The Olympics is a great celebration of individual achievement, cloaked in nationalism.  Friday’s long opening ceremony was intended to be a dramatic portrayal of British history.  Great Britain does have a great history, with many magnificent contributions to civilization.   But the job of portraying the history was given to a leftist movie maker (sorry for the redundancy) so what we saw portrayed was a decidedly Marxist view of history.  We apparently can’t get away from that propaganda, even in sports.

Briefly, Peter Boyle’s history went something like this:   In ancient times, everything was green and beautiful.  The background  music was beautiful.  The people were so very happy.

Then the Industrial Revolution was portrayed as the end of everything green.  The scene turned ugly and dark, the music was harsh and dissonant.  And the people were poor and sad, except for the wealthy captains of industry who stood tall in their fine clothes, smoking cigars and smugly observing the scene of destruction before them.  Evil had triumphed.

Later in the saga, there was a long adulatory scene portraying the wonders of Britain’s National Health Service.  Goodness had prevailed after all.  The children were happy and danced with the nurses around the hospital beds.

In the real world, life in the pre-industrial ages was nasty, brutish and short.  At that time you would expect half your kids to die young and the lucky ones who lived could hope to scrape out a very meager existence for 30 years or so.

The Industrial Revolution changed all that.  Division of labor allowed people to be immensely more productive than ever before in history.  For millennia before that, life had changed little for the common man.  Now there was real progress.  Entrepreneurs created a world of choices.  There was increasing prosperity for everyone.  The benefits spread around the world.  Life expectancy improved dramatically.

The advances in medicine from the free enterprise system were spectacular; new drugs and new treatment methods improved the quality of life.   Eventually there was enough prosperity that politicians could buy votes by telling people they would give them “free” medical care.  Of course, nothing is free, and nothing done by government is managed efficiently or economically.  Nothing.  England’s National Health Service proves it.

Yet the Marxist delusions persist.  And Friday night, nearly a billion people watched a dramatic portrayal of false history.