Globalization means an import of social rulests to the Core, as well as the export of economic rulesets from the Core.

As Barnett wrote:

"can we show the necessary patience to let Muslims living in the West make these necessary changes on their own schedule, or must we force confrontations and showdowns?"
http://tdaxp.blogspirit.com/archive/2005/11/17/tom-barnett-against-connectivity-fundamentalists.html

After criticism he rhetorically backed away from some of the consequences of this, but I bet he still believes it. I'm sympathetic to that view, myself.

I don't think that's a bad question to ask: in fact it is an excellent question to answer.

And I think that the answer has to be, it depends. I don't think that there is any need to force acceptance of homosexuality on Muslims living in the West, but nor may we accept them forcing homophobia on us nor may we accept them acting on their homophobia by killing gays. Similarly, we cannot allow them to kill people who make films about Islam, or shut down newspapers who publish cartoons they object to, but we need not force them to sit silently by (as we expect, by and large, Jews and Christians to do) and not react at all.

In other words, our patience and tolerance ends, at most, just before we are forced to throw out our own core values (no pun) in exchange for those of the imported minority.

So does PNM, then, expect that we will actually be forced to accept not just social change at the margins, but changes in the central values of Western society? If so, PNM is doomed to fail: it is as unrealistic to expect Westerners to simply turn away from their entire history and moral system as it is to expect Muslims to do the same.

Although I think it's a tremendously optimistic and positive theory, I'm skeptical about Barnett's theory for pretty simple reasons: there is no Core; there is no Gap. Barnett's theory began with a line drawn on a map. The line is an error of perspective. If you can't actually draw such a line, what becomes of the theory?

The reality is that, as this fall's riots in France demonstrated, when you actually get closer to the ground you see that Core countries have little areas of Gap inside them and Gap countries have little areas of Core.

One of these days I'll post my alternative theory (which I've thought of as the “Wave Theory of PNM”). It provides a framework for explaining a number of observed phenomena that Barnett's work just ignores.

One of the fundamental premises that Dr. Barnett makes with his Core and Gap principles is that the Core has evolved (socially, politically, and economically) and the Gap has not. Since it makes little sense for the Core to make major concession or changes within their further evolved societies the answer is that they will require the Gap immigrants to adapt socially, politically, and economically.

The time given to the Gap immigrants to adapt (generations) and their percentage within the Core society during this period of adaptation will be the best measure of whose rulesets are being pushed to reset. The worse case situation would be a high immigration rate over a very short period of time. It is obvious that this case produces a large amount of human emotion adapting over a short period of time - thunderstorm and possible tornado's would be in the forecast.

Dave,

Barnett mentions the impression in the first book.

Jeff,

"So does PNM, then, expect that we will actually be forced to accept not just social change at the margins, but changes in the central values of Western society? If so, PNM is doomed to fail: it is as unrealistic to expect Westerners to simply turn away from their entire history and moral system as it is to expect Muslims to do the same."

No ruleset will be replaced wholesale, but one can expect marginal changes to be leveraged. I think one can see a (more peaceful) glimmer of this in how hispanic immigrants are beginning to shape social policy in the US.

Great post Jeff and comments. I'll try to respond late tonight and alert Sean Meade to the discussion

I asked a similar question some time back, a little more generically. "What happens when a Core nation backslides, becomes Seam or Gap?" I'm still waiting for my answer. It's not that Dr. Barnett's answer is wrong. As far as I can tell, he views the probability for backsliding as so low as not to deserve serious consideration.

The problem is that the area of Kantian Peace that he theorizes about gets less desirable when it's not a one time effort that ends in a self-sustaining process. And once you change the granularity of the examination to sub-national groups, right down to neighborhoods, it becomes clear that cycling through Core and Gap is possible, even likely over time.

Dan tdaxp - The question is framed incorrectly because the bright line isn't whether you pray to Allah or not but whether you adopt the Gap ruleset of your birthplace or the Core ruleset of where you live in the West. Those who peel off (like an onion layer) from the Gap ruleset create a powerful example when they succeed and show that it is the ruleset, not their religion, skin tone, or accent that determines success. A self-sustaining situation will have an Old Core nation creating a successful New Core portion of Gap immigrants who do war on the Gap ruleset they successfully ditched. This is a fancy way of recasting the old assimilation narrative but it increases detail and is closer to the reality of the process.

