"I guess I'm not too familiar with the bulk of Huntington's work outside his civilizations stuff, which I know mostly in the sense that I think it's a pretty stupid idea, not in any I've-actually-read-his-argument sense."

Ouch! You should read it. I know we are all taught in university that Sam is a Bad Man, but take a look and you'll see that he has a WIDE spectrum of ideas. When I read Clash, I agreed with about 70-80%. But there were some things in it I thought were pretty extreme. And you have to remember I come from a pretty anti-culturalist background.