http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/03/07/cscope-exposing-the-nations-most-controversial-public-school-curriculum-system/

CSCOPE: EXPOSING THE NATION’S MOST CONTROVERSIAL PUBLIC SCHOOL CURRICULUM SYSTEM

Mar. 7, 2013 7:50pm Tiffany Gabbay

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In February, Texas announced that the state, along with the Texas Education Service Center Curriculum (TESCCC,) would enact major changes to the controversial curriculum management system dubbed CSCOPE. The system received a litany of complaints from faculty members and parents alike concerning its lack of transparency (parents were allegedly not permitted to review lesson-plans), lack of oversight from the State Board of Education, and for allegedly imposing oppressive working conditions for faculty members.

CSCOPE was created so that teachers could frame their year around teaching points required by the state. Lessons, which are written by CSCOPE staff and current and former teachers, can be updated and delivered online, making it more cost-effective than standard textbooks.

To note just how off-color some of the CSCOPE curriculum is, consider that the Texas CSCOPE Review, an independent watchdog group, uncovered an out-of-date, optional CSCOPE lesson-plan on terrorism — “World History Unit 12 Lesson 07″ — which allegedly likens the Boston Tea Party to “an act of terrorism.”

The system also recently asked students to design a flag for a new socialist nation.

To glean greater insight, Glenn Beck invited special guests David Barton and Pat Gray, along with teachers Mary Bowen, Stan Hartzler and Texas State Sen. Dan Patrick to discuss what is truly going on within their state’s education system.

Barton explained that CSCOPE is referred to as “instructional material” and not “curriculum,” therefore is not subject to regulation by the State Board of Education. The historian also brought in artifacts of Texas public school curriculum to showcase just how different it is today and to mark, year-by-year, the increasing application of political correctness in lesson plans.

Using a chart, Barton documented and mapped out core CSCOPE material, which eliminates national values, Americanism or rather, American exceptionalism, the study of federalism and majority rule (the core of our constitution) along with patriotic symbols like the Liberty Bell. Christopher Columbus, Rosh Hashanah and Christmas are all relegated to the dustbin along with American military history. Equality and a belief in justice is replaced by “fairness” and instruction on American propaganda and imperialism.

Disturbingly, Beck and Barton noted that the worst is yet to come. Showcasing a lesson plan for grades 1-3, Barton revealed CSCOPE’s list of “heroes,” which comprises a dozen secular progressives and only three conservatives or political moderates.

According to a previous report from TheBlaze, teachers complained that they were expected to deliver the curriculum verbatim and only on days allotted by the CSCOPE lesson plan. Even if students were unable to absorb the lesson, teachers were allegedly directed to progress to the next lesson regardless. TheBlaze also reported that teachers were “asked to sign a contract that would prevent them from revealing what was in the CSCOPE lessons or face civil and criminal penalties.”

The controversial program’s website states that CSCOPE is a comprehensive online curriculummanagement system developed and owned by the Texas Education Service Center Curriculum Collaborative (TESCCC), a consortium composed of the 20 ESCs in the state.” It goes on to explain that the CSCOPE system provides curriculum framework for grades kindergarten through 12 across a broad range of subject areas.

The online description might raise red flags for some when it states that the CSCOPE content is regularly updated based on, among other criteria, “feedback collected through various stakeholder groups in the collaborative, including individual teacher submissions through the CSCOPE website and the School District Advisory Committee, comprised of district representatives from all participating regions of the state.”

What, or rather who, comprises CSCOPE’s collaborative and stakeholder groups? That question and a myriad others are what critics hope to get to the bottom of.

But while the groups to which CSCOPE appears relatively beholden may sound alarms for critics, the actual researchers CSCOPE credits with providing the basis for its curriculum seem to be formidable industry veterans by and large. Those educators include Robert Marzano, Fenwick English, John Crain, Heidi Hayes Jacobs, Grant Wiggins, Jay McTighe, H. Lynn Erickson, and James Barufaldi.

CSCOPE has been adopted by some 75 percent of Texas schools and the aim was to implement a national adoption of the management system. However, CSCOPE reportedly refused when Common Core Standards sought to purchase the system as the national curriculum standard. It is by far and away, one of the more hotly contested topics in the current education debate and much mystery still remains as to CSCOPE’s core tenets.

Beck noted that secular progressivism, further, the notion of communal life and collectivism, is at the system’s core. Other points of contention concerning CSCOPE curriculum include lesson-plans positing that Christopher Columbus was an “eco-warrior” and, when referring to the famed explorer’s journal, all references to God and Christendom were removed.

