Thanks, Sarah

The US Secret Service blames Sarah Palin for a dramatic increase in death threats against Obama. The increase coincided exactly when Palin started her nastiest line of attack in the 2008 Campaign. She would question Obama's patriotism, or say "we don't know who the real Barack Obama is". A subtle suggestion that he is somehow evil, or a traitor.

We saw her say these things, and her crowd would whip up into a hateful frenzied mob. We heard shouts of "hes a terrorist" and "kill him", and we saw her say nothing. We saw no condemnation of these events from the right. No repudiation of such hate from Palin's base, the evangelicals and "values voters" (Jesus apparently hates liberals). The silence was, and continues to be, deafening.

Ironic that I'm writing this on the seventieth anniversary of the Kristallnacht. That was another time in history when hateful people on the fringes of a movement said and did things while their more moderate colleagues watched in silence. When "good" men and women did nothing, said nothing.