Opinion: In today’s pages: Tibetans, tribes, and cadavers
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Contributing editor Ian Buruma says Tibetan culture may not survive China’s modernization, except among the diaspora:
The Chinese have exported their version of modern development to Tibet, not just in terms of architecture and infrastructure but people, wave after wave of them: businessmen from Sichuan, prostitutes from Hunan, technocrats from Beijing, party officials from Shanghai, shopkeepers from Yunnan. The majority of the people living today in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, are no longer Tibetan. Most people in rural areas are Tibetan, but their way of life is not likely to survive Chinese modernization any more than the ways of the Apaches did in the United States.
George Washington University’s Jonathan Turley wonders why you can be competent to stand trial, but unfit to represent yourself. And Hope College’s David G. Myers says primal urges are to blame for March madness.
The editorial board warns taxpayers that they’ll face new risks as Fannie and Freddie buy more mortgages thanks to a rule change. The board also wants to know where scientific exhibits got their cadavers, and thinks the Supreme Court erred by not giving Jose Medellin, a Mexican national on death row in Texas, another day in court.
Readers discuss discussing race. Torrance’s David Nelson says, ‘The article begins: ‘How do we start a national dialogue on race?’ A better question is: Why should we?’