Blood in the Water?

On Tuesday, Joseph Bottum published this rather chilling analysis of the multitude of horrible personal attacks directed at Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. In his entry, Bottum cited this quote from a commenter at the rabidly leftist website, DailyKos, who was trying to justify the wave of anti-Palin slander:

Are you telling me you would not destroy the love a family holds for one another, even if it meant letting someone who would destroy the constitution become president?

None of use would use these tactics in a perfect world. It is not a perfect world. It is a fallen world. We have to judge costs and benefits, not moral absolutes. I know this is the way to fanaticism and destruction—believe me I do. But, when we face opponents such as the ones we face . . . what else is there for us to do?

What choice do we have? When faced with monsters, we have to be monstrous ourselves.

Monstrous the radical leftists have certainly been, accusing Palin of having faked her pregnancy earlier this year and referring to her daughter Bristol as a woman of ill-repute.

What has come over these people since last Friday? The attacks upon Palin and her family have unmasked a raw, visceral hatred that has come to characterize the radical left over the past several decades. Such rage is based upon a level of contempt for traditional, middle-class Americans that up to now, I think has gone largely unnoticed by most people - those who do not regularly follow the day-to-day goings-on of American politics and the culture wars.

At a personal level, the slandering of Sarah Palin and her family has struck a chord with me that previous political battles have not. This time, it is personal. For the past few days my blood has been boiling, seeing an innocent teenage girl who made a personal error in judgment being assaulted for no other reason than her mother is the wrong kind of American: conservative, religious, and middle-class.

I've spent nearly all of my adult life in the academic world among liberal, effete types who look down their noses at anyone who does not fit into their mold of what an "acceptable" person should be. Being the same type of "unacceptable" American that Palin is, I am not surprised that such hatred exists, for I've encountered it time and again in my own life - personal and professional. Make no mistake, the left looks at traditional Americans and despises who we are, where we come from, where we went to school, the kind of vehicles we drive, the way we talk, the churches we attend, the way we dress, and the very fact that we even exist. They are not our friends and never will be.

In my previous entry, I referred to those attacking Palin as "sons-of-bitches." Some of you reading this may think that is over the top, and that perhaps I should have censored myself. The thing is, I did censor myself. "Sons-of-bitches" is a far kinder term than such lowlife scum deserve, and in retrospect it is an insult to female dogs everywhere. Hopefully, the female canine community will accept my apology.

The attendees and speakers at the Republican National Convention seem to be handling it all rather well. On Tuesday evening I was impressed by Fred Thompson's stem-winder of a speech and Joseph Lieberman's call to do right by the country, regardless of political affiliation. This evening, I look forward to watching Rudy Giuliani's keynote address and Sarah Palin's acceptance speech. Palin strikes me as someone with the requisite poise and articulateness to easily brush away the shameful assaults on her character and her family's honor. As for her political record (which should be the focus of the campaign), consider this article which Eric Blair e-mailed to me today.

Ultimately, the hateful, deranged left would do well to consider these words with which Bottum concludes his entry:

This is the blade by which politics turns to bloodshed.

Does the left really intend to cross that line? I have a troubling feeling we may soon find out.