This post was originally published on time4thinkers.com.

Olympic ideals win gold
By Mark Sappenfield
The Olympics are coming—a great, big, supersize portion of national pride mixed in with amazing athletes, their even more amazing stories, and a healthy side of corporate sponsorship, all neatly wrapped in a bow nightly by Bob Costas.
We love the Olympics. NBC would not have spent $4.4 billion to broadcast the next four after London if we didn’t. But as London prepares—spending more than $14 billion itself and even considering putting missile launchers atop local roofs for security—the question arises: What are the Olympics, really?