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An update on Nathan Phillips and the Catholics — 42 Comments

1. Thank you for this. I was coming here to report this.
   The esteemed Native America ‘elder’ is not so sainted after all. I am shocked. Not.

2. Liars gonna lie.

3. I haven’t followed this with a magnifying glass but I think even early in the news cycle there was some indication Phillips is a “professional activist”.

4. FOAF – yes, he does seem to be of that “community organizer” tribe.

   https://donsurber.blogspot.com/2019/01/covington-kids-should-sue-twitter.html

   David GudemanJanuary 22, 2019 at 2:47 PM
   “Chief Fulla Bull may not have a lot of money but there is a good chance he is being funded by someone with deep pockets. Go after them.”

5. Surely part of being a shamanic drummer is to have respect for the sacred. And isn’t using a sacred drum for political protest cultural appropriation? I would venture a guess that there must be some Native Americans who are furious about all this. Not that anyone will be looking very hard to find them.

6. He must be Native American. He has high cheek bones. Like Senator Warren.

7. I am Italian. Native Americans, feel free to make fun of my nose.

8. When you turn fifty you have the face you deserve.

   I will be posting no pictures of my face.

9. I saw a report this morning that Trump has invited the Covington kids to the White House. A wag added that he ought to serve them Chick-fil-A.

10. Neo,

    I’m Catholic, and occasionally find myself, via the Internet and you tube, thoroughly enjoying the company of the retired LA Catholic cops (Jesse Romero, Eddie Chavez, Ruben Nava) and assorted Catholic “blue collar theologians” who hold forth 4 hrs per day on Virgin Most Powerful (Catholic) Radio.

    A superb, and thorough, discussion on the March for Life incident ensues at hour three of the January 22, 2019 Virgin radio broadcasts, at the “Terry and Jesse Show”, beginning at 2:00 on the timeline. These two guys are, shall we say, actual men (got that, Mr. You Know Who?) and aren’t about to throw a Catholic high school kid under the bus and feed him and his family to the wolves, all for the sake of signaling their wonderful personal nobility to the people who, like, really really really matter.

    The first half hour of the first of the four 60 mn shows, featuring Jesse Romero and Eddie Chavez on “Jesus 911” (LOL!) also touches on the incident, albeit briefly, as well as some related issues.

    A bigot is a bigot. A racist is a racist. However fashionable the bigotry and racism. And there’s far, far too much it on the Left these days. Period.

    One reason narcissism is so rampant today, is that our present cultural zeitgeist readily provides the narcissist the victim status he (or she) absolutely needs to effectively practice their art. It’s oxygen. From behind this impregnable fortress he (the narcissist) can bully, manipulate, gaslight, slander, and turn the tables on anyone. Anyone. And destroy them. Easily. A despicable bullying manipulative adult narcissist who practices his dark art against unsuspecting teen-age kids, is a despicable bullying manipulative adult narcissist who practices his dark art against unsuspecting teen-age kids. A bigot is a bigot. A racist is a racist. And their salivating enablers are no better. (Got that, Mr. Noble Professor? Sir.)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4SMjxJLfCs

11. Titan, I urge you to spend your teaching career to impart to your students just how special this country is. I sometimes think I wasted years of my life defending this country’s borders. I neglected passing on just how important it is for us to have borders.

    My grand parents came to this country from a h3ll hole in Italy. And we have always served this nation in every war we have ever been involved in. I have, framed, on my wall my great grand uncle’s discharge certificate from WWI. My dad and uncle Tony served in WWII. My dad served through Vietnam. I spent twenty years in the service, through both Gulf wars. And I am not bragging, nor am I claiming to be anything special. What I am saying is that this country is special. That’s why my grand parents came here.

    Teach your students that. This country is worth dying for.

12. I used to make fun of the ground pounders. But that was only in jest. And it was just between us. Professionals have to give respect to professionals.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-GU39Owwho

13. The DD 214 of the fake Indian is now out. He was a refrigerator repairman in the Marine Corps in Nebraska, which is as close to Vietnam as he got. He also went AWOL three times and ended up as a private after four years. No wonder he is homeless working at minimum wage for the left donors.

    The attempt to harass the Mass is more evidence that this is an anti-Catholic campaign anticipating Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination.

    Catholics and observant Jews seem to be the left’s enemies these days.

14. Steve57, my great great uncle died of a wound suffered on May 22, 1863 in the last attack on Vicksburg before Grant settled down to a siege. His brother died of measles contracted in camp. It was as bad a scourge to the army in the Civil War as influenza was in 1917,.

