libertarianSPORTS
____________________________________________________
Why have a sports page at a political website?
Why not? How many times do we refer to our elections as a horse race? So we offer sports from a libertarian perspective. Obviously as a small third party, the quintessential Libertarian team is the small-market, small-budget pro team, the tiny liberal arts college no one has ever heard of making the sweet sixteen in March Madness, the average high school football team that slays behemoth's by introducing a brand new offensive scheme that transforms the game. In other words, underdogs!
David vs. Goliath is a Libertarian Story
What
makes me an incurable sports junkie is that it is a cross-addiction
with being a political junkie. Again, forgive me for invoking the name
of Tim Russert again, but Russert-- the quintessential political
junkie-- was also a sports junkie and a die hard fan (in the true sense
of the word as the root of fanatic)
of his hometown (and in the interest of full disclosure, also mine)
Buffalo Bills because the contest, the odds, the real if also remote
possibility that a sleeper can emerge from the woodwork to unseat the
anointed one, is the essence of both sports and politics in America.
Libertarians
are about overcoming odds, holding firm to principles, maintaining
loyalties, staying in the game at 110% no matter what the score. We're
the eternal David up against the Goliath of Big Government but we stay
in the fight because we know how David's story ends and we are
imaginitive enough to believe that it can happen again. So we continue
the fight for liberty over legalities, for free markets over market
manipulation, for private solutions over public incompetence,
inefficiency and corruption. We tend to enjoy the underdog role but we
have the vision to believe that we can prevail, and we will. --jwh--
More on giant-slayers at our sister website USUnderdogSports.
Here are some highlights.
On Any Given Sunday... The key selling point for the National Football League, over the past couple of decades at least, has been "parity." In other words the proverbial and literal playing fields are level. There is balance in talent from team to team. Therefore the expression, "On any given Sunday any team can beat any other team," is more than a tag line. It is the truth.
It could be argued (and I will argue) that football is America's national religion. It has strong vicarious power. We all have the opportunity through our teams to go from last to first in one season (which frequently happens in the NFL). There is always hope for the underdog. There is no corruption, no fix, just pure competition. Anyone can win. That's the Libertarian vision for society. Parity of opportunity. Free markets. No corruption, no fixes. Equal opportunity for victory or defeat. --jwh--Soccer in the United States
Is it Libertarian to like Soccer? We seem to get the impression that it isn't "American" to like this world-sport with greatest strength in socialist bastions like Europe and fascist bastions like Latin America. But we submit that in the United States, where soccer is and may always be the step-child in the professional sports arena-- especially women's soccer-- at least when competing for the sports dollar, it is definitely a David vs. Goliath thing. Soccer players and aficionados in the United States just don't get respect. Sort of like a political party we know? But one day they will enjoy parity-- also like a political party we know. Pro Soccer in the United States. Rays, Cardinals, Cavaliers, Bimidgi State, and Piedmont High.
The Piedmont High School (CA) football team (below) have made national news by beating or scaring teams much better than they are, with their new "All Eleven" offense.
