Welcome Sports Haters!

Thanks for the compliment. I hope I won't disappoint or bore you with more posts.

Regarding your observation as a libertarian that totalitarianism is an assault on individuality, you might be interested to learn that Lenin and Hitler attacked the very notion of the conscience of the individual. Lenin completely dismissed the concept of conscience (and morality) as a "bourgeoisie" invention. Addressing an assembly of SS officers (if I remember correctly who the audience was), Hitler said, "Let me liberate you from the chimera of conscience." In this country during the Vietnam War, conscientious objectors whose religious convictions were not in doubt were exempted from the draft. In Nazi Germany all conscientious objectors, including Jehovah's Witnesses, were executed. I'm sure the record is the same for Communist regimes.

Sure. Just call me Bill. I've never let anyone call me William. Sounds stuck up.

Since we’ve been discussing totalitarianism in a sports-related thread, I must relate the following incident. When I first learned as a high school student about the Holocaust, a particular question immediately arose in my mind; and that was, during our nation’s participation in World War II, were those of our Jewish servicemen fighting in Europe at risk of becoming casualties of the Holocaust? As I learned years later, the answer was most definitely. Although the number is very small compared to the numbers of Jews killed in European countries and territories occupied by the Nazis, the Holocaust did claim the lives of several hundred American Jews. I don't remember the exact figure. Many of them just happened to be visiting certain countries in Europe either conducting business or visiting relatives back in “the old country” when they were stranded there by military invasion. Their U.S. citizenship did not protect them. They were rounded up with the native Jews.

During the early 1980s, there was a pharmacy near our home that I frequently patronized before it eventually closed down. I was making a purchase there one day, and was chatting with the lady behind the cash register, who was old enough to be of my parents’ generation. This was the only time I happened to see her at the pharmacy. She told me that she had a brother who was a World War II veteran who had served in Europe, where he was captured by German soldiers. She told me that he was incarcerated in a concentration camp. I responded by saying, “You mean a prisoner of war camp, don’t you?” She replied, “No, a concentration camp.” I don’t know why, but I didn’t think to ask her if her family were Jewish. I have no doubt that they were, though. Years later a member of my congregation told me that he personally knew a Jewish World War II veteran who had spent time in a Nazi concentration camp. I assume that this veteran was this pharmacy clerk’s brother.

When her brother departed this country for Nazi-occupied Europe, he was in top shape physically and had a powerful physique. She told me that he had been an athlete in high school. I’m assuming that he had played football. (You know how crazy Texans are about football. I don’t happen to share their enthusiasm.) Fortunately, the concentration camp where he had been incarcerated was liberated; and he was flown back to the U.S. Upon his return the members of their family were shocked at his condition. He was emaciated. Just the expression on his face revealed that he had been traumatized. He had been deliberately starved and possibly had been subjected to other forms of torture as well. I didn’t have the heart to ask his sister for more details. As he was starving in the Nazi concentration camp, his body cannibalized muscle tissue from his well-developed physique. If he had entered the camp with a slender build, he would have died. He no doubt had enjoyed the popularity of being a football player in high school, only a year or so later to be threatened with death in a concentration camp as a Jew despised by the Nazis.

For about a year and a half, he could not talk to anyone about his experiences in the concentration camp and how he had been mistreated. He started drinking heavily and developed a drinking problem. Fortunately, he realized that he was hurting himself and stopped drinking. Then he was finally able to tell his parents and sister what had happened to him in the camp.

Oops! This post is addressed to OmSigDAVID. Sorry!

Earlier you wondered how sports fans would react if they discovered that some of the athletes they cheered for espoused principles that were abhorent to their own. I'd like to pose a question or two to you along those same lines. When I was a boy, I had the misfortune to grow up with a former university football player who was a bully. He once beat up a friend of mine who was having to take growth hormone injections, which should give you an idea of the extent of this football player's cowardice. I noticed that the local sports media, including the student newspaper at the university, never said that his conduct off the playing field was less than admirable. Instead, he was portrayed as one of the coolest persons who ever lived. The sports media, which really is nothing more than a propaganda mill, and many of the football fans say that I should admire this guy simply because he excelled at playing football. The way he treated others off the playing field didn't matter? I don't admire nonathletes who are bullies; so, why should I admire an athlete who is a bully simply because he excels at a sport? To cite another example, a year ago I read about a Denver Broncos football player (not in the sports media, incidentally) who had fathered eleven children out of wedlock by eleven different women. I shouldn't have to mention that children who grow up without a father suffer terribly and often become socially maladjusted. How often are individual athletes, such as the two I just mentioned, condemned for their despicable conduct? I recently spoke to a guy who played college football. He said that most of his teammates had had a "Rule the roost" attitude as football players at the university. (Mind you, he wasn't talking sour grapes. He's still a rabid football fan today.) I wasn't exactly surprised at what he said about his former teammates.

