ABSTRACT
It is revealing of the political spirit of our post-Cold-War times that Samuel P. Huntington, once the optimistic herald of world-wide democratization, has become a pessimistic prophet of a “clash of civilizations.”1 Huntington had earlier, like Alexis de Tocqueville, argued that the spread of democracy was inevitable. Now Huntington has adopted a friend-foe thesis (“the West versus the Rest”) reminiscent of the German jurist Carl Schmitt. Which Huntington should be believed? The democratic universalist or the cultural particularist? Will democracy’s wave continue to wash up on foreign shores or will it break upon civilizational conflict? Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that consistency was a concern only of the smallminded. But this “clash of Samuel Huntingtons” puts broadmindedness to the test!2
