How Bobby Fischer Won the Cold War

I know I will get a lot of flack from my fellow conservatives for saying this, but it wasn't Ronald Reagan who won the Cold War; it was Bobby Fischer, who died today in Iceland at 64. Sure, Fischer, who was probably the greatest chess player who ever lived, was anti-Semitic (although his mother was Jewish), renounced his American citizenship after he was arrested in Japan for violating sanctions against the former Yugoslavia, and rejoiced on September 11 saying he wanted to "see the U.S. wiped out," but nobody is perfect. For me Bobby Fischer will always be an American hero.

Young, handsome, brash, spoiled, somewhat insane, Bobby Fischer became a role model for American youth when he beat Soviet grandmaster Boris Spassky in the 1972 World Chess Championship. That this uncouth punk, playing a game most Americans didn't understand or care about, beat the cultured, pampered product of Soviet government largesse stunned the world. For one brief shining moment from July to September 1972 Americans huddled in their living rooms around their televisions debating the relative merits of the Sicilian Defense, the Queen's Gambit and Tartakover Variation. Fischer showed that an individual could triumph on his own merits and you didn't need government handouts to succeed. All you needed was confidence in your own genius, a big sense of entitlement and a lot of style. You can see the influence of Fischer not only in America's steroid-pumped baseball stars and Olympic athletes but even in the carefree arrogance of our own President.

When Fischer beat Spassky, America was at a low point in its history. The Vietnam War was winding to a close without any sign of victory. The American basketball team lost the Olympic gold medal to the Soviets in a controversial game that summer. Communist influence was on the rise. But Bobby Fischer showed the world that we Americans still had one weapon in our arsenal. That weapon was our faith that we are better than anyone else in the world and therefore we don't need to play by the world's rules and if you rile us we are just as liable to overturn the chessboard as we are to humiliate you in 41 moves.

Richard Nixon had once proposed to his aide Bob Haldeman a strategy for victory in Vietnam he called the Madman Theory. "I want the North Vietnamese to believe I've reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war," Nixon told Haldeman. "We'll just slip the word to them that, 'for God's sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about Communism. We can't restrain him when he's angry -- and he has his hand on the nuclear button' -- and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace." But Nixon just talked about the Madman Theory. Bobby Fischer put it into practice. And Nixon was right. Just a month after Fischer proved how crazy Americans can be, the North Vietnamese agreed to end the war. Earlier that year the Soviets signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the United States, no doubt because Soviet chess players had already relayed reports of Fischer's nuttiness to their government officials. Seven years later the Soviets signed the SALT II treaty. Bobby Fischer was the closest contact the Soviets had with a real American and he terrified them. By the time Ronald Reagan arrived, joking about dropping the big one on Russia, the Soviets were already running scared. To them it seemed as if Bobby Fischer had been elected President of the United States.

F. Scott Fitzgerald once said there are no second acts in American lives, but he was wrong. American second acts are played as farce. American genius is often too great for any one man to handle. Like Howard Hughes, Elvis and Tom Cruise, Bobby Fischer was always teetering just this side of complete and total looniness, so it is no surprise that he finally went all the way over. And yet he still managed to beat Boris Spassky again in their 1992 rematch.

The terrorists are probably too young to remember Bobby Fischer. But maybe there is a young American backgammon player out there who knows the game as well as Fischer knew chess. And maybe someday he will play the Arab world's champion backgammon player and he will complain about the lights and cameras and walk out in protest and generally cause a ruckus with his eccentricities. And then he will come from behind and crush their champion backgammon player. Maybe this young American backgammon genius will win the War on Terror the way Bobby Fischer won the Cold War.

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Technorati Tags: Jon Swift, Bobby Fischer, Boris Spassky, Chess, Nixon, Cold War, Soviet Union, Politics
Carnivals: Carnival of Mental Illness, History Carnival

When Steroids Are Banned, Only Cheaters Will Have Steroids

The Mitchell Report has shocked the world of baseball with its revelation that many of the sport's biggest stars, including Barry Bonds, Jose Canseco, Roger Clemens, Lenny Dykstra, Eric Gagné, Paul Lo Duca, Andy Pettitte and Miguel Tejada have used steroids. In the wake of the report many are calling for Congressional hearings and saying that the Major League Baseball needs to get tough about steroid use. They blame MLB and the MLB Players Association for being slow to act. I think this is exactly the wrong approach. The real problem is that baseball banned steroids in the first place. It is a fact that when you ban guns, only criminals have guns. The same is true with steroids. When steroids are banned, only cheaters will have steroids.