Bill

Before I'm denounced by some sports fan, I admire individual athletes
who actually uphold moral standards and are kind towards others;
but I have no respect for those who are arrogant jerks.
The sports media refuses to recognize that a guy can excel at a sport
and at the same time be a lousy human being (which is true of
every other human endeavor as well, of course).

I'm sorry to hear about your father.
I must concede that having no father
is better than having a bad father.

I know this has nothing to do with this thread; but I've noticed in another one that when you made a challenging comment about people on the left, one of the liberal members responded by saying "F--- you" instead of trying to reason with you. I paid a lot of attention to politics when I was younger, but disillusionment set in over the years.
I really don't keep up with politics anymore; but I've always been close to my sister, who is very liberal.

So, I'm just wondering: Is this the way liberals typically act, or do conservatives act the same way?

liberal (adj.)
late 14c., from O.Fr. liberal "befitting free men, noble, generous," from L. liberalis "noble, generous," lit. "pertaining to a free man," from liber "free," from PIE base *leudheros (cf. Gk. eleutheros "free"), probably originally "belonging to the people" (though the precise semantic development is obscure), from *leudho- "people" (cf. O.C.S. ljudu, Lith. liaudis, O.E. leod, Ger. Leute "nation, people"). Earliest reference in English is to the liberal arts. Sense of "free in bestowing" is from late 14c. With a meaning "free from restraint in speech or action" (late 15c.) liberal was used 16c.-17c. as a term of reproach. It revived in a positive sense in the Enlightenment, with a meaning "free from prejudice, tolerant," which emerged 1776-88. Purely in reference to political opinion, "tending in favor of freedom and democracy" it dates from c.1801, from Fr. libéral, originally applied in English by its opponents (often in French form and with suggestions of foreign lawlessness) to the party favorable to individual political freedoms. But also (especially in U.S. politics) tending to mean "favorable to government action to effect social change," which seems at times to draw more from the religious sense of "free from prejudice in favor of traditional opinions and established institutions" (and thus open to new ideas and plans of reform), which dates from 1823.

Definitions of liberal on the Web:

broad: showing or characterized by broad-mindedness; "a broad political stance"; "generous and broad sympathies"; "a liberal newspaper"; "tolerant ... having political or social views favoring reform and progress tolerant of change; not bound by authoritarianism, orthodoxy, or tradition a person who favors a political philosophy of progress and reform and the protection of civil liberties

the fact is, they only got that far because they make people too scared to oppose them and teenage girls tend to be a bit ditzy and will go for the hunky footballer than the smaller yet far more intelligent and well-conducted young man

Same here with my and my friends. Well, my "imaginary friends".

At my school, I sucked at nearly every sport I played and nearly
put out my arm swinging an 11 oz. baseball bat. The only sport
I was good at was running and that was only because every damn
P.E. lesson the jocks would all gang up on me and chase me
around the gym/court/field and when they caught me,
I would usually get the living crap beaten out of me.

P.E. classes inflicted so much torment on me...
it has been 10 years since I last had to do a school sports lesson
but the emotional scars I had been given still last today and they
have hugely affected my self-confidence and I find it difficult to
go out and make myself known.

Sports dominate our society in many ways.
I don't mind that, but they have taken hold of many people and their minds and
turned them into an elitist clan who will reject/harass/patronise
anyone who dares not show any interest in them. The word "sport" alone
sends shivers down my spine.

I loved computing, math and the sciences and
once I managed to recite 150 digits of pi in front of my whole class.
I sure did get some funny looks that day, and there are people out
there who can do far more than 150. i_like_1981 does not seem
to be hugely lucky in a social sense. I had very few friends during
high school and practically everyone picked on me.

Even the girls. I once got beat up by a girl
who was friends with several of the jocks at my school.

Of course, I could have fought back, but if
I'd have dared do so much as even go for her, the jocks would have
given me something even worse so I just decided to take the beating
in fear of an even worse one. I absolutely despise jocks.

They are the Nazis of the school hierarchy.
They bully those who don't think or act or even breathe like them