A Court Ruling That Speaks Volumes
A recent judge's ruling over Confederate school names carries a sharp lesson for how America treats its past, at least in Virginia.
U.S. District Judge Michael Urbanski declared that restoring the name of the school to "Stonewall Jackson High School" violated students' First Amendment rights.
Using dramatic language, he described children being turned into "mobile billboards" for something they may not support.
To NBC News, the decision became a triumph in no time. Their coverage framed it as the latest victory for the NAACP and the families who sued.
The court, in its telling, was righting a great moral wrong, yet the deeper issue here isn't Stonewall Jackson, but the precedent being set of stripping history of its complexities.
The Local Vote That Sparked It All
Our story begins when the Shenandoah County school board voted 5-1 to restore names that had stood for decades. Four years ago, amid the Summer of Saint George, school names with historical context were stripped away in the names of "equity" and "reckoning."
Parents petitioned to return the names; the coalition that organized the push argued to respect the wishes of the majority by honoring community heritage.
NBC, a network not exactly known for subtlety, framed the move as a retreat into darkness, tying it to the 2015 Charleston church massacre, the 2017 "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, and the 2020 wave that removed Confederate monuments.
People receiving news on NBC saw the Shenandoah parents not as members of the community, but as accessories in a broader culture war because the network linked local Virginians to violent national flashpoints.
The Lawsuit and the Media’s Narrative
The NAACP, along with several students, sued, and NBC, again, led the coverage.
Their stories, highlighting sweeping constitutional claims, quoted civil rights leaders who declared that the school board had reaffirmed a commitment to white supremacy. This statement wasn't challenged and elevated to the moral center of the report.
Meanwhile, the chairman of the school board never made it past a brief line noting he didn't return NBC's email.
In other words, the NAACP spoke with voices loud enough to destroy the walls of Jericho, muting the parents and their representatives. Once Judge Urbanski issued his ruling, NBC felt free enough to write the third act: victory, vindication, a judicial rebuke.
What NBC Leaves Out
Reactionary and regressive: That's the picture NBC is trying to paint of the Shenandoah parents.
What didn't make any subhead, much less a headline, was those parents exercising democracy: They petitioned, showed up, and voted, with the school board following their lead.
What used to be called civic engagement suddenly becomes an act of bigotry.
What's happening?
The part of the play we can't watch is behind the curtains. National organizations, elite law firms, and a sympathetic media combined to crush a local democratically led decision.
Why?
Because it offended their narrative, the people of Shenandoah were declared persona non grata: Their vote and majority no longer mattered because of their heritage.
Final Thoughts
What we need to remember is that history cannot be flattened into caricature. Americans honor flawed leaders not because they were perfect, but because their lives represent larger truths about our country.
When NBC, or the media in its entirety, reduces Confederate figures to a single label, cheers when courts strip local authority, the damage extends far beyond Virginia. It teaches generations that the past is just a tool, erased if it doesn't conform to the narrative; it's not a story to be understood.
The greater question that remains isn't about Stonewall Jackson. It's about whether communities keep their right to make decisions for themselves, and whom they decide to honor. Or, have national activists and media corporations replaced them?
It's organizations like these that have become a tick, sucking the blood out of their host. In our case, because the tick "dug in deep," we have to be patient when removing the parasite, because digging it out causes more damage. Using common sense, you pour vegetable oil, or something similar, over the area where the tick is, and it crawls out because it can no longer breathe.
Common sense is slowly making its comeback in America. We have to be patient to spot our chances of correcting what the left has screwed up over the past four years.
That tick is dug in deep: We have to find and remove it to help our country heal.