By contrast a non-self sustaining process would have the Old Core of non-assimilating immigrants kill off their New Core fellow immigrants or at least firewalling them off. The muslims in France do this with cries of "whore" and gang raping noncompliant girls and stabbing noncompliant boys.

Are stabbings and gang rape inevitable? I don't think so. And when the situation is presented in such terms, I don't think that there is any significant old core appetite for allowing stabbings and rapes so one minority segment can repress another.

Hello Jeff.

Interesting questions re: "rule of law" and multiculturalism. Both are expressed differently, but neither is static, I think. Laws change when a sufficient number of people believe they should be changed; and multiculturalism can be expressed in various ways, including changes in the laws behind "rule of law."

Behind the law, use of force and threats of the use of force can only work so long. Even in the extreme -- a totalitarian, militaristic state -- a dependence on force for maintaining static rule sets will not lead to rule sets which are static in perpetuity. The old guard is always dying, making room for a new guard. Behind your question seems to be an assumption of static rule sets which must either endure forever or be utterly destroyed; but the more realistic p.o.v. would be dynamism. Of course, societies can take a few steps backward in the process, but I think that ultimately they must tend toward the better paths or they themselves would be utterly destroyed. (Utterly destroyed: even for the immigrants, even for the natives.)

When thinking of the "rule" in rule sets, some theorists seem to believe in an authoritarian person or group of persons who will establish and maintain rules, usually by force or threats of force. I'm more of the opinion that rather than establish rules, we should look for the rules that are already present and build sets from those -- and I don't mean, looking for rules which some person or group of persons have established in the past. I.e., in large populations, some rules will come into force pretty much on their own; they will be recognized by large numbers of people, more and more people over time. I believe that the central question of the future will be what we are already seeing and have been seeing for some time: individual liberties v. communal good. Although individuals can severely disrupt a system, the ultimate rule sets will be determined by a cross-section of forces, many of them in favor of the greatest number of people. (If an individual can wreak much damage, some millions of individuals can also be quite powerful.)

So your question seems, from my p.o.v., to rest on a false assumption. If the question is, "Can present Core rule sets continue in perpetuity, unchanged?", then I think that the answer must be No if we mean by "Core rule sets" every little law and every little cultural custom. Some of the core rules of the Core Rule Set will probably endure, at least for as long as they are useful to the largest number of people.

Of course "every little law and every little cultural custom" will not survive. My concern is whether the key "big rules" of the West — rights to life, liberty and property; respect for all without regard to gender, race or religion; freedom of expression; rule of law; representative governance; and so forth — can survive, or if the multiculturalist demands to tolerate and bend to the intolerance, violence, and reactionary chauvinism of immigrants who don't share those rulesets will tear the West apart. Many consider the welfare state and multiculturalism also to be part of the base ruleset of the West, but it seems to me that the former will soon collapse under its own weight, while the latter may be a cultural death warrant.

It seems to me that most of the disruptive immigrants want exactly the same things you've mentioned in your list of "big rules," but think they are not getting those things. "Respect for all without regard to gender, race, or religion" is one of the key issues in the conflict, from their p.o.v. But these rules come into conflict; so, "respect for all" wars with "freedom of expression." (The cartoon controversy.) Representative governance might also be an issue related to this conflict, within Europe at least.

But like Tim, I doubt that the majority will bend before the minority, especially on the bigger issues of rape, murder, terrorism, etc., or the "right to life".

I wonder how much of the disjunction might be related to issues of education, and the confusion by many, immigrant and native alike, in seeing how all these rights work together. I.e., how can repect for all work with freedom of expression, since one side believes that respect comes from the moderation of expression and the other side believes freedom of expression trumps any form of respect for individuals and communities. Most current laws deal with the concrete expression of these rights -- rights to earn a living, to run for office, and to be physically secure -- rather than with sensibilities, although even in America (for instance) some things can't be broadcast on the public airwaves (pornography, certain curse words, general nudity, etc.), which seems to prove that the populace is in favor of some limits on free expression.

These conflicts of interest are normal for a healthy society. Even if European societies outlaw "blasphemy" in the media, I doubt that they are close to eliminating rights for women or establishing patriarchal Sharia law; I doubt that gays will need to worry about public executions like those performed in Iran. There is a limit to how far the populace will "bend" to the sensibilities of the advocates of Sharia law.