David Brooks has an instructive column on the Olympics and patriotism in The Weekly Standard. Here’s a bit I particularly enjoyed:

We are about to enter the Olympic season, and there are going to be a bunch of obnoxious stories about the overbearing patriotism of the host Americans. My point is first that all nations are overbearingly patriotic come Olympics time. And all nations should be. Patriotism, the love of something larger than oneself, is one of the noblest passions known to man.

But there has been an attempt over the past few years to hijack the Olympic spirit, to minimize national pride and turn the events into a UNICEF-style celebration of global harmony and cooperation. The organizers are trying to turn the Olympics from a series of sporting contests into a multinational festival.

Which is a total perversion. The Olympics are meant to celebrate honorable rivalry and maximum skill, perseverance and toughness. The Olympic events, after all, are won by people who are ferociously competitive. On the medal stands we celebrate their prowess and their drive. We honor them because they are the best on earth at what they do. Through the games, and through competitive sports generally, we celebrate a set of moral habits: Striving for excellence even through pain and tedium; perseverance in humiliating circumstances; facing defeat with honor and celebrating victory with grace.

Yet there is a certain sort of person who chokes on the stark inequality that is inherent in competition — the fact that some are better than others. That sort of person only knows how to celebrate cooperation.

So now we have a whole propaganda machine built up to spread the distortion that the Olympics exist to bring people from all over the world together to enjoy togetherness–when the reality is that the Olympics are there to bring people from all over the world together so we can see who is best.