15. One of the the “Stolen Valor” guys—real veterans from prestigious combat units who try to track these pretenders down and expose them—has reportedly gotten hold of a copy of “Recon Ranger” Phillip’s discharge document, his DD-214.**

    Retired Navy SEAL Don Shipley says that Phillip’s DD-214 shows that Phillips was enlisted in the Marine Corps from 1972-1976, he was given basic training as an electrician, and served as a refrigerator mechanic at bases in the U.S.—at Lincoln, Nebraska, and at El Toro Marine base in Southern California.

    Phillip’s DD-214 listed him as having been AWOL three times while stationed at El Toro, and he was given an Honorable discharge with the rank of Private.

    The Stolen Valor issue is a major issue, one that has been given far too little attention.

    There are hundreds, probably thousands (or many thousands, no one knows) of individuals running around the country, appearing in uniform in public, claiming to have been in the military when they weren’t, or they were in the military, but they are claiming to have served in famed combat units when they didn’t, or they’re claiming to have been awarded medals for valor that they weren’t awarded, or claim that they were a POW when they weren’t, and quite often they’re also claiming high ranks that they never attained.

    Some run around all dressed up in their supposed uniforms, which are sometimes covered with so many insignia and medals (sometimes from different branches of the military, and usually wrongly placed) that some of them look like an old Soviet or North Korean General.

    They dishonor the people who really served in those units they falsely claimed to have served in, and who actually earned their awards though acts of heroism and valor–often at great personal cost, and they devalue their service and sacrifice.

    Some of these individuals are in all sorts of other trouble with the law, and so establish a connection in people’s minds between being a veteran and lawlessness, violence, alcoholism, drug abuse, and mental illness.

    These pretenders have reaped all sorts of benefits from their lies—been feted by their local towns, churches, and schools, gotten the girl, been written up in the newspaper, treated to free vacations, food, and drink, been interviewed about their “experiences’ on TV, some lecture children in schools about their heroic acts, get preferential treatment from banks and businesses, and go to the head of the line.

    There is the Stolen Valor law that makes the deception they are carrying out a crime, but this crime is apparently seen as a very low priority by law enforcement, and few people have been prosecuted under this law, or receive anywhere near the penalties they deserve.

    ** See https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/01/retired-seal-nathan-phillips-not-a-vietnam-vet-he-was-a-refrigerator-mechanic-who-went-awol-three-times/

16. Mike, I don’t know what to say. I have nothing but the greatest respect for you ancestor.

17. My family didn’t arrive until the early 1900s.

18. There’s nothing wrong with having served as a refrigerator mechanic. Allowing news reports to frequently refer to him as a Vietnam vet is wrong, and he seems to have encouraged this implicitly at the least. And as I understand it, being in four years and never advancing at all doesn’t argue for good work, which the three AWOLs may have something to do with.

    The anti-Catholic and pro-abortion aspects of this are very evident. Several prominent leftists have tweeted that the boys don’t deserve respect because they were at an “anti-woman” event like the March for Life. Phillips’ attempted invasion of a Mass on Saturday night only emphasizes this.

    They hate life, and they hate religious Christians and Jews. This makes it even more urgent that the Catholic diocese in Kentucky reverse its initial condemnation more strongly.

19. As has been pointed out somewhere else, the rise of all this Leftist anti-Catholic harassment and hatred—highlighted by Democrat Senators Kamala Harris and Mazie Haruno’s recent questioning of Trump judicial nominee Brian Buescher over his membership in the Catholic Knights of Columbus
    —despite the fact that, to quote Article VI, clause 3 of the Constitution,”…no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”—seems planned, and is very likely part of a campaign by the Left/Democrats to “prepare the battle space” for President Trump’s likely nomination of female Catholic Judge Amy Coney Barrett to fill Justice Ginsburg’s position on the Supreme Court.

    An attempt to “gin up their base” and to flood the zone with so many anti-Catholic comments and ideas that, when they go after Trump’s Catholic nominee, it will just seem quite normal to question her faith, to view it with skepticism, and to call it an impediment to her doing her job with impartiality.

20. Kate–Apparently Phillips sometimes referred to himself as having been a Marine “Recon Ranger,” despite the fact that there is no such designation in the military, and certainly being a a refrigerator repairman is not a combat position.

    I note that lot of these Stolen Valor wannabees seem to want to say that they were assigned at a LRRP unit during the Vietnam War.

    LRRPs , Long-Range Reconnaissance Patrol units**, were small, heavily armed reconnaissance teams the penetrated deep into enemy territory.

    ** See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-range_reconnaissance_patrol#In_Vietnam

21. Yeah, Snow on Pine, the “Recon Ranger” line didn’t make any sense, as many have pointed out.

22. P.S.—Leading up the the passage of the original Stolen Valor Act, in 2005, (since struck down by the Supreme Court, reformulated, and made law again in 2013), there had been a growing number of sites on the Internet where actual combat veterans tracked down—sometimes interviewed, and pictured—those they accused of being frauds and, then, listed the information that made these actual combat vets believe that these people were not truly combat vets, served in the units that they said they did, were awarded the decorations they claimed, or sometimes had no military service at all, and sometimes the people targeted were fairly highly placed.