When only some baseball players take steroids, they have an unfair advantage over those who don't. Just as law-abiding citizens don't have guns to defend themselves against gun-wielding criminals when guns are banned, baseball players who don't take steroids are unable to compete with those who do. Distributing guns to everyone and requiring everyone in the community to know how to shoot levels the playing field and gives everyone a fighting chance against criminals. In the same way distributing steroids to all baseball players and requiring every player to take them would level the baseball playing field and give everyone a fair chance to compete. No longer would players like Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa have an unfair advantage. It's not cheating if everybody does it.

As I pointed out back when the U.S. performed so badly in the World Baseball Classic, the problem with American baseball players is that they don't take enough steroids. "The poor performance of the U.S. team, which lost against such second-tier teams as Mexico and Canada, gives ample evidence that American players need steroids to play effectively," I wrote back then about our humiliating defeat. This disaster made us look weak in the eyes of the rest of the world and as I predicted then, the repercussions have been felt beyond the world of baseball, making us look weak to our enemies.

President Bush should not only be supporting the use of steroids by American baseball players (or at least looking the other way as he did when he was an owner of the Texas Rangers), he should order the Pentagon to distribute them to our soldiers in Iraq. But is adisppointing statement that bowed to the forces of political correctness, he said that the steroid "scandal" sends "a terrible signal to America’s youth." I agree that the wrong message is being sent. Young people are being sent the message by those who refuse to use steroids that you shouldn't be all you can be, that you should settle for being second-best to someone who cared enough about winning to take steroids. Do we want a generation of young people who are not willing to do whatever needs to be done to win? Do we want them to fight the wars of the 21st century against an enemy that will stop at nothing to win?

The real heroes in this story are the players who were not afraid to take steroids because of some old-fashioned notion of fair play. They were the ones who had the courage to do what they needed to do to win, even at the risk of throwing away their careers and being shut out of the Hall of Fame, denying them the ability to charge young baseball fans even more exorbitant prices for their autographs at baseball shows. It's the baseball players who were afraid to take steroids, who didn't have the guts to risk the wrath of sports writers, who, let's face it, used to be the kids they beat up in high school, that are the real cowards here. What are these players going to say to their disillusioned young fans who looked in vain for their names on the Mitchell Report list: "Sorry, kid, I just didn't want to win bad enough"?

Some are even going so far as to propose that players who have take steroids should have their awards rescinded and their records erased, or even be subjected to the most severe punishment in baseball, to have their records permanently tarnished by tainting them with the fearsome asterisk, a fate that is worse than death or at least worse than playing for the New York Mets. In fact, I think that the records of player who did not take steroids should be the ones that are asterisked. Clearly, these players were not playing to their true potential. Shouldn't those who refused to take steroids be asking themselves if they could have done better?

It's no accident that the man chosen to lead the commission that wrote this 409-page report was George Mitchell, the former Senator from Maine and the Democrats' Majority Leader from 1989 to 1995. There is already a word for people like the baseball players who refuse to take steroids, people who would rather play by the rules than win, people who are so afraid of what journalists might say about them that they aren't willing to take any risks. They are called Democrats.

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Technorati Tags: Jon Swift, Baseball, Major League Baseball, MLB, Jose Canseco, Mitchell Report, George Mitchell, Roger Clemons, Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Steroids, Iraq, Bush, Sports
Carnivals: Rants, Drugs and Pharmacology Carnival

Bridge Too Far

I always thought that people who play Bridge, a needlessly complicated card game, were harmless enough, though they certainly could be making better use of their time. But I had no idea that that the world of competitive Bridge was a hotbed of anti-American feeling. Last month at the world Bridge championships in Shanghai a team of women representing the United States did something shocking when they went up to the dais to receive the Venice Cup, the award for the best women's team. One of their members held up a hand-lettered sign that said "We Did Not Vote for Bush." This act, which has led some bridge players to accuse the women of "treason" and "sedition," has brought back memories of other Americans who have dared to criticize this country abroad, such as Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks in 2003 and Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who gave a black power salute after winning medals in the 200 meter race at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. The team's nonplaying captain Gail Greenberg claims, "There was a lot of anti-Bush feeling, questioning of our Iraq policy and about torture," at the tournament and calls her team's action "a moment of levity," but there is nothing funny about treason.

"This isn't a free-speech issue," explains Jan Martel, president of the United States Bridge Federation, commenting on what the organization refers to as the "Shanghai Incident." "There isn't any question that private organizations can control the speech of people who represent them." A statement released by the USBF reiterates, "This situation is not about free speech; it is about determining whether the USBF has a responsibility to its membership to impose sanctions on those who have acted contrary to the best interests of the organization and its members."

