Ivory Tower

This simple dedication is for all those worked up over the Olympic flame: “Games Without Frontiers,” by Peter Gabriel.

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     The Olympic torch has gone into hiding as officials figure out what to do. Everywhere the flame has been taken on its global journey toward the Summer Olympics in China protesters have tried to stop the torch and otherwise made a big ruckus over China’s violent crackdown on the Tibetan separatist movement. We can only presume that the Chinese have seen American TV shows and determined that the notoriously peaceful Tibetan monks are still able to kung-fu them all right back to the Qing Dynasty, and must be wiped out.

     Protests over China’s hosting of the Olympics have at times gotten out of hand. The flame reportedly was snuffed out five times during its tour of France, and officials were worried about what might happen in its only stop in the United States, San Francisco — the city that includes Chinatown, of course.

     They needn’t have worried; in fact, the torch should have had a longer run in this country. After all, if we know anything, it’s how to protest. That’s part of the greatness of our heritage.

     Americans have enjoyed freedom of speech for centuries, and have learned to use it both effectively and creatively. As a result, most law enforcement agencies have been trained to deal with demonstrations and protests. As we found out at Chicago in 1968 and Kent State in 1970, police have tended toward violence when they became afraid or frustrated. Experience and training have made violence against protesters rare here.

     Much of that relative peace can be credited to the Rev. Martin Luther King. One of his greatest legacies is the ideal of passive resistance — nonviolent protests. Many people inspired by King, including Saul Alinsky who wrote “Rules for Radicals,” embraced and refined nonviolent demonstration techniques. In other words, Americans normally don’t throw rocks at police, and police normally don’t respond by firing bullets back at them.

     More than likely, protests along a U.S. torch run would have been relatively bloodless, and yet effective. Protesters probably would have just tried to impede the route by sitting or lying on the roadways, and police dutifully would have just picked them up one by one, zip-tied their hands and tossed them into the paddy wagons.

     Switching themes, we’re beginning to hear calls from Capitol Hill and elsewhere that the United States lead an international boycott of the games, or at least the opening ceremonies.

     How soon we forget. Boycotts were the rage for a decade, and all were a flop. More than two dozen countries avoided the 1976 games in Montreal to protest the participation of New Zealand, which hadn’t joined the international trade embargo against South Africa and its Apartheid policies. The United States led the next boycott four years later in Moscow, to protest the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan before we did. The Soviet states returned the favor in 1984 by staying away from the Los Angeles games.

     In the end, those boycotts had little effect on international politics, and the decision to keep the U.S. team home in 1980 helped secure President Jimmy Carter’s defeat that year. And in true entrepreneurial fashion, Ted Turner leaped at the opportunity and organized the Goodwill Games, which reasserted the ideal of keeping politics out of international sport, and made him a little money to boot.

     At least Peter Gabriel got a catchy little tune out of the whole Olympic boycott affair (see above).

     So forget about keeping Americans out of the Chinese Games. We’d only be punishing ourselves, and the rest of the world would go right on ahead without us. Besides, people still celebrate 1936, when Americans ignored calls for a boycott, and instead sent a U.S. contingent, led by Jesse Owens, that shut Hitler up in his own backyard.

     That’s the way to get things done. So let the flame move forward, and let the Games begin!