Students are also posed with hypothetical scenarios concerning historical figures and have allegedly been asked to take a position on population growth. Students were even subject to a lesson framed around the idea that “Christianity was a cult,” Beck noted.

CSCOPE’s director, Wade Labay has defended his curriculum and maintained that controversy has stemmed from misconceptions.” For instance, he said that framing the Boston Tea Party as an act of terrorism was merely one teacher’s way to engage students in the day’s lesson.

State Sen. Patrick, who chairs the Senate Education Committee, has led the CSCOPE hearings, bringing the controversial system to public light. He pushed CSCOPE to allow parents to view curriculum and to lift  gag-orders on teachers. Patrick explained his experience bringing CSCOPE to task and revealed what he believes is in store for his state.

Hartzler, who taught math for nearly four decades, retired early because of CSCOPE. He said that he was written nearly a dozen times for not following the system’s lesson plan and maintains that CSCOPE is dumbing-down American students. He said he tried his best to follow the lesson plans, but simply could not.

Bowen, who is currently forced to use CSCOPE in her school district, feels that schools are now more like factories that send children out into the real world from an assembly-line that has not even given them the basics. She spoke to Beck despite the fact that CSCOPE had set up disciplinary consequences for doing so.

Bowen said that the lessons were mediocre at best, often “riddled with errors” and that “tests were invalid.”

“There’s tremendous coercion. It’s an incredibly oppressive environment.” She added that there have been teachers who were fired for speaking out to the school board.

Bowen also explained that teachers spend “one out of every five” days testing students, and that those tests provide data for the government’s use.

When asked what they tell parents who are inquisitive about their child’s lesson-plans, Hartzler said he violated his gag-order “right away.” He said he showed the parents why the students were struggling and where they should go from that point on.

Beck said that President Obama will look to move forward with implementing CSCOPE or such systems within a short time-frame. The panel said concerned Americans should send letters to the Attorney General and that emergency legislation should be enacted to help teachers push back.

Allen West demolishes The caliph خليفة Benedict Arnold over Libya killing

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Congressman Allen West (R-Fl) issued a statement demolishing President Obama over the murder of the US Ambassador to Libya and three embassy employees on Tuesday.

“Less than 24 hours after our nation remembered the heinous attacks of September 11, 2001, Americans find their sovereign soil attacked again as more American lives are lost at the hands of intolerant, barbaric, radical Muslims.

United States Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, and several embassy staff were murdered late yesterday when suspected religious extremists stormed the United States Consulate in Benghazi. This morning, my condolences and prayers go out to the families of the victims.

Americans need to question whether the deaths of these innocent patriots could have been avoided. The Obama Administration touted the Arab Spring as an awakening of freedom, which we now see is a nightmare of Islamism.

Even more concerning, is the initial response to these attacks last night from the embassy officials of the Obama Administration was to apologize for a Facebook video that supposedly hurt Muslim feelings. President Obama’s policy of appeasement towards the Islamic world has manifested itself into a specter of unconscionable hatred.

How anyone can believe this President is strong on national security and foreign policy is beyond my comprehension. President Obama has clearly surpassed former President Jimmy Carter and his actions during the Iranian Embassy crisis as the weakest and most ineffective person to ever occupy the White House.”

The Romney campaign should be spreading that statement far and wide.

http://israelmatzav.blogspot.com/2012/09/allen-west-demolishes-obama-over-libya.html

http://iowntheworld.com/blog/?p=149519

The Film: 2016: The Roots of Obama’s Rage - Commentary

The Film: 2016: The Roots of Obama’s Rage

Commentary

Wil J. Wellisch

31-August-2012

NOTE:  I do not claim to be a film reviewer or a political analyst.  These are simply personal thoughts; musings of an old fellow who knows as much as a jelly fish.

Introduction

The film, 2016, is based upon a recent book titled The Roots of Obama’s Rage by the south-Indian/American author, Dinesh D’Souza.

Body of film

The film’s title directs us to the author-director’s central theme which is two-fold. 

One, the author maintains that Obama’s life from late childhood has led to a career path directed by rage. 

This rage is directed at western industrial-postindustrial societies.  Particular attention is given to the global colonization drives of England in the 19^{t h} and 20^th centuries.  The later expansionistic activity of the United States in the 20th and 21st centuries also becomes a source of his rage, decrying as he does the notion of “American exceptionalism”.  

