Beijing Looks Like Berlin in the Summer . . .

The first Olympic Torch run in the modern era was a product of Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, a run from Greece to Berlin to show the world how well the Nazi regime was doing in rebuilding Germany.  Despite the anti-semitic rhetoric flowing from the government propaganda machine, the United States Olympic Committee voted to send the athletes to the games.  Though there was lip service to “opposing Hitler’s practices” even while participating in the games, the stamp of approval that United States’ participation includes spoke volumes.  Jesse Owens and the other black athletes at the games made a mockery of Hitler’s Aryan theories, but they should not have been there at all.  Some people argued that the games are not political, and that the athletes should not be punished.  I would have argued (and will later on), that if my eight year old is invited to spend the night at a friend’s house, and I know or suspect that the people who run that house beat and kick their dog, starve their cat, punish their children in a draconian manner, then my child is not going.  By sending him, I am saying what they do is okay, when I don’t believe it is.  I am not punishing him by not sending him.  I am “walking the walk.”

What does this have to do with anything?  Am I just fighting a battle already lost, to re-write a history fraught with terror and hardship?  No.

But China is hosting the Olympics in 2008.  And history is about to repeat itself.  We are sending our athletes to compete in a “non-political” manner in a country with a history of human rights abuses and violations.  I graduated from high school in 1989, the same year as the Tiananmen Square uprisings.  I remember watching students cling to hastily erected statues, protesting to enact liberty and express their political will in a country unwilling to listen.  And I remember watching the tanks roll.  Ask the 13th Dalai Lama about the role of China in Tibet.  China is a burgeoning economic power, but that does not excuse the oppression it practices on a daily basis.

Much like that first torch run, this run was supposed to distract the world from the ugly underpinnings of China.  But protesters all over the world have forced the torch onto buses and through buildings, disrupted its “historic” trail from Paris to the top of Mt. Everest, forcing the world to sit up and take notice.  Senator Obama and Senator McCain should both take notice.  The United States of America should not be participating in the Beijing games.  We should boycott, stating that we believe China needs to clean house before we’ll visit.  We know they’ve dusted, and thrown on a coat of paint.  However, they haven’t changed their behavior.  As recently as four months ago, protestors in Tibet – it’s been occupied since 1959 – were being brutally attacked and killed for saying that their country should be free.

We live in the home of the free and the land of the brave.  Sometimes being brave means speaking up for someone else that isn’t being listened to.  It doesn’t mean singing the national anthem louder so that you can’t hear them either.