So sorry to just be getting to this — not sure how it slipped out of my inbox!

Thanks so much for the feedback and thoughts. Although my article certainly gives that impression, I’m no exactly saying I want politics to tap into the baser elements of sports fandom. I’m more implying that, if our brains can be directed to very active thinking and participation in one medium, what about that medium can make a much more important arena — politics — more palatable and conducive to that kind of participation?

Yes, politics is dishonest and misleading. But why? I posit it’s because they know they can lie, cheat, steal and get away with it, and we don’t really pay that much attention. Compare this to an owner of a franchise who tries to make a dumb trade. The fans would go bonkers, because they know why the deal was done to save money or whatever.

But maybe we need to consider them as two wholly separate spheres. To the extent that it really does mean something and have real world implications, politics I think should be more collaborative and coraborative than competitive. Meanwhile sports, at the end of the day, really don’t mean anything outside of matters aesthetic or, as you pointed out, natioanalistic. Thus maybe it’s better to keep them separate and simply evaluate how we approach one or the other.

Politics is dishonest, misleading, disconnected from anything that gives us a “feel good” sensibility. Most regular folk feel duped by covert mandates (i.e. “Weapons of Mass Destruction”; “Axis of Evil”…)and while the political sphere hopes to inform and represent the people, it manipulates and instills fear (often erroneously).

What does sports do for people? It engages and often connects them emotionally, even to the point of national pride (think Olympics, World Cup, etc.) People just want something they can trust and believe in. I would guess that many beloved sports teams achieve this more successfully than political parties.

I don’t think politics should adopt a more competitive “rah, rah, rah…my team is better than your team” approach. Maybe politics will have to change the way it does business and most certainly the way one can vote. Trotting off to the polls may not suit the digital age.

In Canada, we are given four hours to vote, yet we had the lowest Federal election turnout since Confederation (59.1%). It also saw a second term for a minority government where nothing much can get done.

In Australia, voting is compulsory. This is also strictly enforced. Their turnout is 95% – but this probably forces people to vote without thinking. So voter turnout is not the best gauge for voter disillusionment.

Maybe your sports idea could be that the leaders themselves play a game of bocci or hoops and whomever wins can run the country! Now, that’s a game I wouldn’t miss.

1. Fetuses do not present an imminent danger to the life of the woman.
2. It takes two people to make a fetus, it is not a random disease.
3. Fetuses will eventually become full-grown humans.
4. Cancer growths do not have souls.
5. To liken the fetus to a growth eliminates the distinction between a fetus that is a few weeks old to one that is four months old.

Furthermore the choice to abort is not simply about the right to choose what to do with one’s body. The body being aborted is not the woman’s, it’s another individual that happens to reside in the woman’s womb. That’s a very important distinction. I do not see how a random evolutionary occurrence should grant the woman an “extra” right over ownership of the fetus. Without the man, there is no child.

It’s also quite convenient that once a child is born the entire legal apparatus will descend upon the man and force him to take care of that child. So to resume: currently the man has absolutely no say regarding the abortion process but once the baby is born, he is now responsible for the child and may be forced to pay child support if he decides to leave. How such a state of affairs could be considered just boggles the mind.

Furthermore how is it possible to equate the sadness of a man whose child was aborted with the sadness one feels for the death of a pet?

It should also be noted that the pro-choice view (“my body, my rules”) is rooted in a completely materialistic understanding of human existence, one which excludes the possibility of a spiritual dimension to man. Such a philosophy gained prevalence around four-hundred years ago with the works of (among others) Thomas Hobbes. His “project”–contained in the book “The Leviathan”– was to treat men solely as bodies in the hopes of establishing a political system that was “truer” to our nature. That system ended up being an absolute monarchy with a citizenry composed of frightened men and women. Hobbes’ model for this project was modern natural science, whose immediate and profound successes he had found appealing. The problem of course is that we are not simply bodies. To promote such a view is to do violence against human nature, it is a complete reduction.

The issue of a man’s right over a woman’s right to choose is clear in my mind. He doesn’t have that right if we are talking about a fetus which could not viably exist without a woman’s womb. Should that become medically possible, with a willing male counterpart to raise a future fetus, we would have a completely different scenario to consider.

I am, however, sensitive to the fact that some men would be traumatically affected by their partner’s decision to terminate a pregnancy. As with most traumatic experiences, one needs to get support and to seek out resources in order to alleviate the pain of the experience. One also needs strategies to help them cope with the reality of the situation and perhaps even couple counseling if they are still together after such a decision. I do not make light of your attention to this matter, but people feel equally sad and affected when they lose their pet, have failed relationships, lose a child by miscarriage. Yet, I feel very strongly that none of it has to do with or should involve the essential right of a woman to choose.

The men who are affected by abortion need support as do women who are affected by their choice to abort a fetus.

He speaks of violence existing in mostly “failed states” and it makes me think that Iraq was not a failed state. It had a despot who controlled the state with an iron fist. The despot was not a friend of capitalism, and an enemy both to the US and Israel…and he had oil. In biblical terms, violence was often a case of eradicating evil, now it’s eradicating the Axis of Evil. The purpose, however, has greatly shifted to capitalistic interests rather than moralistic interests.

Fewer people bonk you over the head or decapitate you for your beliefs these days or burn you for acting differently. How many people have lost their homes, livelihood, killed themselves over the greed of financial despots? How many seniors have been scammed of their savings and their sense of security by despicable financial planners?

With all the lack of violence “these days” do we feel any safer?

“If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities.” [Voltaire]

“I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own — a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism.” [Einstein]

“Faith means not wanting to know what is true.” [Nietzsche]

“I cannot believe in the immortality of the soul…. No, all this talk of an existence for us, as individuals, beyond the grave is wrong. It is born of our tenacity of life – our desire to go on living … our dread of coming to an end.” [Edison]

“The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma.” [Lincoln]

“Religion is a byproduct of fear. For much of human history, it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn’t killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity?” [Arthur C. Clarke]

“Religions are all alike – founded upon fables and mythologies.” [Thomas Jefferson]

“Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile.” [Kurt Vonnegut]

“Religion is based . . . mainly on fear . . . fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. . . . My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.” [Bertrand Russell]