ABSTRACT
The clash between the multiculturalists and the defenders of Western civilization and the American Creed is 'the real clash' within the American segment of Western civilization. The intellectual school of thought on American identity into which Samuel P. Huntington asserts himself is that of cultural nationalism. Cold War activities took the American military into small-scale interventions in places like Grenada, Nicaragua, Angola, Cambodia, and Afghanistan. Though Cold War activities dominated foreign affairs during the 1980s, Ronald Reagan, too, found himself pulled into Middle Eastern affairs, this time as part of a multinational force in Lebanon. As with immigration, foreign affairs, and the economy, social movements played a significant role in shaping the sociohistorical context in which Huntington was writing. Nativism of the sort proposed by hate groups, what Huntington calls extreme nativism, is driven by the desire to return the US to the peak of a homogenous golden age where Anglo-Saxon culture and people were dominant.
