The Ground Glass Election

From Glenn Reynolds, at the Washington Examiner, "Sunday Reflection: The ground-glass election":

Last week, I noticed this blog comment: "Romney was not my first, second, or third choice, but I will crawl over ground glass to vote for him."

A lot of Republicans -- and, judging from polls, a lot of independents -- feel this way. If there are enough of them, Romney will win, and win big.

Are there? Well, there are some signs. I've written here before that politics is all about showing up. And in recent months, people on the Right have been doing a lot of showing up. They've showed up at Romney-Ryan events in unprecedented numbers. They made Dinesh D'Souza's "2016: Obama's America" a huge hit despite a virtual blackout from traditional media. They stood in line for hours at Chick-fil-A restaurants to buy chicken sandwiches in response to politicians' bullying. They packed houses at the "Hating Breitbart" premiere.

Will they now pack the voting booths and vote for Romney, and against Obama, in similarly unprecedented numbers? If they do, Romney will win in a landslide.

Then a landslide it's going to be. All signs are pointing to an epic day for grassroots conservative turnout --- not just Republican turnout, but conservatives for whom Romney wasn't their first pick but who now see him as the bulwark against continued Obama-Democrat statism and political and economic decay.

It's going to be huge. More at that top link.

Glenn Reynolds Vacation Picture From the Cayman Islands

I need to go there. Man, what a beautiful photo.

See: "VARIOUS READERS HAVE ASKED FOR PICTURES FROM CAYMAN, but I didn’t take many on this trip."

I was one of those who asked about pictures. I emailed Glenn after he got back from vacation.

And that Instalanche I got yesterday was the best ever. I'm stunned at the number of visitors that he's been sending over to my site. It's been just a traffic-palooza all day and night --- or at least it was yesterday. That live traffic feed was spinning like a toy windmill at the beach in October.

Glenn Reynolds Interviews Jonah Goldberg

At Instapundit:

And you can pick up Goldberg's new book here: The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas.

Glenn Reynolds Test-Drives the Nissan Leaf

And what was cool about it is that the dealer loaned him the car for a couple of days.

See: "TEST-DRIVING THE NISSAN LEAF." It's a good review.

Glenn Reynolds: 'There Are Literally Millions of People Out There Who Have a Lot of Talent'

An interview with Bill Whittle (via Theo Spark):

And for more, visit Instapundit!

The Aim of Blood Libels

From Caroline Glick (via Glenn Reynolds):

For Israelis, the American Left's assault on Sarah Palin and the conservative movement in the wake of Jared Loughner's murderous attack in Tucson was disturbingly familiar.

Just as the American leftist media and political leadership immediately sought to blame Palin, the Tea Party and conservative media personalities for Loughner's actions, so in 1995 their Israeli counterparts accused the Right - from then-opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu to various rabbis to the two million Israelis who protested against the so-called peace process with the PLO - of being responsible for Yitzhak Rabin's assassination.

Just as Palin and her fellow conservatives are accused of inciting the schizophrenic shooter to pull the trigger, so Netanyahu and his fellow rightists were accused of inciting the sociopathic Yigal Amir to plot and carry out his crime.

And just as it doesn't matter to the American media elites that Americans conservatives engaged in no such incitement, and that Loughner himself seemed motivated to act by a mad obsession with grammar, it didn't matter to their Israeli counterparts that Amir's closest associate and the man responsible for the most incendiary anti-Rabin propaganda was Avishai Raviv - a government agent.

Palin's characterization of the Left's appalling assault on her and her fellow conservatives as a "blood libel" was entirely accurate. Moreover, as her previous use of the term "death panels" in the healthcare debate brought clarity to an issue the Left sought to obscure, so her use of the term "blood libel" exposed the nature of the Left's behavior and highlighted its intentions.

RELATED: More blood libel, "Marxist Barbara Ehrenreich Exploits Arizona Shooting in Latest Smear on Glenn Beck."

Sarah Palin is Right About 'Blood Libel' — UPDATE!! Jonah Goldberg Walks Back 'Very Modest Objection' to Palin's Use of 'Blood Libel'

From Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, at WSJ, "Judaism Rejects the Idea of Collective Responsibility for Murder":

Despite the strong association of the term with collective Jewish guilt and concomitant slaughter, Sarah Palin has every right to use it. The expression may be used whenever an amorphous mass is collectively accused of being murderers or accessories to murder.

