Character shapes ideals, and with the right ideals a brilliant mind can change entire fields, as did Prof Huntington. Thank you for the description of his character; I like him even more as a person now than as a thinker. His Clash of Civilizations (article and book) changed my entire worldview.

Thanks for sharing your insights.

I think in many ways, though, the clash of civilizations is just the same old clash of civilization vs barbarism, humanitas vs barbaritas.

Of course, Fareed Zakaria would praise Samuel Huntington as a man of towering intellect, who never shied away from going for the jugular.
He might well be so but when he visited Copenhagen few years ago and gave a lecture at the Copenhagen University on his no debunked theme: The clash of civilisations, I challenged him to explain to me, as to on which common grounds, he was lumping 60 diverse Muslim countries as a civilization and what empirical evidence he had. He could not even answer such simple questions.

The fact remains that some neo-con intellectuals have a hobby. Invent an enemy, go out and beat them, occupy the land and siphon their natural resources for a dollar. Iraq is a clear example of it.
So dear Fareed, do sing songs for Mr. Huntington, but be honest and look beyond student-teacher bond.

Kind regards.

The world according to Zirco:

1. Christians accept that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior.
2. Christians are taught to see each other as brothers and sisters in Christ.
3. Christians are expected to keep the Sabbath holy and to come together in communal worship according to the Commandment, in Jesus' name and memory.
4. The US, Moldova, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo all have majority-Christian populations.
5. Ergo, all three are equal constituent members of "Christian" civilization.

it is good piece. However, surprisingly it has done no good to you. You are still a petty Pakistan Hater. You are boasting about a country which does not want to own you. your shabana Aazmi and anothe son of a Nawab can not even buy a flat in Mumbai. Be a Human firs and then a muslm, if you still are.
and then be an American like sam who stood for the truth and not the CNN policy line.

Huntington's "towering intellect" is made obvious by him many "towers" but his last Tower of Babel, CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS, seemed more like a Hollywoodian production rather than a tower of empirical rectitude. He, like many Americans, thought that a superficial grasp of other societies+his credentials amounted to more than enough to go into fantasies and generalizations in order to sell half-baked ideas at the expense of problems understanding and solving. Perhaps, his old age and heath forced him into looking at the momentum of abstractions rather than the fragility of what seems to be the latest trend in polarization. The social forces he saw as so forceful, in fact, were and are very vulnerable to the attraction of modernization and not so well glued together in tradition that only the force of American arms could crush them in hope of building something new from the rubble. As I recall, his Vietnam perspective was much the same. What he failed to realize is that America was not fighting old enemies but rather revolutions. As a result, America fought as if its enemy were familiar ones not revolutionary forces. And so, it fought COUNTERinsurgency—then as now—under the direction of military mediocrities rather than counterrevolution led by its most perceptive and creative intellectuals. Today, we see that the Americanized South Vietnamese youth still overwhelms the Communized youth of North Vietnam, despite the North's power of the gun under Soviet and Chinese advisors.

Zakaria, whom I always watch on TV in hope that he might at some point become interesting, is a cross between TV showman and quasi-intellectual. One might think this is his CNN persona, but, like Fukuyama, this is his hype-intellect persona since he rose to prominence as editor of Foreign Affairs. It is little wonder then that he should so highly praise his mentor who, in his later years, sought attention with hype rather than with substantive analysis.

I in no way doubt the intellectual capacity of either (though Fukuyama leaves me cold, victim of the pseudo-intellectuals he used to serve). But I deeply regret the socialization character of American so-called "public intellectuals" seeking attention and funding through hyperboles and even sycophancy.

A man of towering intellect, who never shied away from going for the jugular. "I challenged him to explain to me, as to on which common grounds, he was lumping 60 diverse Muslim countries as a civilization and what empirical evidence he had" 1. All Muslims worship in the direction of the Mecca. 2. "A couple of years later, as a Ph. D hard drive recover. student at Harvard, I started working for Sam myself. The FP Debate: Samuel Huntington's Legacy Samuel Huntington, 1927-2008" Let's face Huntington for what he was: a foreign policy hack who just happened to put forward an argument which helps further the imperialistic ambitions of an overzealous US government around the world. His "civilizations" argument is weak at best, if not completely asinine. It's time to ignore him and his predecessors like Zakaria--the elite's foreign policy lapdog.