Dakota Beacon

I spend a lot of time reading these days. At the risk of sounding wonkish, I must highlight one more book worth discussing. That would be Samuel P. Huntington’s (1927-2008) book “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order” (1996). His central thesis focuses on the post-Cold War era illustrating that the primary source of conflict will no longer be ideological or economic. Instead, cultural conflicts will be between major civilizations and not nation-states. In other words, Huntington believes that global politics following the Cold War will typically be clashes rooted in cultural and civilizational differences, especially religion.

Re-reading his book, I was particularly interested in the clash between Islam and the Christian West. On this point Huntington was a visionary. Unlike today’s globalist thinking, Huntington saw shifting demographics as key to understanding cultural conflict.

As Huntington substantiates, Muslims have been, from the beginning, involved in considerable intergroup violence. The Koran has few prohibitions on violence. A concept of nonviolence is absent from Muslim doctrine and practice. This manifests itself in the Muslim conviction opposing all non-Muslims and Jews. Plus, an Islamic demographic explosion has become a source of violence as Islam expands into Western culture.

The recent classic clash of cultures occurred February 28, 2026, when the US and Isreal attacked Iran in a preemptive and defensive move. Iran would not negotiate the termination of the production of weapons grade uranium for nuclear warheads and the missiles to deliver them.

Which leads to the question: should we Americans accept millions of unvetted illegal aliens into our culture who have no intention of assimilating, of learning our language, or of learning our history and way of government? That said, imagine these nonchanging aliens congregating in communities replicating the culture from which they came and displacing their new host culture. Battle lines are drawn around civilizational identity including religion, historic grievances, and cultural incompatibility. These will drive violence around the planet.

In his book Huntington argues that unbridgeable cultural conflicts will remake the world order. Although critics called him “racist,” “Islamophobic,” and “ignorant” for dismissing the unifying effects of “diversity” and “multiculturalism,” Huntington’s predictions for a volatile twenty-first century were much more correct than anything coming from the globalist camp. Since his demise, the man who dispassionately forecasted civilizational clash and an emerging period of global uncertainty is still badmouthed as “prejudicial,” “white supremacist,” “bigoted,” and “imperialist.”

On the other hand, globalists pretend not to notice potential conflict. They organize their annual conventions where the World Economic Forum can harangue us about “multiculturalism,” “open borders,” “established norms,” and the “rules-based international order.” “Nationalism” and “patriotism” are besmirched as diseases requiring quarantine. They favor Islam and are willing to silence anyone causing offense to Muslims. Willingly they despise Christians and Jews, don’t blink when medieval cathedrals are burned to the ground, or Hamas terrorists rape Israeli women and kill their babies. Globalists simply ignore threats of Islamic jihad.

Elite leaders of Western civilization suffer from shameless incuriosity and pathological stubbornness. These leaders see “multiculturalism” as our future, “diversity as our strength,” and “cultural nationalism” as a “terrorist ideology” that breeds “hate.”

Western globalists insist that civilizational clashes aren’t real. Even after President George Bush’s failed “nation-building” gambit; even after the exposure of Muslim rape gangs trading local girls as sex slaves in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and France; even after communist China’s saber-rattling regarding Taiwan and promises of world domination; Western globalists insist that civilizational clashes aren’t real. Huntington begs to differ.

Years after writing “The Clash of Civilizations” Huntington has been vindicated. Entering the second quarter of the twentieth century, we will see a renewed reality of civilizational conflict. In the real world, values matter, culture matters, religion matters, the past matters. As one wag put it, “In the real-life bullets fly faster than words. In the real world, people fight, cultures compete, and civilizations clash”.

Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).