The abominable element of the blood libel is not that it was used to accuse Jews, but that it was used to accuse innocent Jews—their innocence, rather than their Jewishness, being the operative point. Had the Jews been guilty of any of these heinous acts, the charge would not have been a libel ....

Murder is humanity's most severe sin, and it is trivialized when an innocent party is accused of the crime—especially when that party is a collective too numerous to be defended individually. If Jews have learned anything in their long history, it is that a false indictment of murder against any group threatens every group. As Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Indeed, the belief that the concept of blood libel applies only to Jews is itself a form of reverse discrimination that should be dismissed.

Judaism rejects the idea of collective responsibility for murder, as the Hebrew Bible condemns accusations of collective guilt against Jew and non-Jew alike. "The soul who sins is the one who will die. The son will not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous man will be credited to him, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against him" (Ezekiel 18).

How unfortunate that some have chosen to compound a national tragedy by politicizing the murder of six innocent lives and the attempted assassination of a congresswoman.

To be sure, America should embrace civil political discourse for its own sake, and no political faction should engage in demonizing rhetoric. But promoting this high principle by simultaneously violating it and engaging in a blood libel against innocent parties is both irresponsible and immoral.

Great piece.

RTWT at the link.

RELATED: The Knoxville Metro Pulse is libeling Instapundit, "Is Glenn Reynolds Getting Sarah Palin in Trouble?":

... Reynolds is no stranger to overheated rhetoric himself. In the lead-up to the Iraq war, he famously called anti-war skeptics "objectively pro-Saddam." (And of course, if you're looking for rhetoric that did help lead to a whole lot of violence, all of the war-drum beating that people like Reynolds did in late 2002 and early 2003 is a fine example.)

All the war-drum beating that "people like Reynolds did" led to a "whole lot of violence"?

Well, there's some more collective guilt for you. Asshats. "Rhetoric" isn't to blame for the violence last weekend, or in 2003. See, "Tucson and the Failure of the Political Class" (via Glenn).

UPDATE: Here's Goldberg, "‘Blood Libel’ and Beyond" (via Memeorandum):

As for the “blood libel” flap, I’ve decided to ratchet down my already very modest objection to the term. While I still think it would have been better had she not used the phrase, so much of the criticism of it is in bad faith. Her intent was honorable and her point was right. Moreover, she’s hardly the first person to use the term outside the bounds of discussions of anti-Semitism. She wasn’t even talking about “the blood libel” but warning against the creation of “a blood libel,” which is exactly what Krugman, Olberman & Co. were doing. The “controversy” was a red herring and little more.

And this just isn't going away. At Politico, "Some Say 'Blood Libel' Signaled Base":

Sarah Palin’s use of the charged term “blood libel” may not have been an accidental blunder, but a deliberate “‘dog whistle” appeal to her evangelical Christian supporters for whom the expression has meaning, commentators and others are saying.

Taegan Goddard, founder of nonpartisan news site Political Wire, floated the idea after the release of Palin’s video remarks Wednesday, writing that “… while it’s not entirely clear what Palin intended, it’s possible she was trying to use dog whistle politics to speak to her religious base who often feel they’re an oppressed minority.”

Commentators have adopted the phrase “dog whistle” to describe Palin’s use of certain words and ideas that will be immediately heard and understood by conservative Christians, but often will not be picked up on by the broader public.

Evangelicals relate to the phrase “blood libel” because they view themselves as a religiously persecuted minority - much like the Jews.

Well, I love the smell of desperation in the morning ... or the evening, be that as it may. The left's "dog whistle" is simply a dishonest ideological construction to facilitate racist smears when there is no real racism in the first place. In this case, I'm not quite sure what utility Palin would have in dog whistling: She is embattled. Before folks in Tucson even knew what happened the progressive-left erupted with despicable allegations of Palin's complicity to murder. It doesn't get more sick than that, and as Goldberg's walk-back indicates, some in the conservative Jewish community may be realizing that criticisms of Palin only work to embolden those who aren't their friends. It's pretty straightforward actually. Progressives are the new anti-Semites, and the right's pushback against Palin is having an enabling effect on the far-left. I wouldn't be surprised if Charles Krauthammer updated some of his remarks in the near future. He certainly agreed Palin was libeled. He simply suggested that she'd have been better off remaining above the fray.