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Most readers of this column know I appreciate competitive sports. I competed for 21 years in just about any sport that involved a ball. I enjoyed a happy and fairly respectable career in major college football and in the Canadian Football League.

Football can get pretty rough in the trenches, and I'm happy to be a spectator today.

Following my football career, I spent several years in elective politics, both at the state and federal levels.

Politics can get pretty rough in the trenches, too, and I'm very happy to be a spectator today.

From my couch, watching the political games being played across the country, I see they are getting nastier by the day.

Watching the Kerry-Kennedy-Clinton crowd dumping on its old friend Joe Lieberman reminds me of the tale of the fox and the hound.

The fox and the hound started out as good buddies. They grew up together and thought they'd be friends forever. Once they grew up, the hound was at first content to remain friends with the fox, until he realized he was bred to be a hunter, and cooled to his friendship with the fox.

"I'm a hunting dog now," the hound announced to his friend one day. "I can no longer be your friend." The tragedy was, they had been great friends, but the hound sadly determined that he had to stay in the defined box, and could no longer keep his friendship.

This is so indicative of politics on both the left and the right. I know of what I speak.

In 1997, I was honored to present the Republican response to President Clinton's State of the Union address. A great deal of thought went into this presentation.

Come that February night in 1997, I was as ready as I would ever be. I delivered a speech that was well-thought out and rehearsed, touching on all of the major issues facing Congress and our nation that day.

Sadly, at least one leader of the social conservative movement didn't see it that way. He blasted out a message to his followers nationwide. My offense? This leader attacked my speech delivered by a member of Congress who was on record as 100 percent pro-life in any and every measure for not mentioning that issue in my address.

I didn't defect on the issue, nor did I equivocate. I simply didn't mention it, and I was lambasted for the perceived oversight.

This legalistic response to my speech was typical. Legalists don't care about facts or what's right. They often concern themselves more with theory than practice. In my case, it mattered not a whit that I was pure on the issue. I didn't promote the issue in my speech, and thus I was deemed a heretic.

Legalists think their burden should be your obligation. For the legalist, you can never be black enough, conservative enough, liberal enough. If you don't adhere totally to their line, your purity is questioned. You are to say and do exactly as they want you to say and do. Do what the group does and think what the group thinks. Don't be an individual with your own convictions.

This brings us to Sen. Joe Lieberman and his support of the global war against terror.

Despite the fact that Lieberman has a long and loyal history of voting with his party 90 percent of the time, he is now not pure enough for the party because he dares to part company on one issue. On the war on terror, Lieberman has said the group uniform doesn't fit, so he's not going to wear it. No matter that they trusted him enough just six years ago to be the man a heartbeat away from the presidency, they dispatched him without remorse.

Joe Lieberman is now dealing with the politics of personal destruction imposed by his own team because he dares to think as an individual and not like the group when it comes to defending America.

John "Captain Courageous" Kerry blasted Lieberman on a talk show recently. He said he was "concerned that Lieberman is making a Republican case." John "I voted for it before I voted against it" Kerry believes he could have prevented war and stopped terrorism by the sheer force of his dynamic personality. With friends like Kerry, who needs enemies.

Yes, legalism is cold and dark for those who depart from the "group."

J.C. Watts writes twice monthly for the Pahrump Valley Times. Watts is chairman of J.C. Watts Companies, a business consulting group. He is former chairman of the Republican Conference of the U.S. House, where he served as an Oklahoma representative from 1995 to 2002. His e-mail address is JCWatts01@jcwatts.com.