sport and politics mix badly

Sport and politics mix badly:
Jay Doubleyou: sport and politics

Here are a couple more provocative articles:

Of Flags and Football

Logan Glitterbomb | @LGlitterbomb | Support this author on Patreon | September 22nd, 2016

The football hooligans are at it again but this time instead of street riots and violence, they are raising hell with flags and fundraisers. With the recent news of Colin Kaepernick refusing to stand during the U.S. national anthem and Gabby Douglas not placing her hand over her heart during the anthem at the 2016 Summer Olympics, the question of whether or not politics and sports should mix has been on a lot of minds. While it is really only a debate over etiquette in the United States, the mixing of politics and sports is actually a punishable offense in Ireland.
During a recent soccer game between Ireland’s Celtics and Israel’s Hapoel Be’er Sheva, fans of the Celtic team waved Palestinian flags and cheered on the Celtics against the Israelis. This obviously carried with it an overt political message of not only standing against the Hapoel Be’er Sheva in the Champions League qualifier, but also against Israel’s violent oppression of the Palestinian people. For this action, the Celtic Football Club was fined by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) for violating their ban against, “gestures, words, objects or any other means to transmit any message that is not fit for a sports event, particularly messages that are of a political, ideological, religious, offensive or provocative nature.”
In response, a group of fans calling themselves the Green Brigade set up a crowdfunding campaign on GoFundMe to #MatchTheFineForPalestine. Together they have collected more than £130,000 to donate to Palestinian charities, including Medical Aid Palestine,which provides medical care for those injured or harmed “by conflict, occupation and displacement”, and the Lajee Centre, an effort to help Palestinian children in the Aida refugee camp start their very own soccer team to compete in the Bethlehem Youth League, which they have affectionately dubbed the Aida Celtic as a thank you.
Since then, many Palestinians have filmed thankful response videos for the Celtic show of support in defiance of the UEFA, proving that sports and politics can mix in ways that are helpful for those who are oppressed by governments worldwide, “from Ferguson to Palestine,” as the saying goes, even if it pisses off a few overly-patriotic sports fans in the process. Oh, and to add the icing to the cake: the Celtics swept the floor with the Hapoel Be’er Sheva, beating the Israeli team 5-2 in the home victory. And soon, thanks to their Irish comrades, I’m sure we’ll see the Aida Celtic winning a number of symbolic victories as well on their way towards freedom.

Center for a Stateless Society » Of Flags and Football

For the Separation of 

Stadium and State

David R. Henderson

Monday, September 19, 2016

The title of this post is the same as the title of an article by Jonah Goldberg about the Colin Kaepernick incident. (If you haven't been paying attention to the NFL lately, here's the summary: Kaepernick is a San Francisco 49er who refused, and still refuses, to stand for the U.S. national anthem.)

I had been pondering writing a similar piece myself. And then I saw his title. Darn, I thought, Goldberg has beat me to it.

Except that he didn't.

Goldberg's article is all about his narrow way of keeping politics out of sports: players should stand for the national anthem. Some people would see this as a way of inserting politics into sports.

That means that people who don't like what Kaepernick did are being forced to pay for the very property on which he did it.

But how would you keep politics out of sports in a fundamental way? It would be by not forcing people to pay for sports.

You don't have to know a lot about the 49ers or the NFL to know that local governments tax their residents and others heavily to pay for luxurious stadiums.

That means that people who don't like what Kaepernick did are being forced to pay for the very property on which he did it. On the other hand, it also means that people who don't like the flag-waving that goes on at NFL games are also forced to pay for the property on which that occurs.

There's a simple solution here: actually separate sports and state. That is, quit forcing taxpayers to pay for sports.

Now that's a solution that I will salute.

David R. Henderson

David Henderson is a research fellow with the Hoover Institution and an economics professor at the Graduate School of Business and Public Policy, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California. He is editor of The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics (Liberty Fund) and blogs at econlib.org.

For the Separation of Stadium and State | Foundation for Economic Education
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