The Patriot Post® · Those Good Old Days

Folks my age tend to waste time and energy pining for the good old days. We put on our rose-colored glasses and recall when life was simpler, we all got along, and everyday activities were not bogged down by the internet, cellphones, or incessantly ugly politics.

My latest lapse into nostalgia cropped up this week (as it usually does at this time of year), triggered by the upcoming Army-Navy game. Last week, a Naval Academy classmate circulated an old newspaper article recounting President John F. Kennedy’s enthusiastic presence at the 1962 Army-Navy game. We were there.

For me, that news clip unleashed a flood of memories, all good ones — vivid recollections of a brilliantly sunny day, of the pomp and tradition of “America’s game,” of Navy’s resounding win over the favored Army team (demonstrating to football fans everywhere that Navy’s upstart young quarterback, our classmate Roger Staubach, was the real deal), and of the visible involvement of a U.S. president who was revered by everyone there. On that day in 1962, life was truly good.

Or was it? How idyllic was American life 62 years ago? Is today worse — or better? The answer, of course, is complicated.

The bigger picture is that the best-intended efforts by a responsible nation (ours is one) to make life better for our citizens rarely follow a straight line. They zig-zag all over the map. Actions to eradicate harmful behaviors invariably overshoot their original intent and introduce unanticipated, entirely new problems, requiring more corrective actions.

It’s an endless quest. Three examples, among many:

1.) Racism and other kinds of discrimination were far more prevalent in 1962 than today. In the half-century since then, we’ve recognized the problem and tried to fix it. We’ve made real progress, but it’s been a rocky road. Violent and destructive protests — like the unexpected Watts riots in 1965, the hundreds of nightly post-George Floyd riots in the summer of 2020, and all the others in the decades between — have raised awareness but, in my view, have done far more harm than good.

We’re still working on the problem. At least now we seem to be recognizing that bloated DEI bureaucracies embedded throughout public and private sectors, empowered to police and enforce “proper” thoughts and behaviors, actually accomplish very little good. Worse, they tend to divert their parent organizations’ attention away from their primary missions (like defense of our nation) and toward politically correct ones.

2.) There is the crisis of border security. Yes, we are a nation of immigrants, and yes, we should welcome new residents who embrace the American Dream. But at the same time, every American — Democrat, Republican, or other — should be able to agree that an open border is not a solution and that the millions of unvetted persons who have illegally entered our country (with our tacit encouragement) in recent years pose a severe threat to our safety and security. As a nation, we must step back and confront that glaring problem.

3.) Less critical but apropos of this week’s Army-Navy game, let’s consider social “progress” in sport. For decades, many have been bothered by the apparent injustice of universities reaping millions from the 24/7 commitment and on-field performance of their unpaid athletes. Well-intended efforts to remedy that unfairness have made a mess out of college football — an entertaining mess, but a mess nonetheless.

Dramatically relaxed new NCAA rules now allow players to be compensated financially, without limit, for the commercial use of their “name, image or likeness.” They can now follow the money by transferring (via the “portal”) without penalty to higher-profile and more lucrative college football programs, and they can now compete for five and, in some cases, even six years.

The NCAA’s intentions are good — the new rules are financially more equitable for the top-performing athletes who view college football as the gateway to professional football. But the broader consequence is substantial. The NCAA has replaced allegiance to one’s academic institution of choice — arguably the hallmark of intercollegiate sports competition — with a purely transactional pay-for-play arrangement.

Elsewhere in sports, we are now embroiled in raging political controversies regarding transgender athletic participation, particularly the question of whether biologically male athletes should be allowed to compete on female teams. That issue is inextricably tied to the interpretation and implementation of Title IX, the very effective U.S. government policy that ensures equal opportunity for female athletes. Ultimately, a societal cave-in on the transgender issue could render meaningless the entire concept of separate men’s and women’s sports competition.

And so, the messy evolution of civilized society goes on. We may discover that Donald Trump, our president-elect, is the antidote to misguided government overreach on critical matters — or that he will be the disrupter-in-chief, tossing hand grenades and muddying the waters even more. We’ll see.

But I, for one, am encouraged by Trump’s energy and drive to take on the challenge. Both sides should give him full support (wishful thinking, I know) on this next leg of American history while considering the complexity and unpredictability of his mission. And we should be glad he’s actively in the arena — just as both Army and Navy fans were buoyed by the presence of President Kennedy, our commander-in-chief, at the 1962 Army-Navy game.