Buddhism Offers No Political Shortcuts
The Atlantic's Graeme Wood on Buddhist democracy nails it:
There may be something or nothing to learn about democracy from these spectacles. The first suggests that the movement for Tibetan independence does not answer only to the Dalai Lama, and that China may have a bigger problem, with a wider and more distributed base, than it thought. Would Lhasa consider exchanging the unquestioned rule of Hu Jintao for something more than the unquestioned rule of Tenzin Gyatso? As for the Bhutanese monarch, all signs point to democracy -- except for the often and freely expressed desire of the Bhutanese to keep and revere the monarchy, with or without elections. Whatever else this shows, it should put rest to the notion that democratization of the Buddhist street is any simpler -- or more welcome -- than democratization of the Arab one.
Second place in thought-provoking quotes, though, goes to French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner:
On Wednesday, Kouchner told RMC radio and BFM television that the boycott was not a bad idea. But "it seems unrealistic," he said. "There are a lot of good ideas that can't be put into practice."
"When you're dealing in international relations with countries as important as China, obviously when you make economic decisions it's sometimes at the expense of human rights," he added. "That's elementary realism."
It's no time for sycophantic devotion to one political course, religion, leader, or even state, especially when repression seems to be expanding.
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