The Opening Ceremony of the London Olympics Reinforces the Struggle We are Now Experiencing in Wisconsin.

Comedian Rush Limbough was irate over the opening ceremony of the London Olympics. He felt Friday’s Olympic ceremony in London was “more socialist” than the Beijing ceremony in 2008, and a tribute to the National Health Service included in the performance was “done on behalf of” President Barack Obama. Read Limbough's statement below.

“Of all the things that you want to honor,” he said on his radio show. “I mean, the people of Great Britain don’t even like the National Health Service! And then it hit me, and then it hit me. It was actually done on behalf of President Kardashian. They did it for Obama. Nobody will convince me otherwise.”

Limbaugh, the comedian, represents an anti-intellectualism that is both racist and mean-spirited.  His ignorance of the world in general and economics specifically is demonstrated daily.

To get a real sense of how the world viewed the ceremony and to get an insight into the real message of the opening ceremony it is powerful to read an assessment of the ceremony by an Economics Professor who has lived in Iran, Canada, and the UK and is world renowned for establishing Globalization for the Common Good. His statement is below.

Thanks, Danny Boyle, for Celebrating the Common Good.

Written by Kamran Mofid, Ph.D.   

Tuesday, 31 July 2012 06:18

“Thanks, Danny Boyle, for that magnificent parade of Britain as the deep-dyed social democratic nation it feels itself to be. That was an exuberant hymn to imagination, ingenuity and irreverence. But above all, thanks for the story of the struggle of the powerless against the forces of conservatism. Suffragettes, Jarrow marchers, CND, punk or hip hop, all these were fiercely resisted by the right, so often proved pleasingly wrong in the end. All our happy endings tell of forces of repression falling under the wheels of people pushing for democracy and a fair share of power and wealth.

Boyle gave us a tear-jerkingly optimistic sense of the inevitability of progress. Here was social history as taught to my generation and Danny Boyle's, where we learned how – from Factory Act to Tolpuddle martyrs, from Chartists and Reform Act to the Butler Education Act – power was gradually wrenched from a small elite. See how the Voldemort tendency is still trounced by the people's enduring affection for the collective good of the NHS and the BBC.”

Thanks, Danny Boyle, for showing the world how destructive, how tragic, the forces of neo-liberalism, rightwing market fundamentalist have been. Those with the false ideology that what matters most are to maximise profits and minimise costs. Those like the ones below:

“The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits, whilst the businesses' sole purpose is to generate profit for shareholders”- Milton Friedman, Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences

“Businesses do not have a natural propensity to do good. What is natural for them is to minimise costs and maximise profits”- Editorial, The Economist, 24 June 1995

"The only reliable, durable and perpetual guarantor of independence is profit" – James Murdoch, Chief, News Corp

Thanks Danny Boyle, for highlighting that what we are going through is nothing but the sheer Crisis of the Spirit and what we desperately are longing and craving for is: The Search for Meaning & Meaningfulness, Stability & Sustainability, Contentment & the Common Good; a time for Spiritual Awakening.

And Danny, thank you also for showing us the path to a better world by encouraging us to reflect on possibilities that the current crisis of global capitalism provides a unique opportunity to chart an alternative to the complicit collusion of central states and free markets that characterise liberal political economy today. From this perspective, the proposed shift of focus from a self-interested pursuit of power or wealth (or both at once) to the quest for the common good opens the way for transforming modern economics, economy, business, society and community: A Time for the Common Good.

We, in Wisconsin, are now suffering from those same forces of neo-liberalism and right-wing market fundamentalist. ALEC, through their puppet Scott Walker has instilled in the Wisconsin Republican Party the false ideology that what matters most are to maximize profits and minimize costs. We are part of a very important world struggle and the generations who follow us will depend upon our steadfastness in this struggle.