Believing that England’s activities were aimed at exploiting the  beleaguered people and securing the abundant resources; believing that the colonizers were convinced of their own inherent superiority, a superiority that might ironically benefit the colonized; such invasions – economic, military, cultural – took place.  This colonizing land-lust directed at the lesser developed nations [LDNs} always led to harsh outcomes for the indigenous populations.

These targets of Obama’s rage, by their very nature, lead to collateral points of focus; attacks leveled against the religions of the technologically advanced societies - Christianity and later Judaism - and people of white ethnicity insofar as they harbored the values of the market economy and gave force to the belief in their inherent superiority over people of color who occupied these colonized places.

For D’Souza, Obama’s early acquisition of a psyche of rage and his later actions in governing are inextricably linked.

Two, given this psychological hurricane at the core of Obama’s psyche, the emerging question for author-director D’Souza has to do with the sources of this rage directed at individuals, groups, and institutions. 

The film takes aim at the sources or instillers of such rage.  The result is a series of interviews with people across the political spectrum, showing footage of historical film relevant to explaining Obama’s development and other visual inserts of relevance.  The interviews are sober and focused: there is no “Gotcha” journalism in the questioning.   For those old enough to remember, D’Souza’s interviews are reminiscent of those in earlier days of television in programs hosted by Dick Cavanaugh or William F. Buckley.

Concluding commentary

Considering the complexity of the topic – covering various time periods and visiting nations on at least three continents – the film does a fine job in a brief period – 87 minutes.

A modest proposal

Given the fine quality of the finished product and considering the host of challenges D’Souza and company faced in producing this documentary it seems bad manners for a rank amateur to make serious recommendations for expanded development.  Yet I believe that such an expansion would lend greatly to a fuller appreciation of the themes laid out by the author-director.

It seems to me that the documentary would have been greatly enhanced if the attention given to Obama’s psychological makeup and consequent actions had led to a more comprehensive discussion of Obama’s subsequent policies – proposed and enacted – as an adult. 

The film would have benefitted by showering the filmgoer with what would prove to be embarrassing contradictions between Obama’s words and later policies.  The hollowness of his claims and the vagaries of his promises, lend no comfort.  [Some might consider these as signs of conscious and willful deception, as being intentionally misleading by Obama, but let the reader decide.]

True, the film addresses the staggering and unparalleled national debt that Obama has bestowed upon future generations and wishes to expand [with the film acknowledging the disturbing role that G.W. Bush played in debt-growth during his two terms, albeit with the drive of a Congress controlled for some years by Democrats]. 

It is also true that a few other serious issues are given comment – the dismantling of the military, the dangerous disregard for the well-being of the one dependable ally in the Middle East, Israel for example – but they do not receive the detailed attention that they deserve.

Apart from the above-mentioned items, several other key matters are either ignored entirely or addressed almost in passing.  Not in any particular order, I would offer the following.  To wit:

·        the staggering assault on the nation’s solid health care system, one that needs modification rather than destruction, the “Affordable Health Care for America” act – referred to by its detractors as “Obamacare”-  is an incomprehensible tome of two thousand pages, 330,000 words, innumerable strikeouts of existing legislation and countless references to other relevant legislation – that demands studied understanding capable of only a privileged few:

The bill:

o   adds thirty million [30,000,000] people to the list of the insured [22,000,000 of whom were not on insurance programs by choice].

o   cuts payments to physicians and hospitals covering Medicare recipients by nearly three-quarters of a trillion dollars [$716,000,000,000 –billions].

o   selects who will receive certain kinds of care and the types of care that will be allowed through a national screening board of 15 appointed members called IPAB {Independent Payment Advisory Board]; the board deciding whether patients presented will be approved for certain treatments recommended by a physician, the board having final authority.

This will lead to an impossibly cumbersome process slowing care to a virtual standstill.   As IPAB will be called upon in the most serious cases what will occur will prove ironic – those in need of the best treatment posthaste will be those facing prolonged delays, likely to writhe in pain until they expire.

o   the IPAB board thus will be in the position of being able to over-ride medical decisions by physicians in an effort to control health care costs; leading to such near-future consequences as three of four physicians recently surveyed saying that they will NOT take new Medicare patients or would refuse to enroll in Medicare-directed treatment.

o   this enforced reliance upon IPAB  coupled with the above mentioned cut in payments will cause the care for the elderly to plummet.

o   with limited payment for care coupled with a decline in the number of physicians   medical services will be delayed severely or denied completely to people of all ages; long waiting lists on the order of those found in western European nations will become the norm in the U.S.

o   costs of medical will rise dramatically for most people with most current group coverage insurance programs from private plans disappearing.

o   government plans will impose requirements and restrictions that will make a cumbersome one-size-fits-all health care system that ignores individual needs, violates the edicts of religious groups, and will have the design efficiency  of the committee that designed the elephant.

