Think Football Would Be Left Alone by the Radical Left? Not For Long.

The American Spectator recently pointed out that football has become “the new smoking.” If only the scourge of leftism were that toxic.

No, it’s much, much worse than that. Football represents a complete affront to the entire project of radicalism, which decades ago spread to our universities, schools, entertainment, and legal professions.

The last remaining conservative bastions — the military and professional sports — are presently under assault by leftists who cannot stand to leave these exemplars of patriotism and capitalist competition alone. So football fans better keep their heads on a swivel.

There is practically nothing more conceivably antithetical to the left’s worldview than American football. This makes it a sitting target, kind of like Barack Obama coming across the middle on James Harrison. [How would Obama talk his way out of the reality that he would get smoked?] The left is therefore working to co-opt the NFL and put it in the service of its political agenda.

Wild accusations? Unfounded speculation? Let’s look at what is happening under Roger Goodell, who is not only wussifying the league, but has moved the NFL seasons’s opening date this year to accommodate the Democrat convention speech of America’s royal majesty Barack Obama. As if a Republican would ever get such a courtesy.

The Obama administration earlier partnered with the National Football League with a “United We Serve” campaign that cross-promoted fitness and “service.” One might object that the NFL has partnered with “charitable” organizations in the past. The league has maintained a long and mutually beneficial relationship with The United Way. But United We Serve is no charitable organization, it is a political ploy designed to get Americans used to the well-established lefwing dream of everyone working for free. Sounds like slavery – with a smile.

For those who believe this is no more than right-wing pontification, observe the language on the White House “blog” describing United We Serve: “It’s going to take all of us working together to build a new foundation for America and it will happen one community at a time.” Yeah, kind of like Obama’s former community organizing outfit ACORN — why would the NFL want a piece of that action?

There is always the possibility that the NFL is simply clueless and sees nothing wrong with inviting a politically divisive figure to serve as representative of the league. Then again, the political correctness police banned Rush Limbaugh from partial ownership of the St. Louis Rams. And remember how Hank Williams Jr. was banned from Monday Night Football for his anti-Obama rant? Are you ready for some fascism?

Then we have numerous subtle assaults on the game, such as the attempt to protect football players from the real effects of concussions, as if NFL players have no choice how they use their bodies for a living (i.e. violently, while making millions of dollars). Again, there is the subtle message that contracts are coercive instruments of owners and not voluntary agreements between individually responsible adults.

But let’s get down to brass tacks. The political left is targeting the NFL and watering down its cultural significance with the leftist ethic of altruism, because the NFL represents a defiance of the socialist narrative virtually en toto. Is it really necessary to make 300 pound football players wear pink wristbands and ribbons for a month to show solidarity with breast cancer victims? Just cut a check for a million dollars and be done with it. Besides, it’s not like prostate cancer isn’t afflicting hundreds of thousands of men.

Sorry, I’ve been a football fanatic my whole life, and I know bullshit when I see it. My first words in life (no joking) were “football you bet.” I know the game. I know the political left. And I know when the latter is mucking up the former, just like it does everything else.

Professional football is an inherently conservative institution. Teaching both individual greatness and teamwork, football brings out the best in men through competition. Heck, most NFL franchise owners are conservative and donate Republican, which is no fait accompli in this crony capitalist climate. But is very ironic and disappointing that Republicans will be holding their convention in a 62% government-funded arena while chanting the slogan “We Built This.” Yet as any political observer nowadays can figure out, conservative and Republican are not even close to being the same thing. But on to the bigger picture.

Does anyone think that leftists fail to grasp how important professional football is to American culture? The NFL has all the traits that effete modern liberals despise. There is capitalism, manliness, and competition – making the league a perennial institution of solid American values so provocative that neomarxist shock-troops cannot help but try to co-opt it.

Best of all, in football results matter. This makes a football game a test of two teams: There is a superior team and an inferior team on any given Sunday. This black or white, up or down way of evaluating superiority clashes mightily with the left’s morally relativist worldview.

The National Football League is also a powerful indictment of the Marxian myth that there are two classes in a capitalist society, the haves and the have-nots, and that the former class unremittingly and perpetually exploits the latter. Professional football players come from all socioeconomic backgrounds (in fact usually lower and middle class ones) and they work their butts off to make the most of their talent; there is no free ride, and no excuses here.

The NFL, without any affirmative action policy and simply through the standard of open competition, confirms an argument that conservatives have been making for years: That a true market is colorblind. In the NFL, the rule is simple: Either you are a great football player or you are a fan.

Football players sell themselves and their unique set of skills to the NFL – and if successful, they become millionaires. The ultimate reason they become millionaires? Because the middle class has the time, the technological means, and the money to financially support the game.

The NFL constitutes a running threat to the leftist narrative. The leftwing march through all the institutions of the culture in order to subvert the economy continues, and professional sports is merely the last of American bastions to resist the left’s creeping program.

Here’s a hail Mary, keep the ubiquitous President Obama and his socialist program out of my Sundays. If you think Tea Party activists are bad, you haven’t seen thirty thousand rabid Kansas City Chiefs tailgaters.