Dear Nick,
It now is some ten days since you unintentionally became famous, and you blessedly no longer are the news outside Covington. But I write to tell you that you are not forgotten for many of us whom you made proud. That includes me, an Orthodox Rabbi.
Obama once said that, if he had had a son, it would have been a boy like Trayvon Martin. Nicholas, I do not doubt that. Not for a
moment. I would rather set the boys of CovCath as role models.
Nick, you came with a bunch of other kids from CovCath to Washington, D.C. to march for life and to have some clean fun in the nation’s capital. That is so noble, and that used to be what America is all about: kids getting to visit Washington, D.C., maybe meeting their Congressional representative and getting to sit in the gallery, maybe getting to visit the National Archives, the Smithsonian, the FBI building, Ford’s Theater, the Jefferson Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, the Reflecting Pool, the Washington Monument. That was the big visit and family trip that teens all over this country hoped they one day could do with their parents and siblings. And maybe one day, if your red hat’s message of hope and change comes true, we all can make America great again.
On the day of CovCath’s visit, though, you found that all around you, millions of other Americans want the right to tear apart fetuses limb from limb. Women and men who are too tired or lazy to take simple precautions that they learn in California and New York elementary school classes end up causing an unwanted pregnancy and choose to undo their laziness and gross irresponsibility by paying someone to tear apart the fetus later. In the old days, when science was less advanced, they fooled themselves into thinking that a fetus has no life form to it, was just a collection of random cells. But now
the science is settled: the heart beats, the body nourishes, the life exists. In a world of Andrew Cuomos and
Kermit Gosnells, you came to defend life.
You also came wearing a MAGA hat. Good for you! Some people in this country believe that everyone except for the kids at CovCath has a right to free speech. They cheer high school drop-outs who say “F – – – Trump.” They photograph themselves holding a bloody decapitated head representing the President of the United States. Indeed, the United States Supreme Court has held that free speech even includes the right to burn the American flag and to dance naked at strip clubs. So, Nick, our Founding Fathers gave us the Bill of Rights so that kids at Covington Catholic and others in yeshivas throughout the United States and others who are older and perhaps not even religiously trained may wear a hat that says “Make America Great Again.” Those words are not the fighting words of Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568 (1942), nor a Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969), incitement to imminent lawless action but words of hope and change: hope for a change from the Wasted Obama Decade.
In America we protect the biased Left mediacracy — people like CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, the
New York Times, and the
Washington Post. These people report mostly true on local interest stories like a county fair or a new restaurant, but they intentionally distort and lie deliberately on national public-interest stories. You know that first-hand because you now have experienced it directly. That is why the President calls them “the enemy of the people” — because
they are. They deliberately distort the truth and reality of what is happening in order to mislead the public into believing an alternate reality. When Walter
Duranty of the same
New York Times did that during the Stalin Years, he and the
New York Times contributed to the murder of millions of people who otherwise might have been saved if the truth of the
Holodomor had come out. Instead, the people died, murdered by the
enemies of the people. The same
New York Times in a small way helped Hitler gas, bury, and incinerate millions of Jews during the
Holocaust by
hiding his crimes from the public. Did you know that the
Times ran 23,000 front-page stories from 1939-1945, of which 11,500 were about the World War — but only
twenty-six about Hitler’s mistreatment of Jews? Of course these evil villains are the enemies of the people.
This Left Mediacracy had a dilemma this year. You were part of a beautiful gorgeous group of pro-life marchers advocating and defending the lives of the unborn. The Left Media hate that. They even were more upset that the very next day, at the same D.C. where you were, there was to be a disastrous catastrophe for their cause, as the “Women’s March” would be crashing down decimated, attracting perhaps a tenth of the prior year’s turnout, now taken over by
anti-Semites, anti-White racists, and woman-haters associated with and
loyal to Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam. So the Left Media was dead-set on creating some alternate story at the March for Life where you attended that would be able to distort the weekend narrative.
There is no way on G-d’s earth that anyone could have prepared you for the Crazy America that exists outside Covington. I know Covington very well; I lived a year in Kentucky and spent time in Covington every few weeks. Covington is a beautiful small city. I would bring my kids to see the Carroll Chimes Bell Tower and Clock depicting the Pied Piper of Hamelin in Mainstrasse Village. Nick, the “big shots” in New York City (where I used to live) and in Los Angeles (near where I now live) look down on Kentucky. They think you guys are a bunch of small-town redneck hicks. That is how they myopically view the whole gorgeous state of Kentucky. But that is because they do not know what they do not know. Covington is a beautiful city with beautiful people in a beautiful state. In Manhattan, by contrast, the intellectuals need to have four door locks on their apartment entrances that they have to lock and unlock, one-two-three-four, just to get in and out, because they are afraid of break-ins and being mugged. They have special “
police locks” that not only get bolted into their front doors but into the floor, because crooks still break through the other three door locks. It’s like living in “
Fauda.” When they travel on their overcrowded, over-priced, always-late, often broken down subways, they keep their eyes shut or focused on the floor because they are taught never to look anyone in the eye since he might be crazy and kill them if he thinks they are looking at him. By contrast, in Covington everyone is friendly and trusting. In Kentucky, people greet strangers openly and welcome outsiders warmly. It is safe to look at people in the eye in Covington. So it turns out that people in Covington are a lot smarter, and New Yorkers are a lot stupider, than either group thinks. In Covington, a
country boy can survive.
