The Magazine  O, My America  From the May 3, 2004 issue: The
clash of the Huntingtons.  May 3, 2004, Vol. 9, No. 32 • By
JAMES W. CEASER Widget tooltip Single Page Print Larger Text
Smaller Text Alerts  Who Are We?  The Challenges to America's
National Identity  by Samuel P. Huntington  Simon & Schuster,
448 pp., $27  SAMUEL P. HUNTINGTON is the author of some of the
most important works of political science of this generation,
ranging from Political Order in Changing Societies (1969) to The
Clash of Civilizations (1998). His latest book, Who Are We?, is
without question his most personal. Huntington has written this
book not just as a scholar but as a patriot at a time when,
according to Huntington, the nation is confronting an "identity
crisis." The very unity and cohesiveness of the country are
under siege, and the dominant trend--only "temporarily obscured"
by Americans' response to the attacks of September 11--is toward
national disintegration.  If creating and preserving a common
identity is the most im