Olympics are for sport, not politics
While many are tempted to use the Olympic Games as an opportunity to criticize China's human rights record, commentator Ilya Shapiro says it's time to take the politics out of this sporting event.
The Chinese Seal, Dancing Beijing emblem for the 2008 Olympics. (en.beijing2008.cn)
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TEXT OF COMMENTARY
Kai Ryssdal: With less than a month to go until the Olympics, China's continuing its crackdown on perceived threats to the Games.
In Xinjiang province today out in the northwest part of the country, police shot and killed five members of what Beijing said was a Muslim extremist group.
Commentator Ilya Shapiro says the Olympics are best used to promote cohesiveness, not politics.
Ilya Shapiro: World leaders are wringing their hands over this summer's Games in Beijing, but politicians' discomfort that the Games somehow legitimize human rights abuses reflects romanticized history. Since the end of the Cold War, the Olympics have thrown off the corrosive chains of ideological battle to revert to their original values. Among these values, the dominance of the personal over the national and the economic over the political.
The standard view of the Greek Olympics was a festival uniting amateur sportsmen in the name of peace. It was invented by aristocrats like modern Games founder Pierre de Coubertin. Hitler, who staged the 1936 Games had a similar romantic vision.
The ancient reality could not have been further from these misconceptions. Athletes competed for filthy lucre and armies routinely violating the Olympic truce.
The modern Games broke with their predecessors. They allowed politics to overshadow sports. The Communist bloc used the Games as an ideological showcase. While the Western world lay mired in stagflation, the Olympics lost their ancient bearings.
Today's proliferation of commercialism is a positive step. The Olympics have returned to their fitting role as a forum for athletes seeking fame and riches -- and showing the rest of us a good time. Tradition meet meritocracy, Coubertin meet Milton Friedman; The Games have reverted to their entertainment, ritual, and financial essence.
So when the torch came to San Francisco, Arnold Schwarzenegger defended the right to censure China, but he opposed a boycott because sports, he said, "should not be used … to do diplomacy."
History shows that the Governator -- a former Mr. Olympia -- is right: Spotlight the horrific Chinese actions but don't use sports for political purposes. Boycotts are a Cold War relic and a departure from the economics-focused origins of the Olympics.
Ryssdal: Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute.
Comments
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11/14/2008
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From Gainesville, FL, 07/12/2008
Baron Pierre de Coubertin did not "invent" the Olympic Games. He was one of the men that was proactive in re-establishing the Olympic Games in modern times.
The first modern international Olympic Games was held in Athens in 1859. 35 years before Baron Pierre de Coubertin established the International Olympic Committee. The Baron was born on the 1st of January 1863. So clearly, his involvement in the Athens 1859 Olympic Games was limited.
His involvement was also limited, by the fact that he was only 3 years old old, when a national Olympic Games was staged at the Crystal Palace in London in 1866.
When the Baron was old enough to become interested in the Olympics he visited the United Kingdom to meet the Englishman who organised the 1866 Games. His name was Dr William Penny Brookes.
Baron Pierre de Coubertin was inspired by Dr Brookes and this inspiration led to the founding of the International Olympic Committee in 1894.
Yours sincerely,
Mike Pagomenos
Founder of Zappas.org
Member of the International Society of Olympic Historians
From Irvine, CA, 07/11/2008
The most astute historian has little chance of seeing the Olympics from the perspective of person X, Y or Z living in that time. The fact is, the games do include the realities of the age, in which they occur. The Commentary and pointed remarks illustrate this well enough for our age, so what is left ?
The imperfections of our world do not stop during the Olympics but they are of no concern to the athlete that got up at 4 AM to train for years. That person knows its time to execute and as fans, we see the miracle of their abilities, attempting perfection. The feeling I get watching, sparks a connection to the best in me. The human archetype is uncovered repeatedly during the Olympic Games and it gives us each the stamina to take up the tasks necessary to improve our world.
:).
From Austin, TX, 07/11/2008
Mr. Shapiro considers 2700 years of rich Olympic tradition, then offers us a rule for preserving it. "Don't use sports for political purposes". Had he considered all the years we humans have struggled with each other to establish universal human rights, he might well have concluded... "By any means necessary". This is not to say we should boycott the Olympics over human rights abuses in China. But we should certainly examine our priorities. If our highest aim happens to be political, then well, screw the rules.
07/11/2008
I am sorry, but your commentary could not be more incorrect. The Olympics is fundamentally and symbollicaly political, it always has been, and denying it won't change the fact.
It is, in fact, a competition among nations, and though you may argue that the only element that matters are games themselves, in reality, the linkages that develop and that are implicit in the competition have a scope that goes well beyond sport. It is a globally self-defining process, and politics will always be part of that.
Please see:
http://www.x3n.org/2008/07/what-olympics-means-to-china.html
07/11/2008
The Cato Institutes's "solution" for the Olympics' "politics" problem is to completely commercialize the Olympics. Instead of representing countries, the new athletes will represent shoe manufacturers, cellphone companies, pharmaceuticals, automobiles, well, the list is endless. The counterpoint to Mr. Shapiro's sorry vision is that it denigrates the Olympic movement and confuses individual athletic achievement with individual financial gain. Mr. Shapiro should do more studying and less pontificating.
The Olympics was designed to be a test of nations. The Greek city states sent their athletes not only for personal glory but for glory of the gods and their homelands.
Pierre de Coubertin envisioned something similar and nationalism shaped the modern games into the spectacle it now is. Politics has always been part of the games and can not be removed so easily.
When the games began, Nike was the God of victory, not a shoe manufacturer. The athletes competed in her name and the other gods of Olympus. The continuing challenge to the Olympic movement is not to remove politics but rather to aspire to goals of the original Olympics: aspire to be the best and thus inspire the rest of us to be our best.
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