New Yorkers in the Left Media cannot understand why CovCath boys like you would smile in the faces of people like that lying phony Native American “Vietnam Vet.” That is because in New York they never would have smiled at him in the first place, figuring he might have a knife or a
tomahawk, so they would have run away from him. The Left Media do not understand a culture where you actually look people in the eye, smile their way, and stand your ground.
By now, we all know
what happened that Friday in D.C. Some crazy, insane Black people who think they are Jews —
Black Hebrew Israelites (and, by the way, they are welcome to have George Soros) — came into the area, yelling insults and racial epithets at some Native Americans. You kids from Covington Catholic innocently got caught in the middle of two sets of circus acts. In time, the Black Hebrew Crazies started calling you guys names, too, and the Native American nut with the drum starting marching right up to you, beating his drum, walking closer and closer, until he was beating his drum practically in your face. Really, Nicholas — a dimension of sight and sound, a land of shadow and substance, the teens of CovCath inadvertently stepped into the
Twilight Zone.
New Yorkers are trained for situations like that — to start running away: maybe he has a knife, maybe a gun, maybe a hatchet. But you are from Covington, so you proudly stood your ground. You did not back away. You demonstrated the best of the Covington Catholic education you have gotten by standing your ground and just smiling at him. That smile said: “I am here in peace. I am not going to be incited into escalating your menacing confrontation. So you can go on beating that stupid drum of yours all day, Ringo, but I am not going to back off, nor will I be drawn into a fight. Because I am here to support life and the rights of the unborn.”
Besides, how could you even know what or who he is? An Indian? But he does not even look like Elizabeth Warren.
Nick, this country became a very nasty place during the Wasted Obama Decade. Obama destroyed something precious that we Americans had. We had become a
post-racial society where people finally were not being judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their
character. Obama destroyed that, but as you know he never quite impacted northeastern Kentucky. That indeed is why so many of us hope that somehow we
will yet be able to make America great
again. You got a taste of how nasty it can get when you leave Covington and walk into the swamp of Washington, D.C. But we got a taste by watching your dignified stance of what the Other America is, the America we remember from before the Obama Wasted Decade.
By now, all of America knows that the loon who banged his drum in your face has a shady past. He claimed to be a Vietnam Veteran, and that now turns out to be a
lie. Although his
lie is the kind that can get you
elected United States Senator from Connecticut, tens of millions now do not trust his
forked tongue. And we have seen the full videos. We trust our own eyes and ears. So take heart, Nicholas. You did fine. A good, clean, wonderful life lies ahead of you.
A few final thoughts:
1. Do not be concerned that this incident will leave you disadvantaged later in life. Yes, it will be on the internet, but you emerged as the winner.
2. If anyone in your future ever chooses to deny you an opportunity based on the incident, count yourself blessed that you will have been spared any future engagement with such a prejudiced bigot and fool.
3. Learn now in your teen years that Facebook and Twitter and Instagram are far more evil than they are good. They spread lies, and they destroy lives. They motivate young people to kill themselves in despair. They spread defamation. Most people who post on those platforms — not all, but most — are people whose opinions do not matter one whit. They are people with “followers” who never actually would follow them anywhere, and with “likes” from people who do not actually like them. Their cheap shots at you mean nothing. Learn to make a life away from social media, a real life.
4. When interviewers at NBC and elsewhere ask you whether maybe you have something to apologize for, just say “No.” If they ask again, “Are you sure that you do not want to apologize to someone?” just respond with that sweet smile and silent gaze. They won’t ask a third time.
5. You and your classmates never should have been criticized by your local Diocese. The Diocese embarrassed itself nationally when they instantly criticized CovCath kids without having the facts.
That was a national disgrace, doing unto you guys what they would not have wanted others to do unto them.
Lev. 11. If they must publicly criticize a Catholic, let them pick on someone their own size and comment instead on New York Governor Cuomo’s new “
Gosnell Law” that legalizes tearing the limbs of fetuses apart, limb by limb, as late as nine months into pregnancy. But tell them to bang the drum slowly.
https://spectator.org/a-letter-to-nick-sandmann-of-covington-catholic-ten-days-later/
