News that President Obama has said that he might meet with the Dalai Lama reminded me of an analogy I made years ago.

Tibet is to China today what the “Indian Nations” were to the USA in the nineteenth century.  Tibet’s old agrarian and nomadic culture cannot survive against China’s modern bureaucratic capitalism.  It is very similiar to the way the Navaho culture could not survive against the expansion of the United States “Empire of Wealth.”  It is sad that old cultures have to die for newer ones to thrive but it is the case.  In the long run the cultures that have survived have been those that offered their citizens the most security, opportunity  and freedom.

The Dalai Lama traveling in the USA to plead his lost cause is similar to Indian Chiefs touring the European capitals in the 1880’s.  It is sad and nostalgic.  We all wish that things didn’t have to change, but nomadic, agrarian societies cannot deliver medicines that save children’s lives and modern western capitalistic democracies can.