Charles Cooke of National Review Online analyzes a furor over members of the American men’s Olympic hockey team attending the State of the Union address.
[I]n their most essential form, most of the complaints about the hockey team’s willingness to interact with President Trump are just gussied-up attacks on pluralism.
The most common argument I’ve seen advanced against the USA men’s team from fans of the game who claim to be distraught is that this or that player should not have gone to the White House or answered President Trump’s phone call because he “has a gay sister” or “has a Mexican mother” or has at some point or another expressed political views that differ from the GOP’s.
But this is absurd. First off, this country has a long tradition of athletes going to the White House after a big win, and of their doing so irrespective of whether they like the president who invited them. It is not “political” to go to the White House, or to receive a congratulatory phone call. The president is the president whether one approves of him or not. To suggest that one should go only if one endorses him wholeheartedly is to recommend the sort of silly, petulant thinking that leads people who are upset about the most recent election to insist that the incumbent is “not my president.” He is, actually. That’s how the system works.
Worse still, it is to propose that one ought only ever to associate with people who share one’s political preferences — as if talking to a person with whom one disagrees, or shaking his hand, were a form of ideological treason. That, clearly, is no way to run a big, bustling, diverse country such as ours. The last election was decided by just over 2 million votes out of more than 150 million. Which, pray, would be more “divisive”? For the USA team to decline to visit the White House because not all of its members agree with everything the winner of that election believes, or for the USA team to go while retaining full control of their own consciences? I know my answer.
