve. I‘m not going to make any judgments on Kerry and Bush as to how they would rate when judged in that way.

LAMB: Well, I guess what I wanted to ask your opinion on is—do people say they‘re liberals or conservatives, say they‘re Republicans or Democrats, do either one of those mean anything today? And do people follow some line . . .

HUNTINGTON: Well, all this problem of—when you talk about liberalism and conservativism in the United States, that we, in our popular discussion and so forth, define those terms very differently from the way in which they were historically defined in Europe. And as many scholars have pointed out, all Americans are liberal, including anybody, whether it‘s George Bush or people to the right of George Bush, are liberals in the European sense. Neo-capitalists are certainly the epitome of European liberalism. But we think of them as conservatives, and liberals are people who promote government involvement in the economy to help poor people and provide services, and so forth and so on. And it seems to me all of these groups, however, have an appropriate role to play in our society.

LAMB: When you—and you talk a little bit about this bit in the book. In Germany, do the Germans insist that the Turks speak German and in France, the Algerians speak French, and in—well, Pakistanis do speak English in Britain. But you see where I‘m getting at. The Koreans speak Japanese in Japan. What kind of insistence is there around the world about assimilation in those places?

HUNTINGTON: Well, I think the Europeans countries have a much greater problem with assimilation because they don‘t have the same immigrant experience that we have had, certainly not to the same extent. And so with the Turks in Germany or with the North Africans in France, there‘s been a tendency for them to go off and live in encapsulated communities and not to really assimilate. Now, obviously, people who are born of Turkish parents in Germany or Algerian parents in France learn German and French, but the communities still are—remain very separate.

And this is a real problem for those countries because Germans have historically defined their identity by ancestry. You‘re a German if you had German parents. Well, the Turks don‘t have German parents. And only—and they only now recently, in the past few years, has Germany begun to change its citizenship laws to facilitate people of Turkish ancestry born in Germany becoming full German citizens.

LAMB: Based on what you know of history, where are we headed? Where do you think we will be in—pick the year—25 years from now? What will this country be?

HUNTINGTON: Well, I don‘t know. That‘s the reason there‘s a question mark after my title. I know where I hope we will be. I hope—I outline in the book various possibilities. One would be a society which did not have a common culture but just had the creed, would be essentially a creedal (ph) society, and—but I have grave doubts as to whether such a society can really maintain unity. It seems to me a country has to be something more than simply a set of political principles.

LAMB: What‘s in that American creed?

HUNTINGTON: Well, all the truths we hold self-evident, in terms of equality, individualism, liberty, democracy, due process of law.

LAMB: Do we deserve—what kind of a grade do we deserve after over 200 years?

HUNTINGTON: Well, I think we deserve a pretty high grade. But as I said, I think that creed is rooted and was a product of this Anglo-Protestant culture. Now, if that disappears—if the culture disappears, I‘m not sure how long the creed will last. If we divide up into a society with many different cultures, we probably will end up with many different creeds.

LAMB: Is it a better culture if it‘s a Protestant culture than if it‘s a Catholic culture?

HUNTINGTON: They‘re just—they—I think there are differences. I‘m not going to say one is better than the other, obviously. I don‘t think it is. But I think our culture has been a Protestant culture. And I think one can see the extent to which the Catholics coming into this country, the Catholic immigration beginning in the mid-19th century, tried to adapt to this Protestant culture in a variety of ways, and in part did it by creating their own set of schools, institutions, and so forth. But in the end, you had what one can describe, I think, as the Protestantization of Catholicism in the United States, and the Catholic—Catholics and Catholic institutions adopted to this society. And of course, by the 20th century, Catholics are among the most nationalistic Americans. And this type of adaptation, I think, is something that one can see going on also in other societies.

LAMB: What does it mean to be Protestant?