    Looking around the Internet, it seems that that number of such sites has now dwindled, and I suspect it has dwindled because some of those people who were outed had enough financial resources to sue or credibly threaten to sue, while the vets who tracked them down did not have comparable financial resources to pay the hundreds of thousands of dollars in lawyer’s fees and court costs that even one such suit might entail, nor wanted to take the time to involve themselves in such a suit.

    See http://www.burnpit.us/2015/12/stolen-valor-lot-more-prevalent-you-even-know

    See also http://www.stolenvalor.com/target.cfm?source=link&sort=order or https://www.stripes.com/news/veterans/stolen-valor or https://videos.extremesealexperience.com/ or https://insider.foxnews.com/tag/stolen-valor

23. Kate–Perhaps it should have been “Refrigerator Ranger.”

24. Phillips is one of the millions of Nutters On Parade, basically thanks to our great (sarc) civil rights laws.
    Our Republic ultimately cannot survive. We will end up with a (hopefully benign) ruling tyrant, but it will be a near thing: We may get our own Stalin.

25. I have nothing but the greatest respect for you ancestor.

    I have some of his letters to his wife. He is buried in the national cemetery in Memphis where he died. The soldiers who died in the Gayoso hospital that day (June 2, 1863) were put in wooden coffins with their names on a paper sheet attached to the coffin. It rained that day and the names washed off. He is in a section of “unknowns” and we plan to visit this June to see if we can figure out how to identify his grave. I know his unit (55th Illinois volunteer infantry) and the date of his death.

    His last letter is after he was wounded and he reassured his wife that it was not too serious. He just had to wait to be evacuated up to Memphis. The Union soldiers had to be transported past the guns of Vicksburg at night.

    The next letter is from the sister of the man in the next bed telling her he had died.

26. As the percentage of Americans who have actually served in the military dwindles, the general public’s unfamiliarity with military life–its history, particular jargon, uniforms, units, customs, designations, and awards–makes faking being a highly decorated vet of a famed military unit a lot easier.

27. makes faking being a highly decorated vet of a famed military unit a lot easier.

    Yes and the Supreme Court made the Stolen Valor offenses less risky.

    The law had been passed as an effort to stem instances where people falsely claimed to have earned the medal in an attempt to protect the “valor” of legitimate recipients. While a 6-3 majority of the Supreme Court agreed that the law was unconstitutional under the First Amendment’s free speech protections, it could not agree on a single rationale. Four justices concluded that a statement’s falsity is not enough, by itself, to exclude speech from First Amendment protection. Another two justices concluded that while false statements were entitled to some protection, the Stolen Valor Act was invalid because it could have achieved its objectives in less restrictive ways.

    The guy claimed to be a military retiree and have been awarded the Medal of Honor.

    Sorry, Snow, I missed your post,

28. I am a Vietnam ERA Vet. US Navy on a Carrier in the Med. My brother was Air/Sea Rescue. My Dad Navy Vet of WWII, starting while he watched the attack on Pearl Harbor. My Great Great Grand Dad was a Confederate solider. Of the four brothers, two died.

    Some times when I wear my Navy hat I get the “Thank you for your service”. And I often feel guilty that I was just floating around in the Med. I don’t consider wearing my hat “Stolen Valor” but I know I was not anywhere near the fight. I do know names on the Wall.

29. It has been said that there are many more people claiming to have been awarded the Medal of Honor that the 72 legitimate Medal of Honor Awardees now alive–which are catalogued by the Congressional Medal of Honor Society.

    See http://www.cmohs.org/living-recipients.php

    One of the problems here is that there are a lot of medals floating around that anyone can just buy.

30. If the Left argues that men should have no say on abortion because those are not their bodies. Under the same logic, why do people living in the coast cities have a say on whether the wall should be built when they don’t live on the southern borders, shouldn’t the issue of whether a wall should be built be decided only by people living in states sharing borders with Mexico?

31. Those who still “believe the original story about Phillips and the Covington teenagers, and are still spewing hatred towards the kids” are interesting cases of projection entanglement. Their vantage in the media affords so-called “journalists” a commanding view of the spectacle and their role in it.
    Anatomy of a Viral Hoax would be an appropriate title for an enlightening exposé on the topic, but we are not likely to see it in the MSM. They wear blinders and cover their mirrors, lest accidental discoveries lead to becoming actual journalists.

32. LYNN HARGROVE, as far as I know men didn’t get to specify their theater of service or their assignments when they volunteered or were drafted. Your service was not negligible because you weren’t sent to combat zones.