·        the disregard for constitutional procedures to circumvent the Congress and establish laws by fiat as in the cases of creating as never before czars beholden only to the White House and controlling important areas of government.   

[In the case of establishing czars, it is not by accident that many of these appointments  displayed particular penchant  for selected people clearly to the far left on the political spectrum, communists and other radicals, with at least one having been a member of a self-declared communist group.

·        in the same vein as the preceding, the penchant of Obama has been to create policies by executive order without consideration of the role of the Congress and to appoint people to critical positions without regard to the role of Congress through the expansion of “recess appointments”.

·        pulling vital missile systems from Poland and the Czech Republic simply to appease Russia’s de facto dictator Putin without any quid pro quo, abandoning an established and legitimate military program.

·        remaining silent or giving only feeble expressions of support to citizens of Iran protesting fraudulent elections, a failure that contributed to the strengthening of control over this nation by the mullahs, letting the protestors face slaughter or imprisonment for their orderly protests.

·        showing contempt for the Dalai Lama, the exiled holy leader of Tibet and not wishing to antagonize the Chinese government which opposes recognizing the Dalai Lama, by compelling the Dalai to exit the White House by the backdoor, going past the garbage cans

so that news photographers could not capture images of this revered spiritual leader with an American president.

·        expressing contempt for the PM of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, unceremoniously insisting that the PM wait while Obama dined, then escorting him out the backdoor previously used by the Dali Lama.

·        giving a speech in Cairo, Egypt in which he did NOT denounce the cruelty suffered by the Coptic Christians or of women under Islamic law but condemned the construction of apartments in Israel on Israeli land that even the Arabs had recognized until then as legitimate construction sites.

·        criticizing the state of Arizona to the United Nations and the World Court because that state wished to regulate and control immigration, a federal duty that the federal government refused to carry out; falsely charging Arizona with discriminatory policies when in fact the law – SB-1070 –  followed faithfully the governing federal law.

[It should be noted that both Obama and Attorney General Holder falsely criticized the law as racist, having to admit at a later date that they had not read a single word of the bill but relied instead upon the assessment of their advisors.]

·        tax policies that would allegedly benefit the middle class, promised in the vaguest of terms, has proven to involve a host of increases – some directly applied with others indirect, some labeled as taxes while others masked by alternative terms.

·        ridiculing, blocking, burdening with unreasonable regulations basic mining and energy exploration industries at a long-term cost to be shared by individual as well as businesses, coupled with heavily subsidizing new, untested energy industries, seeking to put these at the head of the industrial-energy line:

o   Does Solyndra ring a bell with its bankruptcy after receiving $457 million in ‘loans’ to develop a state of the art clean energy system?

o   How about closing down without justification of 66,000 [thousands] jobs along the Gulf after the BP explosion crippling various industries including fishing and tourism?

o   Blocking the Keystone project that would have brought much needed Canadian oil into the US with an estimated 20,000 construction jobs followed by operations that would have offered employment for several thousands.

·        for an executive employing the politics that would have fit into Machiavelli’s “The Prince”, Obama’s early reference to transparency and unity rings sadly hollow.

·        the racial-ethnic politics shared with Attorney General Holder in such matters

o   as refusing to bring to justice members of the militant New Black Panther Party for their menacing and threatening behavior towards white voters in Philadelphia during the 2008 presidential elections – the young males in black leather trench coats, dark sunglasses and berets, holding in menacing fashion combat batons.

o   as allowing death threats with a promise of a financial bounty if a “while-Hispanic”, George Zimmerman, could be found and killed for the controversial shooting by Zimmerman of a black fellow of questionable character, Treyvon [sp] Martin.

o   as condemning immediately the Cambridge, Massachusetts police for detaining Professor Henry Louis Gates [a black fellow, aka African-American] after Gates was reported by neighbors, not recognizing him, as appearing to be breaking into a home.

o   making it official government policy to NOT employ such terms as “Muslim terrorist” when Muslims, in the name of Islam, have engaged in terrorist acts.

