Mondays With Murray: Rothbard On Olympic Patriotism
Growing up in the early '90's, some of my clearest memories are scanning the pages of the morning paper to read through the Olympic medal count for each country. I was at the height of my patriotic medal counting glory during the Barcelona Olympics in the summer of ’92 and winter Olympics the same year in Albertville, France. To me, the only thing that mattered was the United States winning the medal count.Watching the games during these years I would obviously cheer hard for the Americans to win at least a bronze, but I always hoped for gold. Also, I made sure to root against the countries that were just ahead or closely behind the U.S. in the medal standings. Reflecting on these childhood memories does not cause me to swell me with pride.Now that I’m older and, I’d like to think a bit wiser, the meaning of the Olympic Games has changed drastically. It is no longer about the medal count. On the rare occasions that I find time to watch an Olympic event I find myself in awe of the athletic prowess of each competitor, regardless of affiliation. The national pride and patriotic chants have become a turn off and act as a deterrent to tuning in. The Olympic Games have morphed into a two-week long religious event dedicated to worshiping the role of the almighty State throughout the world.Murray Rothbard, in The Libertarian Forum, described the blind patriotism and unsportsmanlike behavior that accompanied the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, California.
ABC was disgustingly chauvinist, much more than in past Olympics. Cameras pointed shamelessly to Americans to the exclusion of virtually anyone else; commentary was American-hype to the nth degree; behind every American athlete pictured was a huge American flag waving in the nonexistent breeze. ABC got so bad that Olympic authorities began to complain.But it wasn’t just ABC or the press. It was the American masses, the audience themselves, that succumbed to the most unsportsmanlike behavior. The mob, bellowing “USA,” “USA,” the cheers for every U.S. point, the booing when a U.S. gymnast got less than a perfect 10. Probably the low point of the entire Games was when Carl Lewis, upon winning the 100 meters – typically, about 20 meters ahead of everyone else – grabbed a huge American flag, and virtually wrapping himself in the thing, ran around the Stadium. It was the apex of a truly obscene spectacle.And what ever happened to the old propaganda of the U.S. media that the Olympic Games are not a team, but an individual, sport, so that one shouldn’t even count the medals gained by the various countries? That old hype apparently applied only when the Soviet Union and East Germany used to walk off with most of the medals. But now that the East European bloc was safely out of the way, Oh the crowing and oh the gloating about all the medals “we” of the U.S. were racking up! Hey, fantastic, so we beat up on the British Antilles, and all the other one-horse countries that the U.S. paid to show up. As usual, the American mob was ungallant from start to finish, as in the invasion of tiny Grenada, gloating about the huge U.S. stomping on minuscule opposition!
What Rothbard observed back then is still true today. The Olympics do not bring out the best qualities from fans or the media. The Olympics are a show put on by the State and broadcast by the State-loving media.It is interesting that there is not more pushback from looted citizens around the globe. In this year’s games the host country Russian is rumored to have spent over 50 billion dollars. What a stupendous misallocation of resources!In a libertarian society, there could still be a place for an Olympic type games put on by a private organization. Of course, in order to be private the event tax dollars could not be used and the athletes would not have their winnings confiscated by the State. None of the athletes would have an affiliation with a country. The games would be a straightforward presentation of the best athletes competing for themselves and their families. No hidden State agenda and no stolen property fueling the spectacle.Until that time comes, I’ll have to tolerate the patriotic status updates and tweets when the U.S. wins and continue to remind others that under the current Olympic set-up the chief beneficiary is the State. Anything that grows the State is an enemy of liberty.If you're craving more Murray, you can read all of the previous editions of Mondays with Murray by visiting the full archive page!
