The liberal case for the Olympics

Root for Team U.S.A., don’t let Trump own the flag

Flagbearer Erin Jackson of Team U.S.A. walks in the athlete parade with her team during the opening ceremony of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics. (Photo by Maja Hitij)

I’d normally be inclined to dismiss this PragerU video of random progressives saying they don’t want to support Team U.S.A. at the Olympics as nutpicking, but I actually have heard a few people in and around my social circle expressing similar sentiments, so I think it’s worth some consideration.

My sense is that first and foremost what’s actually happening here is that a certain number of people don’t like sports and find big sports culture events alienating or annoying and, rather than just saying that, they want to develop political takes.

That’s fine as far as it goes. But the whole phenomenon does, I think, also reflect other things, including American progressives’ troubled relationship with the concept of national pride and American patriotism, feelings about Donald Trump, and attitudes toward the general idea of nationalistic conflict.

Broadly, this reminds me of the points I made about land acknowledgments recently. It’s good and appropriate for Americans to recognize the United States of America as a flawed country with a checkered past and some morally questionable acts in its history.

But it’s simply inaccurate to conceive of the United States of America as a uniquely or unusually flawed country with a history that is somehow different in kind from the overall history of the world, which is full of conquest and bloodshed and enslavement and brutality.

There’s a lot to be genuinely proud of about the United States in terms of our cultural and technological achievements, our generally high living standard and high degree of human freedom, our track record of trying to build a diverse and pluralistic society, and our moments of genuine high-mindedness on the world stage.

Every country is built on “stolen land,” but one country sent astronauts to walk on the moon. Besides which, it’s no good for the people of any country to only ever be hangdog and depressed about themselves all the time. It makes a lot more sense to identify distinctive good things to be proud of and cultivate a relationship with those aspects. You’ll orient yourself wrongly toward a lot of specific questions, including the Olympics, if you don’t get the big picture right.

But there are also specific aspects of the Olympics that are worth considering here.