In the case of Major Nidal Hassan, army psychiatrist, who killed 13 unarmed military and civilian personnel and wounded 30 others at Ft. Hood, Texas while shouting the Arabic phrase praising Allah, his massacre was described in the official military report as “workplace violence”.

o   vigorously opposing all attempts by state officials to curb the tide of illegal voting plaguing the election process  

·        waffling on what stand he should take regarding whether marriage is a monogamous, two-partner and heterosexual coupling or whether it should confer legitimacy upon homosexual partners.

·        expressing disdain at established and well recognized religious beliefs by attempting to require that medical facilities will provide for contraception practices even if the facilities philosophically oppose such practices.

·        and more, so much more.

~~~~~

NOTE: 

In considering some of the items that would have fit nicely into this film, making it run as long as Dr. Zhivago and Lawrence of Arabia in a double feature, I offered a modest selection of topics that came to mind.  This is by NO MEANS complete.  Two, they are not sequenced in any particular fashion; there is no order of importance.  Three, they are not grouped into any categories. 

Hopefully they merit some consideration – perhaps for a sequel; 2016-# 2.

wil j wellisch

31-aug-2012

h/t DJ

El Presidente no want you chant USA!

WEDNESDAY, AUG 1, 2012 07:45 AM EDT

Don’t chant “U.S.A.!”

It's liberal Americans' Olympic dilemma: How do they root for their countrymen without being jingoistic?

BY DAVID SIROTA

U.S. supporters cheer during the group G women's soccer match between the United States and Colombia. (Credit: AP)

Like so many Americans, I’ve been periodically tuning in to the Olympic Games. I’m not a serious sports enthusiast, but I pay casual attention — and when I do, I, like you, instantly scan the screen for the American flag icon among the competitors so that I know which athlete to cheer on. This, no doubt, is one of the appealing qualities of the Olympics. In a world of “asymmetrical” threats and shifting geopolitics, Olympic fandom is a haven for the simpleton in all of us. That Old Glory icon next to an athlete’s name distills the games into the good-versus-bad terms that are so elusive in the real world.

And yet, as I’ve grown older, I find my “U.S.A.!”-chanting reflex increasingly interrupted by pangs of discomfort, and not because I’m ashamed of our country or our Olympians, but because the relationship between American nationalism and the Olympics has been slowly infused with a different — and politicized — meaning. In short, chanting the initials of our nation seems less like it did in 1984 than it has since 1992.

Those two Summer Games were the formative events of my — and so many others’ — Olympic fan psyche.

The former, held in Los Angeles, was a Cold War spectacle of hyper-patriotism deliberately orchestrated to give the big middle finger to the boycotting Soviets and their allies. As ESPN’s Michael Weinreb recounted, “Spectators quite literally wrapped themselves in the flag” and “chants of ‘U.S.A.!’ became so jarring for the foreigners present that IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch wrote a letter complaining about ABC’s unabashedly patriotic coverage of the games.”

“Oh, what we’ve done to the Olympics,” wrote Sports Illustrated’sFrank Deford at the time. “God only knows what the 2.5 billion people around the globe who are watching the games will think of a vain America, so bountiful and strong, with every advantage, including the home court, reveling in the role of Goliath, gracelessly trumpeting its own good fortune while rudely dismissing its guests.”

Such (legitimate and prescient) concerns aside, Weinreb notes, “This was precisely the purpose of the ’84 Olympics — it was a one-sided showcase of American superiority.” And as a child, I proudly joined in with the flag waving and fist pumping. In the heat of the Cold War, blatantly mixing sports enthusiasm with not-so-subtle saber rattling felt entirely legitimate and righteous — especially to my 9-year-old mind.

Then came the 1992 games — the first after the fall of the Berlin Wall. America was at its geopolitical and economic zenith, able to claim the title of “world’s sole superpower.” But instead of projecting a ray of humility in the “with-great-power-comes-great-responsibility” spirit, we instead used the Olympics to spike the ball in the end zone — or, more accurately, 360 windmill dunk over the rest of the planet. That was the year we used a change in Olympic rules to deploy whatSports Illustrated called “arguably the most dominant squad ever assembled in any sport” — the 1992 Dream Team.

While the NBA fan in me was certainly excited to see some of the greatest pro basketball players of all time play on one squad, I also felt that first twinge of doubt when the competition turned into an international version of the Globetrotters playing the Washington Generals. Why, I wondered, do we have to rub our strength in? Why, when we are so dominant, do we have to preen on the world stage in such cartoonish fashion?

Since those games two decades ago, those questions have transcended sport and become bigger than ever.