    My father served in an Army Air Corps reconnaissance unit in WWII, in England, North Africa, and Italy. He didn’t fly because he had lousy eyesight. He maintained the cameras and developed the photos from the reconnaissance flights. He attended many unit reunions in the following decades and I don’t think he was ever treated with disrespect because he couldn’t actually fly over enemy territory.

33. No. “There’s nothing wrong with having served as a refrigerator mechanic. There isn’t. Because what Navy, or what Army, can deploy without people who can deploy capable of repairing refrigerators.

34. Mike, if I were you I’d have those letters hanging on my wall. Because my forefathers didn’t get here in time to end slavery. But if they had the chance, they would have, You know what the Northern Italians called us Southern Italians?

    Africani,

35. Mike, if I were you I’d have those letters hanging on my wall.

    Here’s the last one.

    Floating Hospl Nashville
    Near Vicksburg
    May 17th 1863

    Dear Wife,
    I take this opportunity of writing you a few lines to inform you of my health. I received a wound in my left arm but it is doing well and I expect to go home as soon as the rush is over, they are not taking any up the river now but the worst cases, you need not worry about me for I am in a good place and when I go up the river I may have to stay at week or two before getting a chance to go on home. I received two letters from you while on the Black River on Sunday night and on Monday we established our lines around Vicksburg, we had them completely surrounded before there was a gun fired. The action commenced on Tuesday and had been kept up ever since. Sometimes very hard fighting and sometimes light. I was wounded on the 22nd while getting supplies to the Regiment. I was sent to this Hospital by way of the Yazoo and arrived here the night of the 23rd with about 350 others, the rest of the Lasalle boys were all safe the last I heard from them hoping these lines may find you in good health I bring this to a close from your absent
    W.J. Kennedy
    P.S. do not worry or fret about me for I am doing well and will go up the river in a few days

    The date was probably the 27th.

36. I saw the NBC Today Show interview that Savannah Guthrie did with the 16-year-old Covington junior Nick Sandmann this morning. I thought her questions were delicate (albeit rather one-sided), and that the student did extremely well under the circumstances. He answered all of the questions well IMO and was composed and articulate (although he looked pretty nervous, understandably so). Guthrie was quick to point out that they had already run 3! interviews with Phillips and that they were planning to run a 4th interview with Phillips tomorrow. Seriously! I guess Phillips has even more to say. Guthrie was immediately and predictably slammed all over Twitter for “normalizing” Sandmann by giving him an opportunity to speak for himself:

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/tv/2019/01/23/nick-nicholas-sandmann-today-show-interview-savannah-guthrie-twitter/2655420002/

37. Has Phillips been on the Today Show? The only video interview I’ve been able to find is one he did yesterday with Democracy Now — see here. Needless to say, it was very “softball”; I don’t think he’d be able to stand up to even mild questioning about what happened that runs counter to his version.

38. Ann,
    In the commentary after the Today interview with Sandmann, Guthrie said that they had already interviewed Phillips “several times” and they planned to interview him again tomorrow (Thursday). I guess she didn’t say they interviewed him a specific number (3) of times. My mistake. I know I saw him in NBC on Jan. 19.

39. Mike, that’s an awesome letter. Awesome in every respect of the word.

    Kate, you are correct. I didn’t get to choose. I wanted to go to the Philippines shortly after the Moros blew up some US Army troops. Not like I could have made a difference.

    https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/412405/mnlf-milf-clashes-in-cotabato-city-stop-as-police-army-referee

    This story is from five years after I retired. I would have gone, though. But I didn’t get to decide. Big Navy decided. So I had to stay in Japan and go to the World Cup and facilitate liberty for the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force which was passing our Navy gas in the Indian Ocean.

    My contribution to national defense. “No, now’s not a good time to go to Pakistan. How about Australia? Australia’s nice.”.

40. http://edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/south/06/14/karachi.blast/

    Yes, that was a good time to stay away from Karachi.

41. Lynn Hargrove, I know your feeling. I actually did one WestPac cruise (on a destroyer), but I still have a twinge when around those who were “ass in the grass” there and my time was spent a few miles off the coast; just shooting up jungle. OTOH, we answered the call and didn’t head for Canada, so that counts for something.

42. Snow on Pine said:

    “The Stolen Valor issue is a major issue, one that has been given far too little attention.
    “There are hundreds, probably thousands (or many thousands, no one knows) of individuals running around the country, appearing in uniform in public, claiming to have been in the military when they weren’t, or they were in the military, but they are claiming to have served in famed combat units when they didn’t. . .”

    Including a United States Senator (although he did eventually admit he had made up his service record).

    Striking down the Stolen Valor Act was yet another decision of the Supreme Court with which I disagree, vehemently. Since Congress has plenary power “To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces,” the power to prescribe whether one may make up stories about his service is well within constitutional limits.

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