In 2004, Harvard Professor Samuel P. Huntington published his last book, Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity. The book received virtually all bad, in some cases scathing, reviews. Its broad theme was that the continued rise of Mexican immigration, legal and illegal, into the United States, coupled with the ascent of multiculturalism—even while America’s policy elites were turning away from America and becoming more cosmopolitan and global—augured for an epic internal crisis in America. Huntington was startling clairvoyant, of course: foreseeing the battle lines of Donald Trump’s presidency. But 16 years ago, because many of those trends were relatively undeveloped, the book was considered simply alarmist. Because the book’s reviewers were members of the same global elite that the author was criticizing, they were particularly incensed. The book was not a publishing success. By the time Huntington’s themes did achieve a heightened reality, he was dead.
