[The Epoch Times, September 17, 2023](Written by Jeffrey A. Tucker, English Epoch Times columnist/Compiled by Ren Ji) The rules are simple and stable. The winner has no right to change the rules. He wins by strength, and the loser accepts defeat gracefully. The most transparent way to decide the winner.
The players thanked the referee and humbly congratulated each other. Fans were quiet and polite during the game. Everyone who is willing to put in the hard work can level up by participating in competitions.
This is tennis, a sport that originated in the Middle Ages but is now popular around the world. It’s U.S. Open tennis season, and players are sweating it out and delivering exciting matches that are dizzying to watch. One has to wonder what motivates players to compete for so long in such hot conditions, under the constant pressure of play, and with announcers explaining every move for a worldwide audience.
Those of us who play on community courts can only watch in awe as they display their exquisite skills. How do you achieve a clean serve at 140 miles per hour? How could anyone return a ball with such speed? It’s incredible. But this kind of superb skill competition will not scare us ordinary people away, but will make us enthusiastic.
But what you might not realize is that the rules of such a movement run counter to all the rules of social control that have been developed over the past few years. Anthony Fauci and his co-author David Morens wrote a paper for the journal Cell in which they strongly recommended that lockdowns become the norm. There are no more cities, no more crowds, and certainly no more mass movements, no more people mixing around with germs.
All have a common “great goal”: “to rebuild the infrastructure of human existence, from cities and homes to workplaces, from water and sewage systems, to recreation and gathering places.”
Months before the paper was published, Fauci told an interviewer, “In a perfect world, we would never shake hands again.”
Indeed, in tennis, people do shake hands, and it has even become part of the etiquette of the game. I can’t imagine what kind of reaction it would have caused if I didn’t shake hands after the game, which might lead to a permanent ban.
(The handshake itself has a symbolic meaning worth talking about. It symbolizes trust, and of course trust that the other person will not infect you with the disease.)
There’s something comforting and hopeful about being able to watch the U.S. Open right now. The bad guys did not succeed in the end, and instead there were thousands of bustling crowds, sitting next to strangers, sweating together under the scorching sun, cheering on the court, smiling at each other, cheering for their favorite players, blessing the weak, and drinking Favorite drinks, share snacks with your neighbor. This is simply Fauci’s nightmare, but everything is so civilized and beautiful.
What if our government was like playing tennis, with simple rules that anyone could understand after just 30 minutes of watching? What if winners could get the rewards they deserve, and losers had the grace to accept failure? What if it was in everyone’s interest to follow protocol and etiquette, rather than being arbitrary and brutal? You can grasp the gist of these political sciences by watching a few games, and it’s really that simple.
This reminds me of an article by the great Joe Sobran. He and I struck up a friendship in the months after the Cold War ended. At that time, the 40-year Cold War was finally over, and every American was concerned about the basic issues of social life. Can we get back to normal life? What is normal life and how does it work? Sobran, who had strong liberal leanings during this period, believed that the United States could now become a peaceful commercial republic again.
The article that blew me away was on the cover of National Review. The article was titled “Baseball Republic” and was published in 1990. The language is clear and the argument is simple: we can learn more about the normal functioning of society simply by studying this great American sport.
“Referees don’t care who deserves to win in terms of morals, progress or demographics. Referees seem to have a small but vital role. If they bring any so-called higher purpose to their work, their work will be corrupted. They Just care about the rules. The Supreme Court could learn from them.”
“The rules themselves are very few. Aside from maintaining some balance between offense and defense, their purpose is simply to facilitate the flow of the game, not to hinder it. In baseball we enjoy something we can never find again in politics. Stuff: the geniuses who make the rules in the Western world.”
A major sign of this genius is changing the rules as little as possible. Baseball is older than the income tax, but its rules could still fit in a pamphlet, and the tax code runs thousands of pages. If you’ve played baseball, you understand most of the rules intuitively without looking at them, and you don’t need a lawyer to explain them to you. They arise from the internal logic of the game and never seem to be added for an external or specific purpose.
“In politics, people elect people to change the rules for someone’s benefit, so let’s not be surprised when these rules are broken. A key difference between baseball and democracy is that in baseball, the winner does not have the power to rewrite the rules. Rules. Losers don’t blame the rules for their failures. When our deepest principles of order are impure elsewhere, they can still be seen for what they are on the field. Baseball is our utopia, Not because it guarantees us the coveted victory, but because it guarantees that even if we lose, we will be treated appropriately.”
God bless this author! Let him write this text at the peak of his writing ability. Everything he said about baseball also applies to tennis.
This year, Novak Djokovic’s return is particularly exciting. He was suspended last year for refusing to take the vaccine. He said integrity and honesty are more important than winning games. He has complete autonomy over his body and is healthier than ever. He also broke a new record at this year’s U.S. Open, permanently earning himself the honor of being the greatest player in history.
However, there are billboards on the court sponsored by Moderna, which has also placed a large number of ads on the television networks that broadcast the game. These ads are disguised as public service announcements. Only when you get closer to the screen and see the small characters at the end can you realize that they are actually Moderna advertisements. Because of their “emergency use authorization,” they are not obligated to talk about the side effects of their vaccines or give any regular warnings.
How audacious is the company that has lobbied to force their product on all athletes and spectators to advertise at this event. It should be discredited. But now, with pharmaceutical advertising corrupting everything, the industry’s power has encroached on regulatory agencies, which are now becoming the industry’s rubber stamp. These pharmaceutical companies even enjoy legal immunity from liability for damages.
Politics in the pharmaceutical industry work exactly the opposite of tennis. Drug companies changed vaccine definitions and bribed agencies, then relied on government power to force customers to use their products. In tennis, the rules are fixed, spectators are present voluntarily, bribes cannot influence the outcome, and the skill of the players is judged by the visible results of the game itself.
Not everything is perfect in this tennis utopia. The U.S. Open’s blanket rejection of all players of Russian and Belarusian origin, effectively rendering many players stateless, is deeply frustrating and irresponsible. Why should players be punished because of their national identity? They are not responsible for Putin’s border policies any more than you and I are responsible for Biden’s border policies. Countries around the world are trampling on the rights of their citizens.
As we watch this year’s game, we should also be aware that if the Fauci’s of the world get their way, this will all happen in a cursed “metaverse” and we’ll have to watch the game at home with blinders on. But they failed, mainly because people simply wouldn’t obey. Djokovic bravely stood up. Now, he is the champion, our champion.
About the Author:
Jeffrey A. Tucker is founder and president of the Brownstone Institute, headquartered in Austin, Texas. He has published thousands of articles in academic and popular media and 10 books in five languages, most recently Liberty or Lockdown (2020). He is also the editor of The Best of Mises. He also writes a regular economic column for The Epoch Times and has spoken widely on topics such as economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture.
Original text: The Republic of Tennis was published in the English Epoch Times.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the position of The Epoch Times.
Editor in charge: Gao Jing#
2023-09-18 20:56:05
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