The Cost Of Remaining On Defense: An Illustrative Case

     When I wrote that we in the Right must go on the attack against the destroyers of the Left, I was speaking of a shift in our attitudes that will be required of us if we’re to be rid of the Leftist pest that threatens to overthrow our nation. At this time in our cultural and political conflict, the Left has the initiative. Worse, the Right seldom even reacts with adequate vigor to hold its ground. That situation must be reversed if the United States is to continue as we have known it.

     However, even with all the Sturm und Drang that besets us, most decent Americans are still too comfortable in their lives and personal pursuits to be stirred to offensive action. In consequence, those the Left targets are suffering its attentions with very little support, if any. Many of them are even abandoned by family and friends afraid of “catching their condition.” Try to imagine yourself in such straits, and how it would feel.

     This morning, our favorite Bookworm reminds us about some of the individuals caught up in this phenomenon. What caught my particular attention was an article I managed to miss when it was first published, about a young man who became my personal hero: the involuntary focus of the “Covington Catholic” incident, Nick Sandmann:

     Sandmann was one of a group of Covington students from Park Hills, Ky., attending the anti-abortion March for Life in Washington, D.C., when Nathan Phillips, a Native American elder and activist, was attending the Indigenous Peoples' March on the same day.

     Videos documenting Sandmann's encounter with Phillips went viral -- including some clips that did not show the full incident.

     "For Nick Sandmann, he's going to be tarnished with this stigma forever -- that he is some arrogant, racist kid," [Lara] Logan said on "Fox and Friends" on Monday. "Because that's how he was depicted when he was at the Lincoln Memorial... everyone knows him as the 'Covington kid.'"...

     Sandmann returned to the Lincoln Memorial with Logan for the first time since his life was turned upside down by his chance meeting with Phillips.

     "As we stood there, people began to stare at Nick and it became uncomfortable," narrated Logan. "He was mindful of the death threats and bomb threats against him, his home and [his attorney Todd McMurtry]. So we decided to leave. The long looks followed us on the way."

     "Does that happen all the time?" Logan asked Sandmann, as they walked away from the steps through heavy rain.

     "It happens everywhere I go," he said. "From in my community to different parts of the country. Everywhere I go, there is someone that will point me out."

     The unpleasant attentions Nick Sandmann gets, from the unfriendly stares to the death and bomb threats, are entirely because a hostile media establishment found it “newsworthy” – i.e., something that would draw in readers and viewers – to tar him as some sort of bigot. Despite the lawsuits that have followed, in which Sandmann has collected huge sums from the offending media companies, there have been virtually no retractions and no corrections of the initial inaccurate and inflammatory stories about the incident.

     Sandmann and his lawyer have done everything they can to punish the media outlets that have done this to him. It hasn’t been enough. It would take massive public support – boycotts of the offender outlets and their sponsors – to force those companies to change their ways or go out of business. No such support has arisen. The media continue to do as they’ve been doing: slandering anyone in the Right who can be made into grist for the mills of their Leftist allies.

     In noting one recent and especially scandalous Leftist initiative, Sarah Hoyt said acerbically (and in all capital letters, at that) that “THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU LET YOUR CULTURE BE TAKEN BY PEOPLE WHO HATE THE COUNTRY.” In point of fact, we’ve seen one demonstration after another of the power of a militant minority with a short, coherent agenda. That militant minority is capitalizing on the diffuseness of its opposition: i.e., us. Their aims are few, while ours are many. It’s easier for us to say “I can’t do anything about it,” or “someone else will take care of it,” than to engage in the struggle. Thus we cede the initiative to those who seek to destroy what we claim to cherish.

     There may not be a solution. Decent persons at a distance from such scurrilities are difficult to rouse to action. They have their own lives to live: their own responsibilities to discharge, their own bills to pay, and their own worries to worry. Rallying the majority of the population of the nation against the hatred and lunacy the Left has unleashed is difficult even to imagine. It didn’t happen in Revolutionary times – the consensus among historians of the era is that no more than 10% of American colonials were enthusiastic supporters of the Revolution, much less actively engaged in making independence from Britain happen – and it’s less likely in our current era.

     Yet should we remain passive, we can easily see what will become of us. Nick Sandmann’s case, though of particular importance to me personally, is only one illustration out of many. Bookworm provides several others, a non-exhaustive list.

     We are at war. We must fight or go under. There is no third way.

     Pray.