How could he? Was it an example of immaturity, reminding one of a child who becomes angry in the middle of a game and takes his ball home? How could Stanley Cup winning goaltender Tim Thomas, a hero of the average man, pass up a photo op with President Obama, who had invited his team to the White House some seven months after they won the championship? It was "Bush League. Shabby. Immature. Unprofessional and Self-centered," wrote Hockey Hall of Fame writer Kevin Paul Dupont in the Boston Globe. Or was it? I think not. Tim Thomas, a goaltender who took years to achieve anything and spent a good part of his checkered career playing in Europe, is a maverick. He claims the right to think for himself, a dangerous idea in this age of get along and go along. And he made his point by being the only Bruin not to attend one of these traditional championship audiences in which the modern imperial president, a person who can make war with little objection from Congress, basks in the accomplishment of a championship team. As a longtime Bruins fan, I’ve read Dupont’s excellent hockey analysis over the years. Yet, from the time to time, he has slipped in comments in his hockey columns that public schools and other government departments are underfunded. Dupont has every right to criticize Thomas. However, it would be nice if, as he sets himself up as the political critic of hockey players, he would disclose his own political sympathies. I would guess that, like most of the Boston Globe staff, he likely believes in the principle of more government and voted for Obama. But I must not forget the principled man who did this: Tim Thomas. He is a man who caused himself much grief by standing alone. Until recently he was an apolitical hockey hero who came out of nowhere to become a champion. Everyone liked or at least respected him. Now he is a target of the politically correct; of the enablers of President Obama who pretend that everything is fine in America; who want to forget that more and more of our young people are dying every day in useless wars, that he is spending the country into bankruptcy and that the president’s Keynesian policies – and he is certainly not the first president who followed these failed policies – have made things even worse than when he took over from another failed president, George W. Bush. So why did the "shabby" (sic) Tim Thomas do what he did? We’re told by Dupont that his comments are part of "the right wing/conservative/Tea Party end of our political spectrum for the last 2-3 years." The last two to three years? It must be opposition to President Obama, whose policies Dupont says are making things a little better. (Very little, I would say). Here let’s listen to Dupont: "Politically our nation is a mess," Dupont says (It’s probably those damn Tea Party types who want less government), "but the material Property of the People of the people at least seems to be getting better."
Does it, now? In a quarter century of living in Queens, New York I’ve never seen more empty stores in our commercial strips. Possibly, Obama, who I doubt has ever studied the Keynesian policies he doggedly pursues, has never heard the comments of a former British prime minister, someone who made the same errors but learned: "We used to think that you could just spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending,’ said British prime minister James Callaghan in September 1976. "I tell you, in all candor, that the option no longer exists; and that insofar as it ever did exist, it only worked by injecting bigger doses of inflation into the economy followed by higher levels of unemployment as the next step," Callaghan said. But let us not forget this goaltender who so angers the politically correct. He issued a short statement at NHL.com when he decided to pass up a photo-op with the president. Let’s look at his comments, the comments that Dupont dismisses as "blather." Thomas, in a wonderfully short statement, explains his White House absence by writing, "I believe the Federal government has grown out of control, threatening the Rights, Liberties and Property of the People." D’accord.
But it gets better. "This is being done at the Executive, Legislative and Judicial Level. This is in direct opposition to the Constitution and the Founding Fathers vision for the Federal government," Thomas writes. As a journalist who has written against the Iraqi wars, who has been shocked by the Patriot Act and who sees more of his property taken by various levels of ravenous government, and who believes that limited government was the original idea of our now perverted constitution, I was delighted by Thomas’ words. But isn’t Dupont warning us that Thomas is part of a vast right wing conspiracy? Sorry, Dupont, you obviously missed this part of the statement: "This was not about politics or party," Thomas explains, "as in my opinion both parties are responsible for the situation we are in this country." Well said, Tim Thomas. Oh, and one more thing before I shut down. The reason why the Duponts of this world can never understand an individual like Thomas is because, right or wrong, agree or not, he did what he did because he believed in something. Thomas would refuse to goose step even if everyone else in our leviathan world was goose stepping. I would respect that, even if Thomas and I didn’t share the same value: the love of liberty. That’s right of the individual, as F.A. Hayek explains in the first sentence of The Constitution of Liberty, to go about his or her life with the maximum of liberty. And pace modern liberals, many of whom are de facto socialists, that also means economic liberty.
Thomas is a maverick. And J.S. Mill reminds us in On Liberty that the maverick serves society even when he’s wrong! How? When he’s wrong he is still forcing us to think of why we believe in something. The maverick keeps our brains from going to sleep. That’s something we sorely need in this Fahrenheit 451 age of endless television and cell phone calls. (Thanks for waking up some people out of their mental slumbers, Tim Thomas. But cuidado, senor. Some people would prefer to sleep forever until republican virtue and limited government are dead letters!) And then there is another point to consider from On Liberty. Maybe, just maybe, the maverick is right and rest of us are wrong. Thankfully truth is not based on majority votes. Ultimately, Thomas, taking Polonius’ counsel in Hamlet, made the right choice because he was true to himself. It’s all right there at the end of Thomas’ magnificent little statement: "This was about a choice I had to make as an INDIVIDUAL." The hockey player Tim Thomas will never create half the buzz or excitement of the great Robert Gordon Orr. Yet Tim Thomas will always be my favorite Bruin. Tu Ne Cede Malis
January 27, 2012 Gregory Bresiger [send him mail] is a business editor living in Kew Gardens, New York. Copyright © 2012 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.
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