If you asked me about Covington Catholic High School 2 weeks ago, I couldn't tell you anything about the school, never mind anticipate that my most popular post over the past week would explicitly reference the school. This opinion is not intended to rehash the kerfuffle but to comment on the aftermath and my own mixed review. To some extent, my own tweets on the subject over the recent past is indicative of how I've evolved over this incident.
As someone who is staunchly pro-life (but I explicitly reference abortion on an infrequent basis in the blog, in part because of the nature of the issue (pregnant women themselves may be unaware of their status). For example, we have laws against suicide. In reality, it is next to impossible to stop a determined person from killing himself; there are innumerable ways for someone to kill himself. Only the most Draconian restrictions on liberty and property could prevent someone from harming himself.) We could say similar things about raising small children. We really can't micromanage family life in the pursuit of protecting against parental abuse and/or neglect of their dependent children. This doesn't mean we should abandon legal protections of the unalienable rights of young people. So the issue of how to protect preborn life is intrinsically very difficult in a liberty-abiding society. None of us want to prosecute a woman who has lost her child, just like we don't want to prosecute people who have attempted to take their own lives. We are less tolerant of abominable merchants of preborn death.
I have never personally participated in the annual March for Life, I may one day. But my heart is with them. I don't tolerate a lot of politicians, like Donald Trump, who are trying to exploit the cause. For example, Donald Trump won't even rule out that he has contributed to Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion provider, but he eagerly courts the political support of pro-lifers. In part, that plays into my nuanced perspective. But since Roe v Wade, which struck down state-based regulation of abortion (like other traditional public safety/law enforcement rights and responsibilities reserved to the states under the Tenth Amendment), nearly 60M babies have been murdered--nearly the equivalent of 20% of our population.
So this kerfuffle has absolutely nothing to do with the pro-life movement. Why student protesters were wearing MAGA hats isn't obvious to me, but it was wrong. This wasn't a partisan event. Am I trampling on the students' right to free speech? No, I just think they are sending a mixed message in their participation in the march; I don't like Trump's baggage of anti-immigration and anti-trade policies, which are far from pro-life positions, should be conflated with the pro-life movement. Where were their pro-life posters, clothing, etc.? (It may well be there were some, and I haven't been motivated enough to watch and listen to 2 hours of video coverage to check ) I did see a number of MAGA hats in my limited exposure. I just think, as a Catholic and a pro-lifer, it was a distraction from the moral crusade for life and badly reflects on the school adult chaperones. In all the coverage I've seen, there were only incidental references to being at the March for Life. Now I don't hold the kids responsible for the mainstream media's obsession with political correct themes, like MAGA cap wearing youth intimidating elder Native Americans, but their participation in the March did not draw attention to the abomination of generational genocide and was driven more by their choices in attire.
I cited a basic video of the fuller context in a recent post, but most prominently there was a short clip showing a smirking teen, Mr. Sandmann, confronting an elder Native American (Nathan Phillips) who is chanting, dancing and beating on a drum (as I seem to recall). Now the clip was grossly out of context; I mentioned in a later tweet I did look for a fuller video on Youtube. It looked to me like the high school group had intercepted the small Native American group and was mocking them, dancing and chanting. Sandmann's smirking face under his prominent MAGA cap made him the poster child. I've known Catholics since at least when I was in sixth grade who were involved in the civil rights movement. We "adopted" a poor black family in DC. I had Catholic sister professors who lived not in the convent, but in the surrounding barrio. Never in a million years could I imagine a group of Catholic students harassing a group of Indians.
But I was--and still am--repulsed by Sandmann's smirking. I've seen at least a handful of commentators who have mocked people for criticizing this smirking. Now, granted, there are a lot of things worse than smiling inappropriately, including physical assault, but it still is disrespectful and needlessly inappropriate provocation, making fun of someone engaging in a ritual dance. I myself tweeted that I would like to smack the taste out of Sandmann's mouth. There are a number of libertarians who have severely criticized the media attack on these kids (like Tom Woods, who I personally don't get along with, who can get personally nasty at people like Romney. Woods published a scathing attack on the Twitter storm savaging these kids. I didn't disagree with most of Woods' comments, but Woods has a tendency to get a little too full of himself.)
I first became aware of the fuller context online at Reason.com where a writer posted an opinion after reviewing a 2-hour video, perhaps from an extremist racist black (oh yes, I'm going there) Jewish group. I could only tolerate the first 5-10 minutes of hearing the blacks mocking the Indians, arguing that God had punished their worship of animal spirits by giving their lands to the European and related provocative nonsense. The Reason commentator said some of the Twitter rumors, i.e., that Trumpkin Covington Catholic marchers were chanting "Build the wall", also claimed by Indian leader Nathan Phillips, were flat-out false. Nathan claims that the Covington Catholic students were threatening the small group of extremist blacks, and so he played the role of peacemaker between the two groups. So it was basically Phillips invading the high school group, not vice versa. In fact, there is evidence that the extremists were telling a black high school student that his fellow "crackers" would kill him and cannibalize his vital organs. It seems that the high school students were confused by the Native Indian group actions, thinking they were sympathizers and trying to chant and dance as a sign of unity.
There is no doubt that Nathan Phillips, who played the politically correct card to full advantage and validated the Twitter storm over alleged Trumpkin youth attacks on Indians or blacks. The video flatly contradicts his account. I lost a great deal of respect for Phillips, pursuing a false narrative even as contradictory video evidence become available.
Luckily I don't watch much, if any related FNC, aka the Trump Propaganda Network, coverage, but of course this feeds right into the mainstream media talking point, not to mention an attack on Trump and Trumpkins everywhere. I think Hannity has now included its recitation in his tiresome Trump apologist litany.
This is rare case where progressives got caught in a compelling case of deliberate, knowing distortion that even columnists from progressive media like "The Atlantic" were forced to admit they had judged the students out of context and on limited evidence and perhaps we should be more empathetic to young people caught in unfamiliar circumstances.
