The Death of the Olympic Spirit–An Adventurist Editorial

For 100 years the Olympic Spirit has enveloped nations in politics, spirit, and sport. It has brought out the worst in Nations, the best in athletes, and offered all of us an inside view into the world at large.

In 2008, the summer Olympic Games will be held in Beijing, China. Most of the world knows this by now, with the myriad of broadcasts on CNN, the BBC, and stations around the world reporting on the recent protests concerning China, Tibet, Mt. Everest, and Darfur.

Protests are not new to the Olympic Games. Every four years a new nation has a new agenda. It is world nature that everyone does not get along. Bob Marley sang “One World, One Love” probably the epitime of what the Olympic Spirit tries to encompass every four years. With nations waging war, with atrocities committed to fellow humans–famine, disease, disaster–political uprisings, and political leaders who fight for their own personal agendas, “One World” is simply not possible.

China rests it laurels on a huge “coming out” party during the Olympic Games. They want to be seen, heard, and represented as a leading world power. With that power comes responsibility. A responsibility that many of us feel has not come to fruition through China’s own world relationships with nations that represent a bit less of what freedom means.

Perhaps I am speaking only of an “American” outlook. Perhaps my eyes are jaded, to a degree, by the press and it’s own personal agenda. Perhaps I wouldn’t believe in Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Press, Freedom of Religion ect. if it were not for the aforementioned Press.

Over the past few days, many nations are calling on a Boycott, not of the games themselves, but of the Opening Ceremonies. A boycott of this type would show a country’s personal stance without causing a damaging blow to the athletes that have trained religiously for the past four years. It would also allow America and other world nations to show their support of China by pumping millions and millions of dollars into an economy and a political system that we don’t see eye to eye with.

The United States needs to WAKE UP!

The United States was built on a struggle for Independence. Tibet is now struggling for the same freedoms that we struggled with 230 years ago. We took up arms to fight tyranny, taxation, and a censorship of freedoms that our founding father’s felt like we deserved. Our understanding of democracy has allowed us to rise swifter, higher, and stronger than any other political system to date. “Citius, Altius, Forius“–The Olympic Motto–”Swifter, Higher, Stronger”.

China see us as a political enemy bent on keeping them down. We are not the enemy. Human Rights is the enemy. Freedom of Expression, Freedom of Press, Freedom of Religion–those things hold China down. Let your people speak and worship as they choose, let them find out what is really going on in the world, both at home and around them–let them decide for themselves what their roles should be in the growing world economy and quit subduing, quit blanketing your own fears of what your people will think or how they will react. They might actually offer up something good to society.

The International Olympic Committee has shown it’s support of China by giving the 2008 Olympic Games to Beijing. I question this move from an International standpoint on the basis that in 2004 they were refused the Olympics due to human rights issues. Can four years possibly equal a complete change in attitudes regarding such a large issue? Nothing has changed with Tibet, Taiwan, or Darfur to warrant China the opportunity to host the 2008 Olympic Games.

An Opening Ceremony Boycott, while showing the views of the nation’s involved, would still allow for the economic support of a nation that does not value our own personal beliefs in the rights of humanity.

It is not enough.

While a full Boycott of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games would hurt athletes, it should also be our government’s responsibility to always back what our Nation stands for and not let China profit from a world stage. Just because China wants something does not mean we have to expose ourselves by submitting to their system of beliefs and values and empowering them to believe that we support what they are doing.

By standing on our own heals, by allowing us to make our own decisions, by giving us the freedom to speak our own thoughts–we are empowered to make the decision that would be best for this Nation. That decision should be a full Boycott of the 2008 Olympic Games based on the past and current track record of China’s human rights issues. Failure to do anything less will be an injustice to the people of Tibet, Darfur, Thailand and our own nation, a nation that many look upon as the place where Freedom rings. Without the freedoms that our Nation holds on to, in my eyes, the Olympic Spirit is dead–