Prof Claims Surfing is an Olympic Sport Due to ‘Centuries of U.S. Imperialism’

Prof Claims Surfing is an Olympic Sport Due to ‘Centuries of U.S. Imperialism’

Progressives live with the never-ending fear that somewhere in the world, people are having fun.

The College Fix reports:

Professor: Surfing an Olympic sport due to ‘centuries of U.S. imperialism’

A professor in the Department of Liberal Studies at Texas A&M at Galveston recently wrote a piece for The Washington Post in which he claims surfing became an Olympic sport due to “centuries of U.S. imperialism.”

Thomas Earle kind of stretches the meaning of “centuries” for, as he notes, the American imperialist tendency didn’t even begin until the early-to-mid-19th century, when American missionaries journeyed to Hawaii.

Missionaries “served as forerunners to American economic and political penetration,” Earle writes. They followed the late 18th-century stop in Hawaii by British Captain James Cook.

They sought to impose their morality and values while stamping out practices viewed as sinful and licentious. Missionaries helped pass laws that banned hula dancing and discouraged the wearing of leis. While surfing remained legal, practices associated with the sport, including nudity and gambling were not. …

The missionary emphasis on Calvinist ethics such as hard work and enterprise left little time for surfing. Missionary Hiram Bingham noted this relationship: “The decline and discontinuance of the use of the surf-board, as civilization advances, may be accounted for by the increase in modesty, industry, and religion.”

During the 20th century, many of these missionaries’ offspring became business executives on the island, and “this cadre of powerful Americans,” along with U.S. Marines, brought about the late-19th century coup which formally annexed Hawaii.

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