The True Sins Of The Covington Catholic Students

The March for Life is an annual march on Washington, DC, to advocate for the rights of the unborn. It has been occurring for 47 years, and drew approximately 600,000 people from all around the country last week. It was widely ignored by the media, who disagree with the pro-life position. This year, however, a story emerged from the March for Life that drew national attention.

The story was that a group of white, male, MAGA-hat-wearing, Catholic teenagers surrounded and mocked a Vietnam veteran Native American man named Nathan Phillips, who was banging a drum while attempting to get to the Lincoln Memorial. This story led both the Left and the Right to widely condemn the actions of these teenagers, ranging from calls to apologize to physical threats on them and their families. Along with the viral three-minute video was a picture of a young white teenager, later identified as Nick Sandmann, smirking in the face of Phillips. Reza Aslan, formerly of CNN, said, “Have you ever seen a more punchable face than this kid’s?” Kara Swisher, a New York Times opinion writer, referred to these kids as “Nazi youth.” The teenagers were identified. Death threats were sent to them, their families, and their school. Even a misidentified teenager who lives in another state received death threats. Then the two-hour version of the video came out.

In the longer video, it was clearly shown that these teenagers were not the aggressors of this confrontation. They were sightseeing after the March for Life when Black Hebrew Israelites (a group made up of African Americans who believe they are the descendants of the ancient Israelites and practice a religious mix of Christianity and Judaism) started screaming racial slurs at the group. In an attempt to non-confrontationally drown out the shouting, the students from Covington Catholic (with permission from their chaperone) started singing their school song. That is when Phillips walked towards them, banging his drum. The Covington Catholic students kept singing, Phillips kept banging, the Black Hebrew Israelites kept shouting. Nobody was hurt, nobody was touched. So why did this become a national news story?

The sin that the Covington Catholic teenage boys committed was not that they were surrounding a Native American Vietnam veteran in a seemingly racist act. Their sin, in the eyes of the Democrats and the mainstream media, was far greater. They were guilty of being white, male, MAGA-hat-wearing Catholics. What the students did was simply an excuse for the media to attack the groups that they despise.

To prove that the Democrats and their leftist media spokespeople despise whites, males, Trump supporters and Christians, first we need to disprove that they only nationalized this story because of the supposed racist and anti-veteran actions. Compare the coverage of these students with coverage of their peers performing similar acts. In a video online, two young people, both white, one male, one female, probably low 20s, are seen surrounding an elderly man, claiming to be a veteran, holding pro-Trump signs at an anti-Brett Kavanaugh rally. They surround him, hit his signs, scream in his face, chant, and generally accost him. There was no mainstream coverage of this. When the group of teenagers from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School spoke out widely against guns, they were hailed as heroes. When David Hogg, who is white and male, but of the Left, accused US Senator Marco Rubio (who is Hispanic) of being complicit in the murder of his fellow students, Hogg was lauded as a hero speaking “truth to power.” No allegations of racism were sent Hogg’s way. The vitriol towards the aggressor is not about the race and military service of the recipient.

Their true sins, by Democrat and media standards, are what made this a national story. The sin of being white and male has been growing greater in the last decade, but it can best be described by US Senator from New York and Democratic 2020 Presidential candidate in a December 2018 tweet, “The Future is Female[,] Intersectional…” Intersectionality and the intersectional hierarchy, for those who are unaware, is the idea that by virtue of race, orientation, or gender, a person is granted a higher status when there are disputes. So a black female would be higher on this scale than a white female. The very bottom of this hierarchy are straight, white, Christian males. (Only slightly higher are Jews, because they have been oppressed but are successful.) Mainstream Democrats, like President Barak Obama, always pushed the notion that diversity is strength. Was he referring to diversity of thought? No, he was pushing diversity of skin color. Mainstream conservative Republicans are pushing for a world that embodies the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., where every child “will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” These teenagers from Covington Catholic were judged by the color of their skin.

As for wearing MAGA hats, one does not need to be a student of the mainstream media to see how supporting President Trump is a sin to the Left. President Trump has consistently received 90 percent negative news coverage. This statistic from the Media Research Council excludes opinions from sources that are forthcoming in their biases. Ninety percent of the “objective” coverage of President Trump is negative, and a third of all news coverage is about President Trump (as opposed to around a quarter of all news coverage was about President Obama during his administration). While being interviewed, Nathan Phillips claimed that the students were chanting “Build that Wall.” The full video of the event disputes that, as no “Build that Wall” chant could be heard. However, the media ran with that as further proof of the evil that these students were guilty of. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi referred to a border wall between the United States and Mexico as “immoral.” By pushing the false narrative that there were chants for the wall, the media was claiming that these students are also immoral.

Finally, the sin of being a Christian in this country is one that is becoming more and more prominent. The genocide of Christians in the Middle East is largely ignored by the media. Some estimates average 7-8,000 Christians are killed annually. Traditional Catholic organizations like the Knights of Columbus are accused of bigotry by Democratic US Senators Mazie Hirono (Hawaii) and Kamala Harris (California). (Kamala Harris is also a frontrunning 2020 Presidential candidate.) During a 2017 confirmation hearing for appeals court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, Senator Dianne Feinstein (California) said, “When you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you.” She was referring to Judge Barrett’s Catholic faith. Just last week, Second Lady Karen Pence came under fire for having the temerity of accepting a job as an art teacher at a Catholic school. This school holds traditional Catholic views on morality (very similar to views held by Orthodox Jewish schools).

The media has a narrative already set of who is good and who is evil. When a story that confirms their predetermined narrative comes along, it becomes nationalized and sensationalized, regardless of the truth of the story. The only way to not get sucked into this is to be aware of the narrative, be a healthy skeptic of the media, and be patient enough to wait for all the evidence to come out. Otherwise, the outrage will overcome, and more lives could be ruined.