The United States Bridge Federation has an excellent opportunity to show the world what America stands for by punishing these women. Some people have the wrong idea about what the Bill of Rights really means. In America you have freedom of expression as long as a private organization doesn't own your expression. Peaceful protests are fine as long as they don't embarrass organizations that depend on corporate sponsorship and take place on American soil behind police barricades where they can be videotaped for future use in any trials that might arise.

In Pakistan we can already see the tragic results that can occur when some people misunderstand what America stands for. Americans don't think that just anyone deserves the right to free speech and democracy. These are rights that have to be earned after years of being under the thumbs of U.S.-supported dictators. Once the people of these countries have demonstrated that they are not going to vote for Communists or Jihadists, then we allow them to have democracy on a trial basis, with the understanding that the CIA might have to start a coup and put another dictator in place if things get out of hand.

The United States Bridge Federation has threatened to suspend these women for a year, which would send a powerful message to places like Pakistan that freedom of speech is not a recipe for anarchy. Not surprisingly, the French also seem to have the wrong idea of what freedom means to Americans. The French team sent an email in support of the women, which said, "By trying to address these issues in a nonviolent, nonthreatening and lighthearted manner, you were doing only what women of the world have always tried to do when opposing the folly of men who have lost their perspective of reality." Leave it to the French to turn it into a sex thing. Of course, this is not the first time the French have misunderstood American ideals. When they gave us the Statue of Liberty with that terrible poem that begins "Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…," a lot of people took those words much too literally, leading to the immigration problem that still haunts us today.

Thank goodness the USBF does know something about American values. Drawing on the best of American tradition, they have had their lawyer, Allan Falk, send the women a questionnaire trying to get them to snitch on the team member who first broached the idea of holding up the sign and he has threatened them with worse punishment if they don't cooperate. Already three players, Hansa Narasimhan, JoAnna Stansby and Jill Meyers, have started to crack, expressing regret that the action offended some people. But Debbie Rosenberg, Jill Levin, and Irina Levitina--the Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver and Stokely Carmichael of the Bridge team--remain defiant. How weak will the United States look to the rest of the world if we can't even scare a few lady Bridge players into backing away from criticizing the President?

"Freedom to express dissent against our leaders has traditionally been a core American value," Ms. Rosenberg, who held up the sign, wrote in an email that should be turned over to the FBI for investigation. "Unfortunately, the Bush brand of patriotism, where criticizing Bush means you are a traitor, seems to have penetrated a significant minority of U.S. bridge players." It is almost as if she is daring the President to have her executed for treason.

Champion Bridge player Robert S. Wolff disagrees with what the team did. "While I believe in the right to free speech, to me that doesn't give anyone the right to criticize one's leader at a foreign venue in a totally nonpolitical event," he said. Apparently, Ms. Rosenberg and her teammates are completely unaware of the criticize-one's-leader-at-a-foreign-venue-in-a-totally-nonpolitical-event exception to the First Amendment.

The First Amendment does not give people the right to yell anti-Bush slogans in a crowded theater, or even to talk during the movie at all. If we let a few lady Bridge players criticize the President, it could spread. The next thing you know Democrats in Congress will start opposing the President's appointments, passing laws against torture or defying him on funding for the Iraq War.

The future of this country may well depend on the action the United States Bridge Federation takes. Ms. Rosenberg claims that she earns a living from Bridge and suspending her for a year would be a financial hardship. The USBF maintains, however, that it "has no obligation to coddle, foster, or protect any person’s ability to earn professional fees." But is refraining from "coddling" their professional fees really punishment enough? Although I'm much too lazy to do it, I'm sure my friends in the conservative blogosphere are already digging up negative personal information about these players and trying to learn their email addresses and telephone numbers and where their children go to school so that they can spur their readers to attack and harass these women and ruin their lives. Soon small towns around America will be aglow with bonfires as members of local Bridge clubs toss their playing cards into the flames in protest. And Congress will take some time away from less important business to sponsor a resolution condemning these women, which even Democrats will vote for because they don't want to seem un-American. These lady bridge players will learn soon enough what freedom of expression really means in America.

Update: I receive an email from Allan Falk, attorney for the United States Bridge Federation: "This blogs sounds like it was written by a Ted Kaczynski or some other complete nut job. Allan Falk. Attorney at Law."

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Technorati Tags: Jon Swift, Bridge, United States Bridge Federation, Shanghai Incident, Debbie Rosenberg, Bush, Politics
Carnivals: Game Carnival, Carnival of Political Punditry