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To engage or not to engage? Can human rights advocates accomplish more by engaging with China, supporting the Olympics, or shunning the country and the games?

To keep families together who cross the borders illegally, even if that means keeping them in a former prison? Let them go, even if they disappear?

What's the future of jazz? Should we do something to save it? Or does every boat have to float on its own bottom?

It strikes me that a good part of today's program was about balancing competing interests and competing values ... now sometimes it isn't like that. There are almost ALWAYS two sides to every story... or three ... or four. But sometimes there really isn't - in the sense that there's a right and a wrong. You can ask the question of why there was genocide in Rwanda but you can't defend it. You can't justify it.

But I think today's stories are different. You may disagree. And I'd love to hear from you.

But I sincerely believe that both arguments on China are compelling. We played a bite from President Bush explaining why he supports the games, we heard from a journalist covering the games and a radio host who's been mediating the conversations her listeners have been having. Is there really a clear answer about whether the best approach is to stay or go? There were long and emotional debates about how to address South Africa under apartheid - to isolate or to persuade. Eventually it does seem that isolation proved the key to breaking South Africa's will to oppress its black majority. But those were unique historical conditions. Do the same apply to a country of a billion people?

Is there an easy answer about what to do about families who cross illegally? One of our guests, an advocate for less restrictive immigration policies, acknowledged without hesitation that there are good reasons to keep track of people who come to check identities. How do we know that that woman with a baby is really the mother and not trying to sell the baby? How do we know that the man with two little girls in his care is not trying to traffic them, or is not himself a person who participated in acts of genocide or other crimes? But is what we're doing now the right way?

And finally jazz ... we always like to leave you with a smile. I hope we did, but even here there are some dilemmas to face and questions to be asked. Should we do more to preserve this vital American art form. Or, as I said before ... every boat on its own bottom?

Discuss ...

(NOTE from DOUGLAS: This post written by MICHEL - not me - I mistakenly posted under my name. Thanks for understanding.)

3:58 - April 10, 2008

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