Whereas 1984 turned Julius Caesar’s “Veni, vidi, vici” into an Olympic posture and a comedic Ghostbusters riff, post-1992 has seen that posture and that comedic riff become both a grand self-image and a dead-serious foreign policy doctrine. From presidential taunts of “bring it on,” to televised “shock and awe” campaigns, to flag-draped statue spectacles, to “Top Gun”-style aircraft carrier celebrations, to the rip-roaring parties and pompous political declarations that accompany our escalation of foreign wars, we present ourselves as Caesars — but with none of Peter Venkman’s self-effacing cheekiness and all of the Dream Team’s arrogance.

Predictably, such an attitude has infected our political vernacular to the point where the parameters of the discourse are now narrowly defined by a reductionist argument over “American exceptionalism” — that is, a Colbert-ian throwdown over whether America is great, or the greatest. This has, not surprisingly, led us to assume not merely that American hegemony is permanent and meritorious, but to further assume that specifically flamboyant, in-your-face, happily-pressing-my-boot-to-your-neck dominance is warranted. Indeed, as Frank Rich notes in his must-read New York magazine piece: “We’re not Greece. We’re not even post-empire England. But if we were to slip into so much as a tie for No. 1, that would drive many Americans nuts, because if anything is baked into the national character, it is that we must be the alpha dog, the leader of the pack, the undisputed world champion.”

The hyper-patriotism surrounding the modern Olympics, then, is just a reflection of that national character. When that TV screen flashes the list of athletes and we inevitably profile the competitors by nation, we do so not just because we experience natural feelings of solidarity with fellow countrymen. We likely do so also because of that deeper desire to publicly showcase American preeminence — a desire we’ve been programmed to haughtily express since the end of the Cold War, a desire we’re led to believe we must express in this “love it or leave it” era for fear of being labeled traitors.

Missed in the ensuing red-white-and-blue hoopla, of course, is the fact that we are not so exceptional outside the Olympic village. WhileWall Street 24/7 is accurate in reporting that medal-wise, “the United States is irrefutably the most dominant participating country in Olympic history,” our athletic victories seem to have an inverse relationship with our standing in other measurements of national success.

For instance, we are not gold, silver or even bronze medalists when it comes to healthcare; sadly, we are 39th for infant mortality, 43rd for female mortality, 42nd for adult male mortality and 36th for life expectancy. Likewise, we are not champions when it comes to basic equality; we are one of the most economically unequal nations in the industrialized world. In fact, if we do stand atop a dais anywhere other than at a sporting event, it is for military spending, carbon emissions and incarceration rates.

In this sense, the shrieks of “USA!” for our athletes take on a “doth protest too much” quality. Our shiny medallions and our patriotic braying reassure us that, despite our slipping world standing, we at least still kick international ass in the competition that gets the highest Nielsen ratings. Meanwhile, the downward standard of living trends persist at home and anti-Americanism festers abroad among a community of nations that often perceives us to be more trash-talking aggressor than humble friend. As if deliberately perpetuating the cycle, our Olympic victories — and celebrations of those wins — then (wrongly) convince us of our ongoing superiority, while robbing those weaker nations of any wins that might give them a fleeting feeling of self-empowerment or sovereignty against us. In other words, we are further distracted, and they further emasculated by us militarily, economically, geopolitically and, every four years, athletically. And so the cycle continues…

Noting all of this isn’t to pretend I’ll be rooting for some other nation. A boy can mature beyond his infantile displays of hyper-patriotism, but the sense of American solidarity will always remain. That means in every individual contest I watch, I’ll almost certainly be pulling for the red-white-and-blue (and probably with the occasional “USA!” outburst).

However, I’ve outgrown the lust for an overpowering victory that has us, medal-count-wise, leave everyone else in the dust. I’ve outgrown it because while I know our athletes deserve our support and respect, I also know that the same respect is due all the competitors from all the nations at the games — and respect is something wholly different from complete conquest.

It’s a truism we should remember when watching the Olympics — and when contemplating the larger world.

Close

David Sirota is a best-selling author of the new book "Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now." He co-hosts The Rundown with Sirota & Brown on AM630 KHOW in Colorado. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com, follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at www.davidsirota.com.MORE DAVID SIROTA.
http://www.salon.com/2012/08/01/dont_chant_u_s_a/ h/t Chris Plante wmal.com