Post by Prof. Paul Eidelberg

The title of this article is that of a book written by Harvard Professor Samuel P. Huntington, who traces his ancestry to the Samuel Huntington who signed the Declaration of Independence.

As I have written in Rescuing America from Nihilism, Huntington begins to define America’s national identity with these precise remarks:

Until the middle of the eighteenth century, Americans defined themselves in terms of race, ethnicity, and culture, particularly religion. The creedal component of American identity only began to emerge as relations with Britain deteriorated over issues of trade, taxes, military security, and the extent of Parliament’s power over the colonies…. As their debates over their relations with Britain intensified, Americans also began to invoke more universalistic Enlightenment self-evident truths concerning liberty, equality, and individual rights. Combined, these two sources generated the creedal definition of American identity embodied most notably in the Declaration of Independence, but also expressed in many other documents, sermons, pamphlets, writings, and speeches in the 1770s and 1780s.

This is what Huntington says in Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), 47

Tragically, America has lost or has forsaken her national identity. No longer is America animated by what Abraham Lincoln called “our ancient faith.” That faith, Lincoln saw, was embodied in America’s primary foundational document, the Declaration of Independence. It was in this revolutionary document that America’s Founding Fathers proclaimed the cardinal principles of American Exceptionalism, principles that transcend space and time, principles derived from the universal and trans-historical truths of the Bible of Israel and encapsulated in the Declaration pivotal terms, “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” the source of man’s inalienable rights to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

It should be obvious that President Barack Obama’s paramount objective is to destroy America’s unique national identity by flooding the country with Muslim migrants. No greater traitor has ever arisen in this country, whose would-be leaders, however, lack the courage and wisdom to articulate their convictions in such a way as to identify America’s greatest enemy.