Why are those folks bugging the Olympic torch runners?

I don’t know about you, but I’ve just about had it with the Tibetan activists – and any other such enthusiasts over the years – trying to disrupt the Olympic games.

I’m no athlete and I probably won’t spend much time before the television during the Olympics, but I do respect the institution and tradition.

What is going on in China is up to the Chinese to handle. Having had a few rough centuries of late, they are a civilization of thousands of years and are headed to being an economic superpower. Despite clinging to an antiquated communist system, they apparently understand the value of economic growth – and the social and cultural aspects it can enhance.

Pestering the torch runners and boycotting the official opening are childish and counterproductive.

It’s not just with the Chinese. I thought then-president Jimmy Carter was a damn fool and busybody when he pushed the Moscow Olympic boycott in 1980. He had more important things to do - working on the declining U.S. economy, say – than dillydally and dog dance around with an Olympic boycott. All he succeeded in doing was further hurting athletics, cheapening them even more than what the Soviets would have done. He hurt the Soviet consumer economy, perhaps delaying the eventual fall of the Soviet empire.

In case I’m confused with being a flaming red here, I’ll note my anti-communist credentials are as sound as they can get (with anybody with a masters degree or more). It’s just some things are supposed to transcend crass politics or the left or right, whether it’s the Nazis using the 1936 games, terrorists disrupting the 1972 games or Soviet bloc countries using drugs and heaven only knows what else to cheat for decades.

We had better not throw out a major civilizing institution – even as flawed and drugged as it has been – and wind up leaving the world in even greater jeopardy of isolation.