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• Marc A. Thiessen: On North Korea, Trump Should Refuse to Take the Bait

For more of today’s columns, visit Right Opinion.

Opinion in Brief

Jonah Goldberg: “By now you’ve probably heard that an American teenager wore a traditional Chinese dress to her prom. The young lady, Keziah Daum, is not ethnically Chinese or Asian. And this infuriated a lot of people on Twitter. … Cultural appropriation was originally a sociological term to describe how a majority culture borrows or adapts from a minority culture some custom, fashion, cuisine or practice. At some point, alas, it went from being descriptive to proscriptive. … Without cultural appropriation, American blacks would never have picked up European musical instruments to create the blues and jazz. Without cultural appropriation, white and black artists alike would never have spun these wonderful creations into rock and roll. Nearly every meal you’ve ever eaten is the byproduct of centuries of cultural appropriation, to one extent or another. … The New York Times did a great journalistic service this week: It investigated whether the Chinese were offended by Daum’s alleged hate crime. The overwhelming response? Nope. Chinese social media and cultural commentators celebrated Daum’s decision as a compliment. But in America, unfortunately, some people are so insecure in their identity and so desperate to be offended they have breathed new life into H.L. Mencken’s definition of puritanism: ‘the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.’”