The International Elite Bubble

That's the title of this piece by Michael Totten over at World Affairs, sent along by former blogger extraordinare Tertium Quid. As Totten describes, the international elite is thin on the ground in the Middle East and elsewhere in the developing world, and the assumptions that undergird the elites in the West have largely failed to permeate the cultures outside the West. As Totten concludes:

I’d like to see a world where the majority of people everywhere have cosmopolitan values. That world might be less interesting to write about, but more pleasant to live in.

We’re not there yet. And I’m not at all convinced we’re even heading in that direction. The cultural elites of the world are heading in that direction, for sure, but it’s not true of everyone everywhere.