Who are they?

As far as famous last words go, Michael Moore's at last year's Oscar Awards ceremony were just the right cocktail of populism, moralism, epigram and, as it turned out, delusion: "Shame on you, Mr Bush. Shame on you. And any time you got the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, your time is up."

When George W. Bush officially marks the beginning of his second term later today, it will be tempting for Europeans who tune into the inaugural ceremony to turn the occasion into a celebration of European sophistication in the face of a country so blind (or so evangelical, or so stupid... take your pick) as to re-elect a President who led it into a war on false pretences.

But we should resist the temptation. If we are to use the United States as a foil with which to think about European identity, then we need to get to better grips with the subject.

One way to start is to remember that Mr Moore got the election so wrong because he got a lot right. The letters he was receiving through 2004 from ordinary Americans (Will They Ever Trust Us Again?, Penguin), show a great confidence in American identity and a moralistic foreign policy. This much Mr Moore and his correspondents share with President Bush and his supporters.

Repeatedly, whether the correspondent is a soldier stationed in Iraq, or an Arab-American, or a family member of war veterans of World War II, Korea or Vietnam, we read of pride in being American. It is not the combination of moralism and foreign policy that is questioned - but the betrayal of moralism.

To have an idea of what Mr Moore underestimated, one needs to look at Samuel (Clash of Civilisations) Huntington's book on American national identity (Who are We?, Simon and Schuster).

Two points from that argument are worth emphasising. First, there is the degree to which the US is a deeply religious country and, moreover, despite of immigration, a Christian one.

To go by the polls that Prof. Huntington cites, atheists (only 10 per cent of the population) tend to be abhorred even more than "socialists". The congregations of all the Christian churches are on the increase. Even immigrants from Asia tend to be Christian, rather than Muslim or Buddhist. Despite Mr Moore's comment about the Pope being against the Iraq war, Catholics and particularly some prominent Catholic leaders (as became evident by the time the election came around) have massively shifted their support to the Republican Party over the last couple of decades.

Then there is the historic dimension. Every great movement in the US since its foundation was generated in the wake of a religious movement of solidarity - the Revolution, the abolition of slavery, the radical socialist Christian workers' attacks on "big interests" and machines in the late 19th century and the evangelical coalition behind the current neo-conservatism.

The second point Prof. Huntington emphasises, and which he sees as one of the foremost challenges to the stability of national identity today, is the detachment of most elites (except business, in some cases, and the military) from popular sentiment. The attack on the "liberal establishment" - especially Hollywood, the media and the academics of the top 50 universities - often seems to be a neo-con distraction. But Prof. Huntington (a Harvard professor with a sympathy for popular sentiment) shows that it has a statistical basis on issues like religiosity, language-use and patriotism.

Prof. Huntington sees the challenge to American identity in terms of a core Protestant settler culture based around the values of liberty, individualism and equality of opportunity that is being challenged by cultural doctrines that want to turn the melting pot into cultural enclaves, with patriotism as the big baddy.

What he cannot explain, however, is a theme running throughout Mr Moore's book and political platform in general: that the criticism of Mr Bush is couched in terms of solidarity - a sense of solidarity that his style of government is dispersing and that the American Constitution can retrieve.

It is a criticism that agrees with Prof. Huntington's note that the elites are insulated from the middle and poor America - but because they are withdrawing from publicly funded programmes and pursuing a politics of greed and privatised health and social services.

There is little room for European smugness here. We too face a real threat of withdrawal of the European privileged classes from social welfare, public health and education programmes. And it is not clear that by the end of next year we will have a Constitution which can serve as a source of European solidarity.

ranierfsadni@europe.com