HUNTINGTON: Well, let me take a distinction between Protestantism in the sense of religion, whether one is a Presbyterian or Episcopalian or Baptist, or so forth and so on, which is not the way I was using it in terms of talking about Anglo-Protestant culture. I was talking about a set of values and customs and beliefs which are the product of the settlers, but—and which, obviously, are adhered to—were adhered to by people who were Protestant. But they are also—that‘s a culture that can be absorbed and—by a larger—by other people. It‘s not limited to Protestants. When I‘ve talked about my ideas with Jewish friends and talked about Anglo-Protestant culture, they very frequently say, Oh, yes. Of course. And I‘m an Anglo-Protestant Jew. And that‘s very—that‘s the overwhelming case.

LAMB: Define what an Anglo is.

HUNTINGTON: Well, now wait a second. You say “Anglo.”

LAMB: Yes. I mean, you say Anglo-Protestant. Just define what an Anglo is, just so that . . .

(CROSSTALK)

HUNTINGTON: Well, that reflects the British English—primarily English heritage of this country, beginning with our language, but also our legal institutions, political institutions, the law. So many of our customs were derived from England because it was the English who came here.

LAMB: Some might be listening and saying, Well, OK, Anglo-Protestantism got us the British empire worldwide, and the way that . . .

HUNTINGTON: It didn‘t get us. It got the British the British empire.

LAMB: Well, that‘s what I mean.

HUNTINGTON: OK.

LAMB: You know, got the world. I don‘t mean Americans. Got the world. And is that something to be proud of?

HUNTINGTON: Well, I don‘t understand. The . . .

LAMB: But having an empire—I mean controlling people‘s lives and telling them exactly how to live. They didn‘t live in democracies.

HUNTINGTON: Of course. You know, I‘m not going to—I think it would be most unfortunate if America became an imperial country. I think the—we look at the experience of the British empire. The British made tremendous contributions to many of the countries whom they had as colonies, like India, for instance. But that‘s not something that can be sustained and shouldn‘t be sustained. And I don‘t think America should be—take—or move out into an imperial role.

Now, there‘s a lot of talk recently about the American empire, and some people embrace the idea. But I think that‘s something we should avoid. If we have to intervene overseas, it should be for limited purposes, and we should get out. I don‘t think it‘s the right thing for us to do. I think we ought to cultivate our own society, our own institutions, and not try to go off and shape in any sort of sustained way other—the institutions in other societies.

I do think we have an interest in trying to encourage movements in other societies, to promote democracy in those societies. But I think democracy, if it‘s going to come to other societies, in almost all cases, with a few exceptions, has to—has to have indigenous sources. It‘s not something you can impose from the outside.

LAMB: Before this is over, I have to ask you to tell the story—because as a mild-mannered man sitting in front of me, I read the story about you taking on the mugger, the story of the mugger . . .

HUNTINGTON: Oh!

LAMB: . . . who took you—I mean, attacked you and your wife. How many years ago did this happen?

HUNTINGTON: Oh, that was years and years ago. I don‘t—I don‘t think I could fight off a mugger now.

LAMB: What were the circumstances?

HUNTINGTON: Well, we were at a—had been at a dinner party in Cambridge, in one of the nicest areas of Cambridge, and with one friend, we were walking back to our car. And these two young men came up, and said, Money. And we—What? What do you mean, money? We want your money. And then they attacked us. And . . .

LAMB: Were you surprised at your ability to fight them off?

HUNTINGTON: Well, I don‘t know that we—but I—what—the one—I don‘t think the important thing was physically—these three middle-aged people physically fighting these young men was important. But what I did was to start shouting at the top of my voice, Help. Police. Help. Police. Call the police. And you saw lights go on in all the houses along the street, and people obviously called the police because the police got there in a couple minutes or so. And the—I think our attackers realized that would happen and made off.

LAMB: What was your wife‘s profession over these years?

HUNTINGTON: Well, she has been involved in—as a staff person in politics. She worked in the mayor‘s office in Boston as a special assistant to our friend, Kevin White, who for 16 years was mayor of Boston. And then she has also worked as directing programs at the Kennedy School of Government, executive programs for officials from the U.S. government and from foreign governments.

LAMB: How long do you want to teach?

HUNTINGTON: Well, I‘ll continue. I have no immediate intentions of retiring. I think I probably will want to give it up at some point, and should give it up at some point.