2002-07-11 - 12:04 p.m.
Just to get this out of the way first and foremost, I fully stand by the decision to end the All-Star game in a tie after 11 innings. These players have seasons to finish and have better things to do than wear themselves out finishing a glorified exhibition game.
I felt I got my money's worth in the second inning, when Barry Bonds (who is a great player, but a detestable man who should be run over repeatedly) was robbed of a home run by a spectacular over the wall catch. That for me is an evening's worth of satisfying baseball.
While I was watching the game, I was helping my mom with her homework (She has to do a presentation on a chapter of a book in her PoGo class) so I wound up reading the chapter myself and making notes for her. Fascinating stuff.
The chapter was an essay written in 1835 by a French bastard named Alexis de Tocqueville while he was visiting the Jackson Administration United States. The essay was all about the dangers of the majority opinion, and how it can be more tyrannical than any dictator. In democratic societies, the will of the majority decides an issue. Everyone is free to express their opinion during the decision making process, but once a conclusion has been reached, woe be the man who expresses a contrary opinion. They won't be killed or tortured or arrested, but, worse, they are shunned and ostracized to the point where even those who agree with the dissenter are uninclined to speak up for fear of similar reprisal.
Tocqueville points out that in a dictatorship, where voicing dissent will merely get you killed, people are far more inclined to do so. Thousands of books criticizing the Church circulated Europe during the Spanish Inquisition. We the people don't notice that we're passively repressing free expression because we're too busy patting ourselves on the back for having such a perfect form of government. Even by 1835, Tocqeuville noticed that hardly anyone he met in the was a genuine person anymore. The vast majority of those who disagreed with US policy on anything kept quiet and pretended to like it anyway, and very few displayed the "independent masculinity" spirit that founded the country in the first place.
While I would argue that things aren't quite that extreme today, it does make you think.
Ken
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