Samuel P. Huntingdon: Unassimilated

The Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntingdon has a new book, Who Are We?, that argues that Hispanic immigration is undermining the United States, at least the United States as it has been. Huntingdon is interviewed in today’s New York Times Magazine.

Below are my two favorite question-and-answers, the first selected because of the answer and the second because of the unintentionally revealing question.

Your book implicitly endorses Anglo-Protestant values.

Would America be the country it has been and still is, pretty much today, if in the 17th and 18th centuries it had been settled not by British Protestants but by French, Spanish or Portuguese Catholics? The answer is no. It would not be America. It would be Quebec or Mexico or Brazil.

….

Some of us find it surprising that a man like yourself, a Harvard professor and an eminent political scientist, would see the trend toward bilingualism as such a threat.

There are perfectly decent, responsible, democratic countries, like Canada and Belgium, that are bilingual. But that does create its own distinctive set of problems.

By contrast, some of the rest of us find it surprising that so many still regard the New York Times as a national rather than a tribal newspaper.