I was in London last week and went to see the Paralympics. It sucked when the bureaucrats tried to make everyone equal and threw a mishmash of people in the pool before shooting the starter pistol.
It was good when equally disabled people raced around the track on their wheelchairs. When rule makers try to enforce equality, we end up with a system that actually punishes people for their accomplishments. Plenty of athletes at the games had to give back medals because they weren’t handicapped enough. When you make “being the best at it” the only criteria for winning, you end up with something worth watching. My column this week discusses the dichotomy between the two…
PARALYZED WITH FEAR OF OFFENDING
I just flew back from the Paralympics, and boy is my arm tired. No, but seriously folks, Britain appears to be going bloody mad for the fourteenth Summer Paralympic Games, and unlike the congenital diseases that cause many of these disabilities, the excitement’s contagious!
I drove from Glasgow to London last week and everywhere I went, the ubiquitous “MEET THE SUPERHUMANS” billboard was there. You couldn’t pick up a paper without having a wheelchair rammed down your throat.
ARTICLE CONTINUES HERE
This was on TV there every five minutes. British people are really good at editing but are handicapped people really Improved Humans? They’re not subhuman. Nobody’s saying that but are we supposed to pretend it’s actually better to have no arms?
Welcome to the game of false language, used to fool everyone into believing real world conditions are changed by how you verbally frame them. You think the “Improved Human” with no arms wakes up every morning not thinking about and envying “Unimproved Humans” with arms?
i really hope that wheelchair guy rolled off the top of that apple and did a flip or something
With all the returning wounded, America will dominate the Paralympics for a generation! At least we have that…