OPINION:
Sports are an essential part of American culture. Look at the football stadiums, basketball arenas, baseball fields, tennis courts, golf courses and other sports facilities that prominently mark the American landscape.
Young Americans grow up practicing individual sports such as running, figure skating, acrobatics, golfing, bowling, swimming and skiing. They also practice group sports such as baseball, basketball, soccer and football. Parents spend hours driving their children to and from a wide variety of practice sessions (far more hours than are driven to tutoring in academic subjects, for better or worse).
There are countless sporting events year-round on television. As I wrote last week, many of them are among the top-rated shows. NFL football, college football bowl games and college basketball’s March Madness Final Four have enormous viewership.
There is a fascinating relationship between this interest in sports and the pragmatic, competitive culture at the heart of the American system. Consider key values and realities of sports and compare them to the elite modern left’s efforts to fundamentally change society and put Americans into a postcompetitive culture.
The contrast between the values inherent in sports and the attitudes and values of the elite modern left is astonishing. It explains why generations of effort by elite left-wing academics, news media, politicians and bureaucrats were rejected by the American people in the 2024 elections.
Consider the key elements of sports culture and how decisively they contradict and reject the alternative values of the elite modern left.
• Winning is good. Elitist leftists abhor the idea that winners should be elevated because it makes losers feel excluded. Sports enthusiasts think defeat is a simple step toward trying harder to succeed.
• Mastering any sport requires practice and hard work. But the elite left rejects hard work as subordinating your free, artistic, pampered being to the indignity of effort. It is why elite leftists have, for three generations, derided working at McDonald’s as “hamburger-flipping jobs” that are beneath the dignity of those who should be treated better. Since more than 40 million people have worked at McDonald’s, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the elite left is not winning on this.
• Any competitive sport provides an opportunity for achievement but not a guarantee of success. Even the best at any given sport will lose more than they win.
Homestead Grays and Pittsburgh Crawfords catcher Josh Gibson still holds the best batting average in baseball history. He played in the Negro League II in the 1930s and 1940s. Yet Gibson’s .372 batting average means he failed to hit about 6 in 10 at-bats.
Tom Brady is the winningest quarterback in history but lost one-fourth of his games. Tiger Woods, possibly the greatest golfer in history, had long stretches where he could not win. Deciding to compete in sports means you must be prepared to lose and continue competing. Sports fans think the process builds character. The elite left thinks it is cruel and exclusionary.
• There is an inherent meritocracy in competitive sports. This commitment to excellence contradicts the diversity, equity and inclusion mindset, which has come to dominate the elite modern left. Consider a football team entering the championship game. The sports culture would say, “Play the first-string players.” The DEI crowd would say, “Play the appropriate players to represent racial inclusion and make sure everyone feels a sense of equity.”
Playing your least talented quarterback is DEI’s version of fairness. Virtually every sports fan would consider that approach insane and a guaranteed loss for the team (of course, the same principle applies to companies and countries).
• The positive side of playing your best players and putting together your best team is celebrating success. With the elite left’s passion for inclusion, you never know if you won because you were the best or if it was your turn. An inclusion-based system makes participation and identity more important than succeeding. This is what led to spectacles such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren claiming to be part Native American to get a better shot at joining the Texas Bar.
In the real world, people who rely on the proven success principles exemplified by sports will consistently improve and eventually succeed. Those who create a fantasy world reliant on short-term feelings will be doomed to long-term failure.
The elite left’s effort to reject reality and impose its own social and political values has been growing for a long time. Tom Wolfe captured this insanity and complete isolation from reality in a brilliant set of essays published in 1970 called “Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers.” If you read Wolfe’s essays, it will be impossible to take the elite left seriously again — except as a mortal threat to the American culture of hard work, courage and success.
If Republicans thoroughly modernize government using the cultural values of sports, America will become a safer, more prosperous and more successful country. It will also become clear that the modern Democratic Party is made up of elitists committed to values and principles that don’t work in the real world.
• For more commentary from Newt Gingrich, visit Gingrich360.com. And subscribe to the “Newt’s World” podcast.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.