this all basically makes sense, but i worry that you may want to explicitly introduce a more robust theory about what you might call the ‘assimilationist’ contingent.

i started to write a longer reply about what i meant by this, but i realized it was getting quite long and off-topic, so i decided to make it into an entry of its own, which can be viewed here (http://www.livejournal.com/users/q10/136550.html).